Expansion Pack Beta: "BARBIE"
The spoiler-free "pink, glittering existential dance party" issue ft. Barbenheimer
Formerly titled: Barbie’s Having a Crisis. Aren’t We All?
What do poetry, Barbie, and Oppenheimer have in common? You’re either in, the cause and effect of, or trying to find your way out of an existential crisis. Oh, you too? Wash it down with pink and glitter because it’s officially Barbie opening weekend, and this is your spoiler-free poetic guide to the Barbie-verse.
In today’s issue:
Margot Robbie’s press tour outfits, paired with 1-line poems in the style of Drake
An assortment of Barbie-themed poetic novelties including the viral Barbenheimer toy ad, vintage pink books, and Barbie poetry
A nod to Oppenheimer because let it be known, this fourth weekend of July in 2023 will be one to remember in which two extremely hyped films from beloved filmmakers may just require an all day trip to the cinema. And the reviews are in: both are masterpieces.
Hi Margot Robbie, I see you.
You’ve become one of my top ten favourite blondes, somewhere in the vicinity of Dolly, Elle, Marilyn, Pam, and Lisa Simpson (or is that just her spiky bald yellow head?). Barbie wasn’t one of them—my most treasured Barbie as a kid was actually a holiday edition brunette—but she did play a part in me starting my first career as a fashion designer with this:
You’ve seen Margot too.
You’ve seen her all over the red carpet living out her Barbie World dreams before the SAG strike brought the Barbie press tour to an abrupt end. So today, for our very first outing officially as Violets Poetic Novelties, we are bringing you a review of Barbie’s outfits, paired with poems. Oh wait, we don’t do reviews, because we don’t know what’s good and what’s what, so may I interest you in a montage of enthusiasms?
But first, how ‘bout Poet Barbie? Back in May, we shared that Barbie director Greta Gerwig got the gig by writing a poem about Barbie—which is the closest Barbie’s ever gotten to poetry other than maybe the near-rhyme scheme in Aqua’s Barbie Girl.
When Barbie was first invented, its creator Ruth Handler was trying to make a doll that didn’t give young impressionable girls the impression that motherhood should be their only life aspiration. (In the 1950s, the only dolls on the American market were dolls that bore the likeness of babies.)
Since then, Barbie has been a palaeontologist, a beekeeper, even a cat burglar (among 200 careers), but has never been a poet. (Which I’d expected, but what surprised me was finding out that Barbie had never been a “writer” until Barbie the film, where “Writer Barbie” is played by Alexandra Shipp.) But with the increasing number of rockstars aiming for the mantel of poet as of late, could Poet Barbie be the most prudent prediction for her next career change? I am of course, totally kidding. Next Barbie will be Influencer Barbie, or is that too meta? Or has that already been done? But that does beg the question…
Feature request if you’re listening, Substack: more character count for polls!
Thanks for keeping me entertained. Now, onto the fashion.
A recap of our favourite Barbie press tour outfits, with poetry pairings. And inspired by Drake’s recent foray into poetry (read all about it at PopPoetry), I wrote them all as one-liners.
Other ways to say (and dress like): Barbie is anything.
She’s a puff of cotton candy leaving a trail of sugar in the air of unsettled messes, standing as a pristine and powerful truth.
She's a thorn in safety's side, making magic from a rose folded into pulse, a breath into next, into next, into now.
She's a smattering of stars, evening cutting into light, bloom holding up an entire night's worth of expanding.
Why did Barbie walk off the pink carpet? Did the tour end?
At the time of this writing and as of Thursday July 13, the Barbie press tour came to an abrupt end due to the Screen Actor’s Guild strike, before its intended finishing stops. This is a newsletter about poetry in context, art and not just optimization as progress, and as far of a reach as this may be, it’s important to include a brief interlude about this and why you should care. I’ll keep this bulleted:
Barbie and Ken (er, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling) have gone on record to say that they absolutely support and stand by the strike
Contrary to some what’s being said online, the vast majority of actors aren’t millionaires.
Studio execs, yes, the guys who are making multi-millions, have said their hope is to let the strike drag on onto SAG members get desperate as they start to lose their homes
This is the first time since 1960 that both the screenwriter’s guild and the actor’s guild have been on strike at the same time, coincidentally just a year after Barbie first debuted in March 1959.
Why are they on strike anyway? Inflation and the impact of both streaming and most recently artificial intelligence among growing (and urgent) concerns.
I started this newsletter to share my growing enthusiasm for poetry, but what’s not new to me is my longstanding support for creatives to be able to make a living from their work. I don’t know any actors personally, but some of you reading this at present are creatives. Many of you I’m sure have concerns about AI, if those concerns haven’t already come to fruition. The strike surfaces this growing sense of doom in the air ACROSS ALL INDUSTRIES, that there are too many people making way too much money who care only about profit and shareholders and optimization. Thus, my appreciation of poetry as the antidote. Thus, the existential crisis that has led to this weekend.
