British pundit Piers Morgan decided to share his unsolicited two cents on the new Barbie movie, which went over as well as expected.
“If I made a movie that treated women the way Barbie treats men, feminists would want me executed,” reads the headline of a Piers Morgan column from July 24.
While he was trying to pander to the large part of his fanbase that was outraged by the film, Twitter users were quick to call Morgan out.
Twitter user @ianmakesfilms wrote, “I mean the film literally could not be any more subtle with the message of ‘maybe both sexes should treat each other better.’”
Another argued, “It’s not really that subtle. It’s pretty obvious that the movie is trying to push equality rather than superiority.”
The Greta Gerwig film notably had a feminist bent that some found offensive. If Morgan had paid attention to either the plot or the dialogue, he would realize that the script empowers Ryan Gosling’s Ken to have an identity outside of his relationship with Barbie and encourages men and women to be kinder to one another.
“You mean the movie that treats men the same way women are treated in society?” Twitter user @MationMiss wrote. “While also asking them to be themselves and happy with who they are?”
Morgan’s comments followed a similar line of thinking many outrage-happy conservatives have taken to since Barbie hit big screens on July 21. Many politicians have attempted to use the film as a lightning rod for controversy, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who proclaimed he was “going to war” with the movie.
But many have noted that these political grandstands from Piers Morgan and Ted Cruz blatantly underscore the subject of male fragility—one of the primary themes of the Barbie movie.
One Twitter user wrote, “Always the hypothetical persecution of men is taken more seriously than the actual persecution of women.”
