Sing the Legend

In 2022 and early 2023, as Americans shed their masks and began congregating in public again after the end of COVID-19, a strange phenomenon began to take shape. In a decision that was at once inspired counterprogramming and a snarky jab at Christopher Nolan for having gone over to Universal, Warner Brothers announced that Greta Gerwig’s postmodern, Mattel-driven Margot Robbie film Barbie would throw its hot pink weight up against Nolan’s massive biopic Oppenheimer, scheduling Barbie’s opening for the same summer weekend and setting up what seemed at first a battle royale between two visions of American dream life: funky, spunky, consumer-driven feminism against war, spectacular violence, and the moral burden of global power.