After watching Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, my daughters and I left the theater laughing and crying. But lingering in my mind was a scene that plagued me with reminders of how dystopic America has become in contrast to the dolls’ utopia. And it has to do with guns.
In the film, when the CEO of Mattel, played by Will Ferrell, enters Kendom (formerly known as Barbieland), he and his corporate sidekicks walk into a brawl. The war between Kens is fierce, but the most brutal violence is rendered with beach balls, not bullets. “There are no guns in Barbieland,” as Ferrell said.
The characters—and some of the audience, all of whom likely scanned the theater for exits before sitting down (it is the “real world” of America, after all)—sighed deeply, relieved the Kens couldn’t inflict the horrors we see in the news every day.
The gun violence epidemic in our Real World is complex. Still, one facet of why this preventable crisis continues to devastate our lives is the marketing machine behind the gun industry. For decades, the gun industry has marketed the lie that guns make us safer when in reality, research has long shown that firearms make society far more dangerous. Guns are now the number one killer of our kids. …
Do you want to be “Good Guy with a Gun Ken” or “Military Might Ken”?
The gun industry has perfected the formula to prey on natural human developmental insecurities and fears to sell deadly products without considering the human toll. This isn’t a Mojo Dojo Casa House they’re selling to young men. They’re selling an epidemic.
These predatory practices come with deadly consequences.
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- Playing on emasculation, gun manufacturer Remington released an ad campaign telling men to buy their AR-15 style rifle to have their “Man Card” reissued.
- It’s no mistake the Sandy Hook killer used that very rifle to slaughter 26 children and teachers at their elementary school. Brady supported the Sandy Hook families in holding Remington accountable for contributing to the massacre.
- Similar ads and targeted marketing campaigns are believed to have influenced the shooters who attacked a school in Parkland, a Buffalo supermarket and a Highland Park July 4 parade.
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By tapping into military fantasies and needs for validation, the gun industry has created its own “Mass Shooter Ken.” This Ken comes with his own accessories like body armor, a racist manifesto, and an AR-15, complete with an illegally-secured stabilizing brace and ammunition. No background check needed!
— Brady President Kris Brown in One Reason We All Want to Live In Barbieland? There Is No Gun Industry.
Latest term(s) your target demo (suburban women and girls) will be searching: “Barbie”
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Cause/Policy you’re pushing: “gun control”
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Likely AI generated article (they all are now with some light human editing) for clicks (cash) and demo influencing (remember, ladies, gunz-r-bad and you’re stronk and brave for believing so).
Funny you should mention that, one of our local papers is getting called out for doing exactly that and it got noticed because the spelling errors went from comical to nonexistent over the last 5 months.
Some responders on TTAG may just possibly perhaps be AI generated.
I’ll not call any names but some initials are: d a c i an others.
yeah, all caps is a nominee, as well as the racist poop splattering bigot.
I have a new ‘angle of attack’ for ms. poopy, am I being too mean? 🙂
pretty sure it’s a fembot programmed to lash out and regurgitate.
at least it mostly stopped jumping queue.
dacian is not an AI. His lack of intelligence is completely natural.
Wow! You know what must be the happiest places on earth? East Turkmenistan and Tibet! ‘Cause all the normal residents are disarmed and their is a massive police state!
Kris Brown (Probably)
Wheaton Jaeger,
Nope: the happiest place on Earth is Ukraine where they eliminated firearms from society and achieved their long awaited Utopia!
Pro tip: there always has been and always will be evil predators among us who are always watching and looking for weaknesses which they can exploit. Disarming the masses does absolutely NOTHING to reduce predators from attacking the masses. In fact quite the contrary: disarming the masses emboldens predators to attack the masses more often with even greater ferocity.
Ken can keep the vapid and woke Barbie and all her narcissistic friends.
I’m betting GI Joe gets laid more often and by more down to earth ladies with realistic life goals.
G.I. Joe cucks Ken when he is on leave!
ROFL
I vividly recall a tv commercial in which GI Joe pulls up to Barbie’s house in a Corvette. Barbie eagerly gets in the car and GI Joe drives away. A distraught Cucked Ken is left behind.
https://youtu.be/L8QKK5IDSXE
that was cool. i would have guessed robot chicken.
