The far right is constantly warning that if you go woke, you’ll go broke. But when it comes to the new Barbie movie, they couldn’t be more wrong.
Barbie, which follows Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) as they leave Barbie Land to explore the real world, earned a whopping $162 million in its opening weekend, Variety reported Monday. This is the biggest opening weekend of the year, and the biggest opening weekend for a female director ever.
The film had already made $22.3 million at the domestic box office from Thursday previews, the biggest preview haul of the summer. It blew the previous record of $17.5 million (made by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in May) out of the water.
It isn’t woke. Conservative critics misunderstood the movie. They’re complaining that it’s anti-motherhood (it’s not, it’s pro-), that it’s anti-male (it’s not, it properly recognizes men’s struggles), etc. But the discussion is surrounding the more political/gender norm themes of the movie which are quite openly stated and talked about (sexism, feminism, patriarchy, etc).