Far-right provocateur Ben Shapiro recently unleashed a fiery 43-minute rant on YouTube expressing his disdain for the summer blockbuster movie Barbie.
In what some have described as a "tantrum," Shapiro criticized the film—referring to it as "flaming garbage" and one of the most "woke" movies he has ever seen. Having apparently crawled out of whatever cave he's been living in where he completely missed Mattel's Barbie line of dolls has been using female empowerment as a selling point since the creation of the brand.
The product's tagline is "you can do anything," not "you can do what the patriarchy approves of" after all.
In an unusual opening for his latest rant, Shapiro is seen setting three dolls ablaze, symbolizing his discontent with the film. He goes on to complain about being "dragged" to the Greta Gerwig-directed movie by his producers.
Armed with "pages and pages of notes," Shapiro accuses "Barbie" of promoting "angry feminist claptrap" and creating divisions between men and women.
You can watch the moment he burns the dolls below.
Shapiro's complete remarks can be heard in the video below.
According to Shapiro, the film's premise revolves around a notion that men and women are on opposing sides and harbor animosity towards each other. He claims that the movie explicitly aims to separate men from women, which he views as harmful to society.
He said:
“The basic sort of premise of the film, politically speaking, is that men and women are on two sides and they hate each other. And literally, the only way you can have a happy world is if the women ignore the men and the men ignore the women.”
Claiming he wasted “two hours of my precious time, two hours I will never get back, two hours around my deathbed I will wish that I had not spent that time doing," Shapiro criticized the film for including a transgender character and suggested the world depicted in the film does not have a patriarchal system.
He said:
“I mean, Greta Gerwig is a lady. She’s making a good living off of this. Margot Robbie is playing the lead. In fact, the entire cast aside from basically Ryan Gosling is women, so it seems like women are doing okay.”
While the film has a nostalgic appeal to many, Shapiro questioned why millennial moms would take their children to watch Barbie and raised concerns about the appropriateness of its humor for kids. However, double-entendres are commonplace in family films, making his criticism somewhat puzzling.
Shapiro further took issue with the casting choices, expressing his annoyance with Ryan Gosling's portrayal of Ken, Issa Rae's role as President Barbie, and the inclusion of trans actor Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie.
Shapiro was mocked for his intense reaction to a movie about toys.
Shapiro has continued to make headlines for increasingly absurd performative right-wing outrage, much of it surrounding gender roles.
Last fall, he claimed the United States military abandoned "traditional masculinity" and declared wars are best fought by “typically very patriotic, very male people.” His remarks were quickly disregarded by actual members of the armed forces who noted he has never served in the military.
Around the same time, he garnered more criticism after he reached for the cosmos again, this time to insist Democratic President Joe Biden has an "equity agenda" and wants to put LGBTQ+ astronauts on the moon, describing the possibility as something that "sounds like a bad pornography."
In the spring, he was mocked for attempting to stoke fear and panic around an episode of the children's television series Blue's Clues by focusing on cartoon animals depicted as transgender, particularly one with chest scars that suggested top surgery.
While the video aimed to promote inclusivity and celebrate LGBTQ+ individuals, Shapiro comically fixated on the depiction of trans beavers, specifically the one with two small lines on its chest and rather defiantly declared that "beavers don't have two nipples."
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