Jump in the defenseless victim pool…Bring a beach ball.
“For decades, the gun industry has marketed the lie that guns make us safer when in reality, research has long shown that firearms make society far more dangerous.”
Wow, what a revelation! If we eliminate firearms from our society, we can all finally be safe:
— Thugs will no longer beat gay teens to a pulp.
— Wife beaters will no longer punch their wives into oblivion.
— Rapists will no longer strangle their intended victims.
— Robbers will no longer stab their victims.
— Stalkers will no longer bludgeon their victims to death.
and so on and so forth …
What’s that? Attackers did not use firearms for any of those types of crimes and eliminating firearms from society will not reduce those types of crimes? Stop confusing me with the facts!!!
Aint nobody got time for your facts there is an agenda to push.
Just look at how safe societies were historically before guns were invented. No mass killings, no violence against women and minorities, no violent crime. Everyone lived together in peace and harmony before guns came along and ruined everything. Or, maybe it was all peace and harmony before the evil gun companies started marketing them with appeals to masculinity and turning men violent? Ehh, something like that.
Yeah, the real reveal was that The Regime wants to defund schools that teach archery, not just firearm safety. Just like the before time of guns, only those in power had the tools. This and they are really trying to crush anything the lends itself to self sufficiently.
Odd that Brady blindly accepts the Chinese propaganda of the movie that got it banned in Vietnam, it’n’it?
Don’t bite the hand that feeds.
“research has long shown that firearms make society far more dangerous. Guns are now the number one killer of our kids.”
there’s that lie again…
“research has long shown that firearms make society far more dangerous. Guns are now the number one killer of our kids.”
there’s that lie again…
Research has long shown what the “gun violence” researchers were paid to show.
75 year old real world Barbie…
Fire: smoke detector, fire extinguishers, eventually fire crew
Crash: seat belt, airbag, eventually paramedic/EMTs
Lethal threat:______________, eventually police
As you don’t wait for the fire department to tell you what to do in a house fire, as you don’t rely on the EMTs to deal with the aftermath after you skip your restraints, what can put in the blank? Social worker? Prayer? Positive vibes? I have another couple ideas.
The Movie should have had Barbie being forced into an unwanted pregnancy and then having to go on welfare for life costing the taxpayers millions.
Later the movie should have shown Barbie’s little girl being killed in a mass school shooting.
Teaching the upcoming generation on the evil’s of Republicanism would ensure the Republicans get destroyed as a viable political party.
darcydodo…There you go again lending criminals your Gun Control helping hands.
The movie should have shown Barbie getting carjacked and pooping her pink panties…And her kid being abducted and scattered bones found months later by hunters, etc. And now you want to make Barbie and her children more defenseless and easier easy pickings? Shame on you dodo.
to Debbie
You would not have the crime you speak of if we kept guns out of the hands of criminals or lunatics.
To dacian
“You would not have the crime you speak of if we kept guns out of the hands of criminals or lunatics.”
🤣
You evidently have no clue on planet dacian.
In 2022, nationwide, ~48,000 (collectively, car jackings or attempted car jacking’s) were conducted with either knives, ‘blunt objects’, or physical brute force hands as the weapon of choice.
https://wnyt.com/top-stories/jon-romano-describes-vicious-albany-sword-attack/
In many ways it would be worse but it really doesn’t hit home until you either see it first hand in the third world or a block or two outside your workplace………..or both
No human being can be that stupid. And then dacian steps up and proves it so.
To the psycho Booger Brain
More wild bullshit about carjacking. Most carjackings are done with firearms, not knives and its laughable you mention blunt force instruments and physical force.
You are in dire need of some serious mental health care to treat your totally out of control paranoia.
And you dodged the statement about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and nut cases (like you). Your solution is to do nothing and hope the problem goes away.
“Keeping guns out of the hands criminals and lunatics…” Dunce, I’ll wager I’ve done a little more of that than you. You really do not know of which you speak. Don’t worry ignorance is not a sin. it’s just that you should sit down and be quite until you remedy that.
@dacian
“More wild bullshit about carjacking. Most carjackings are done with firearms, not knives and its laughable you mention blunt force instruments and physical force.
You are in dire need of some serious mental health care to treat your totally out of control paranoia.
