What Barbenheimer Revealed About Us

Oppenheimer has made over 500 million dollars at the box office and Barbie has now crossed the 1 Billion (with a B) mark! One is a drama filled biopic about the “father of the atomic bomb” while the other is a social critique film wrapped in the hot pink nostalgia of one of the most popular toys and brands of the last century. This pair doesn’t exactly seem like a double feature made in heaven, but regardless Barbenheimer has become a phenomenon! But, this isn’t just another click baited movie review. Join us as we unpack what made these two movies hit such a nerve in America and what is the deep longing that the marketing success of Barbenheimer revealed about us.

Atomic bombs and Barbie dolls. It seems like these two films couldn’t be further apart, but to understand the connection and what we believe is the underlying longing that drew so many people in, we’ll have to do a quick synopsis of what each of the movies was about. Don’t worry, we won’t be giving away any big spoilers that you wouldn’t see in the trailers, the toy aisle or a history book. Starting with Oppenheimer, writer and director Christopher Nolan takes his audience on a non-linear biographical view of the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Based on true stories, Oppenheimer digs into the complicated mind of the man who spearheaded the Los Alamos Laboratory which designed the first nuclear bombs. When the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb in Japan, it is not only credited as being the decisive moment which led to the end of the second world war, but has also brought about an entirely new way of engaging in war, altogether. In Hiroshima alone, there were an estimated 40,000 military members but over 140,000 estimated deaths from the dropping of the bomb and the radioactive fallout which followed. The ethical dilemma of introducing such a catastrophically powerful weapon into the world and the burden of carrying the weight of that decision after is the focus of the 3-hour film. Barbie, on the other hand, follows the story of a stereotypical Barbie whose idyllic life in Barbieland begins to unravel around her due to some unknown problems happening in the life of the girl playing with her in the real world. In order to get her life back to the way it was, Barbie must go to the real world, find her girl and help fix whatever the problem is.

So, what is the existential thread tying these two films together and pulling so many into the theaters multiple times to see them? Coming at the same issue from two very different angles, I believe that both of these movies are forcing us, as a culture, to face our own lives and the innocence we all have lost over the years. Barbie does this for countless women who grew up playing with the doll and dreaming about what their future lives would or could look like through her. For all of us, though, there came a day when we put our toys down for the last time and were never able to play with them in the same way again. I mean, sure, as a dad, I can play toys with my kids and I was even able to save and pass down a handful of some of my favorites from childhood. And, I'm a collector of all sorts of nerdy things. I have shelves of comic books, movie memorabilia and other items that are still enjoyable to thumb through every now and then, but I’ll never be able to come to all of it with the same childlike innocence that I once had because, and this may come as a shocker, I’m not a child anymore! I’m older, I just had a birthday in fact, and I’ve experienced pain, heartache, trauma and disappointment many times over throughout my life. Life was simpler when I was a kid and playing with toys was part of that simplicity. I suspect the same reason that I still hold onto a lot of my old comics and collectibles, aside from the obviously astronomical financial value they will eventually have - I'm kidding – kind of – is that they remind me of that simpler time in my life and recall the levity of that kid hiding somewhere inside of me and keeping me from becoming a crusty old curmudgeon in now in my advancing age.

Oppenheimer addresses the same issue, but from a different perspective. While Barbie tugs at the innocence taken away from us by life circumstances, Oppenheimer confronts us with the innocence we’ve sacrificed through willful choices which have hurt others and seared our own consciences. It’s not always the wrong thing to do, either. There are times when we’ve each had to drop the proverbial A-bomb and nuke an unhealthy relationship before it could get any worse, but that doesn’t mean that made it any easier or that we don’t carry the scars and the “what-ifs” long after it is done. On the other hand, every time we choose to inflict harm – big or small, physical or otherwise – onto someone else in order to get our own desired outcome, we are burning away more of our own innocence in the process until eventually we become an empty husk; a shell of who we once were. We are driven to these types of behaviors through greed, lust, a desire for power or control and more like that. When we lie, when we manipulate others for our own gain, we become hypocrites to our conscience, treating others contrary to the way we know is right. We are all at different stages of recognizing and mourning the loss of our innocence, both what was stripped from us and what we chose to give willingly. Barbie gives us a brightly colored, sugar-coated, idealized reminder of what we once were. Oppenheimer gives us a jarring and uncomfortable mirror to remind us of who we are now. So, where do we go from here?

“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” - Romans 7:21-24

The words of the Apostle Paul here seem like they could be mined from the heart of any one of who has come to recognize the conflict within as we desire to start over and be innocent again, while simultaneously making daily choices in defiance of what it is that we say we want. We are slaves to our sinful natures, having a wish that things could go back to how they were but continuing to walk towards our own self destruction. We satiate our longings with popcorn and plastic nostalgia, trusting in a movie like Barbie to give us a couple of hours of joy as it reminds us of simpler times, but even Barbie can’t escape the collapse of paradise as the problems of the real world keep closing in. The truth is, Barbie is a substitute. That ache in our hearts, that longing to return to innocence, will not be satisfied by anything except the only One who can actually wash us and make us pure. The Gospel secures our hope for eternity, but also for our lives right now. I can’t go back and be a child again, but I can be born again in Christ. I can’t undo the wrong that was done to me and I can’t erase the harms I’ve caused to others, but by His blood, I can be washed and made clean of my own sins and He will work all things, even the pains of my past, for His glory and my ultimate good. Barbenheimer works because it speaks to this universal longing in each one of us, but the answer to that longing is only found in Jesus.