Expanding Violets
A round-up of Barbie inspired novelties and supplementary textures. And you’ve probably seen the wave of Barbie collabs (luggage! makeup! donuts! shoes!), so this isn’t that. What is it? Just some things I’ve collected across the internet.
Barbie Chang is a fantastic and accessible poetry collection by Victoria Chang, featuring such lines as “"what if we throw a rope up to Heaven and nothing pulls back" and “but she is unnoticed by them, a streak of blue light in a blue sky”.
While there isn’t a Poet Barbie, there is a Barbie Poet. She was writing poems in NYC last weekend, but you can find her now over on TikTok (also at @flora.and.phrase on Instagram). Here’s Barbie Poet’s ode to the movie:
And if her path splits, let the fork look like this: heels tossed off foot flat, slipped soft into two-strapped leather-tough truth.
Claire Thompson’s “I Want a Barbie” risograph zine.
Okay, so the official Strawberry & Dream Barbie Dreamhouse candle by Glasshouse Fragrances launched a couple weeks ago and of course, is already sold out. Need a pink candle fix? Sooh Yang’s got you covered for pink dreams year-round. I’m thinking Champagne Supernova or Champagne Rose. And how ‘bout these matches?
The Barbie Dreamhouse book only released 200 copies, so it’s also sold out. But you can take a peek inside here.
Vintage pink books found off Etsy: Peonies Outside and In (1960s), The Uncommon Cook Book (1968), Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life (1980s), Camellias (1960s), Pinocchio (1967). A Barbie pink vintage tee that says “I hate computers!”
Sidenote: How refreshing it is that for maybe the first time ever, a MAN is given the “but he’s too old” talk (Ryan Gosling on playing Ken at 42). How old do you think Barbie is? Sure, she was born in 1959 but most agree that she doesn’t age. So what age is she forever stuck at? Well, an internet sleuth determined that since Barbie has been president and presidents must be at least 35 years old, Barbie is at least 35. Margot Robbie is 33, so we’re in the ballpark. Could it be? Barbie is 35, flirty, and thriving? I’m thinking Krissy, Barbie’s baby sister that was darkly “discontinued in 2003”, was a stepsister, or Barbie’s dad is Robert De Niro.
Dara Yen Elerath writes about the multitudes of pink in “Against Pink”:
Can a website…be a poem? Chia Amisola made this very pink one.
From 1986, “The Most Iconic Barbie Story Ever Told” by AM Homes.
Guess what colour’s “the navy blue of India”? It’s pink, as quoted by Diana Vreeland. Did you really think we were going to talk about any other colour during Barbie opening weekend? Read all about pink in this essay by David Byrne.
This “Oppenheimer Barbie” toy ad went viral, and if you haven’t seen it, it’s nostalgic, it’s hilarious, it’s disconcerting, it’s amazing. So much poetry in a toy ad! Over on YouTube, Wong Fu Productions released a behind the scenes look.
Are you also loving the Barbenheimer memes? Barbie and Oppenheimer might be more alike than at first glance. Just read this essay by Ruby Thelot on Barbie: The Great Paradox, as part of Byline’s End Times column "cataloguing the omens of the Apocalypse as they occur in culture”.
Time for an Oppenheimer poem
More people than one might assume for a “niche” pursuit, often declared as dead, read and write poetry—one of them being J. Robert Oppenheimer himself, the subject of the movie. The father of the atomic bomb counted among his childhood hobbies studying minerals and writing poetry. I found this one assumed to be written around the age of 24:
Text reads (as best as I can make out):
The sea will bear sea wrought, emaciate waste the cheek taught, wind chaste, bare the bone, sear the charity of breast: Atthis fear lest the agued blood, and sweat more than booo precious Atthis yet perilous remember; lest Atthis- the warm sea knows our watered breath- lest this not this death.
Anyway, I don’t know about you, but if crisis is all we’ve got left, I’d take mine with pink, humour, sparkle, heart, and poetry.
And if it’s any consolation at all, wherever an existential crisis exists, possibility comes with it. The ability to imagine and to be anything you want will always come with degrees of self-uncertainty.
The two, just like Barbie and Oppenheimer in July 2023, will forever go hand in hand.
As a parting gift for today’s issue, should you be so inclined to continue the Barbenheimer fanfare, I’ve put together a Barbenheimer-themed poetry book list over on our Bookshop. Enjoy!
And remember: this is not a test. Imagination! Life is your creation! (c/o Barbie via Aqua’s Barbie Girl). Or in the words of Oppenheimer: “It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful: they are found because it was possible to find them.” What have we become? Who will you be?
—Ana and (the) wondermachine
Come on Barbie, let's go Barbie!