And you dodged the statement about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and nut cases (like you). Your solution is to do nothing and hope the problem goes away.”
You really have no clue at all what the world is really like as you stay locked into your delusion.
Dodged? You saw what I was replying to, I even quoted it for you. But you? What do you do? You once again try to obfuscate, lie, and dodge around the fact that you are wrong.
Not only that but you are mentally ill delusional to think that crime stops simply because there is not a gun or that guns are the only thing used in crimes. A simple google search with the proper search terms and a little time yields thousands of crimes, including car jackings or attempted car jackings, across the U.S. that happened without a gun. Heck, just on one search alone with an aggregated Bing and Google and (private subscription) news-index search for ‘attempted car jacking’ alone in the last two days I found hundreds of them all across the country – and that’s not even using the aggregated news and police report sources my wife uses. There are literally multi-thousands of violent crimes committed every day across the country where no gun at all is used.
You live in your own little world of delusion dacian, a sick mentally ill world of delusion.
That definitely means your hands.
How are your plans for the great purge coming along? A massacre on that scale does take a lot of planning for the logistics.
darcydodo…Well then cut the crap and fixate on the criminal misuse of firearms, bricks, bats, knives, fists, feet, vehicles, etc. And leave people completely ALONE who do not criminally misuse firearms, bricks, bats, knives, fists, feet, vehicles, etc.
“The movie should have shown Barbie getting carjacked and pooping her pink panties…”
You keep bring up defecation – Are you having problems with finding a ‘nocturnal emission’ in your bed when you wake up in the morning?
This might help, dearie :
https://www.depend.com/en-us/incontinence-products/women
@dacian
“The Movie should have had Barbie being forced into an unwanted pregnancy and then having to go on welfare for life costing the taxpayers millions.”
The movie should have Barbie accepting her own responsibility instead of trying to blame it on the ‘patriarchy’.
“Later the movie should have shown Barbie’s little girl being killed in a mass school shooting.”
Later the Movie should have shown Barbie stepping up to defend her “little girl” against the very mentally ill killer the left wing enables, emboldens, and facilitates by putting children in a gun-free zone school and then basically saying “nope, ya can’t defend the kids here with a gun, but that mentally ill killer can shoot as many as they want”
“Teaching the upcoming generation on the evil’s of Republicanism would ensure the Republicans get destroyed as a viable political party.”
Teaching future generations that people like you need to be dragged out back and have their asses kicked then removed from society would go a long way towards removing people like you and the rest of the left wing who have done nothing but ensure and love it when innocent people get hurt and killed.
Had you watched it, you might have been one of the very few to learn for the first time that Barbie has no genitals.
“This Ken comes with his own accessories like body armor, a racist manifesto, and an AR-15″
That’s supposed to be the stereotypical mass shooter now. It’s another reason they’re putting off releasing the tranz manifesto.
Some years back my wife bought the Barbie AR15 for our daughter. Yes, your daughter can have an AR15 for her Barbie to use, just like dad!
Please explain to me how a stabilizing brace makes a firearm any deadlier than simply attaching a regular buttstock to it? Does anyone seriously believe that a person who is willing to commit a mass shooting and in all likelihood die in the process is going to have any qualms about making a short-barreled rifle shortly before committing their atrocities?
Well, duh! It was illegally obtained. Logic!
Oops…*illegally-secured*
My bad.
Wait, what?!?
Apparently marketing by gun manufacturers causes mentally unstable people to buy guns and commit violence but, violence in video games, TV, movies and music have no effect.
Whoda thunk it?
This is like the guy who played Spock talking about guns on Twitter; Living in one’s own world not the actual one.
So there was a Kenbrawl in Barbieland & no gats?Complete with no wieners in plasticland. And no toxic testosterone. BTW that lunatic demented boy in Newtown murdered his mother,stole her rifle & cowardly shot little kids and teachers. Nothing to do with Remington who capitulated after being acquired by a chit corporation…
“Playing on emasculation, gun manufacturer Remington released an ad campaign telling men to buy their AR-15 style rifle to have their “Man Card” reissued.”
The Brady group told people in a mass rally to give up their guns and some did, 83 of them to be exact. Their stories were followed – within six months all 83 were either stabbed or beaten to death by criminals despite having successfully defended against those very same criminals attempts with DGU prior the Brady rally.
Ya know what did not show up to defend these people in their time of need? Not one member of the Brady group (not even you Kris Brown) or any member of any anti-gun organization showed up to defend these people in their imminent moment of need. Kris Brown is real keen on telling people not to have a gun, with his whole groups lies especially, as are the rest of the anti-gun organizations. Yet, there is not even one documented case where anyone from any of these anti-gun organizations ever showed up to defend a victim of a violent criminal act in that victims moment of imminent defense need when they were at home or out doing general life activities (e.g. going to or from work, shopping, at the park, etc…). So in other words, listen to Brady President Kris Brown and get your ‘stupid card’ reissued.
If it were my ‘campaign’ i’d be telling everyone to to buy their “AR-15 style rifle” to have their “Human right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness insurance card’ ‘reissued’.
Scooter said, “As you don’t wait for the fire department to tell you what to do in a house fire”
You don’t wait on the police or the Brady bunch and if you do you may not survive to talk about it.
Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared…………………all the time.
They would turn up to protect the criminal from violations of their civil rights.
More evidence that the gun-control types don’t live in the real world. It is a *movie*, it has nothing to do with real life.
Wanna see a movie that actual does teach some lessons about the realities of gun-control? Try “Schindler’s List.”
anti-gun people live in a fantasy ‘world’ anyway, so of course they think a movie like this ‘validates’ them.
I did not watch the movie, but I would guess that they don’t have ANTIFA Kens out smashing, burning, delivering beat-downs, or dousing people with unknown liquids either? Or all kinds of other nasty realities of our world?
I’m getting so sick of activists tying to graft their message onto anything to which people are paying attention at the moment. Can’t we enjoy a holiday or bit of entertainment without being harangued with leftist talking points that have no logical connection to that holiday or bit of entertainment?
No we can’t have that. I haven’t seen it either. I think young women and girls like it. We went to see Mission Impossible while Barbie was playing. Several groups of young women or teen girls were there dressed up like Barbie.
This article made me search for “John Wick action figure”, and you know what, it exists! I might buy two and play dolls with my son.
Ahem…Action Figures. Not dolls. Even Dark Helmet played with dolls.
If you’re ever bored….
https://www.youtube.com/user/actionfiguretherapy
I believe a very long time ago, I saw a Barbie doll wearing a Battle Dress Uniform. But she had no gun.
That is certainly one of the reasons why the anti-war crowd, wanted boys to play with girls toys. Toy guns were almost never marketed to girls.
You have to go back to the 1950s. And the old black & white TV series “Annie Oakley.” Her EDC was a 45 colt revolver.
I occasionally see pink cowgirl pistols on sale, at some of these smaller independent retail stores.
But I haven’t seen an Annie Oakley doll carrying a winchester rifle in a very long time
If there was a mass shooter Ken, he’d be wearing a hoodie, face mask, skinny jeans, and Nike shoes that haven’t been creased yet. Throw a Chinese Glock switch in for realism also.
mercenary dolls would be cool with the right accessories.
I wonder what their reaction would be, if someone started marketing dolls of Stage Coach Mary, or Harriet Tugman with their guns????
Maybe I’ll invest in it and find out for myself.
So some fantasy movie starring a doll character somehow validates some limp noodle gun control Pansey. Might be time to call the boys with the oversized butterfly nets and I LOVE ME jackets.
They were dolls that someone chose to cast on real life. I remember a few decades ago there was a push to vilify Barbie because the toy represents an unrealistic ideal of the female body. Would someone made up my mind?
That gets a brief mention in the movie, but the story quickly moves on.
As far as toys go, I can remember very well, “the war against war toys”. Or what some people called “war toys”.
And the people who went after toy guns also said they hated the “military-industrial complex”.
I saw a pattern a long time ago. The people who hate the military industrial complex, hate toy guns, and they hate the Second Amendment.
They want your kids to only play with unarmed toy dolls. Playing with toy guns and “playing war” are normal, and morally correct activities for children, especially boys.
There is a Cognitive Dissonance in people who are gunowners. Who claim they are antiwar and hate the military-industrial complex. And then at the same time, frown on people giving their children toy guns to play with.