Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Charles and Dan are just two guys talking about relationships, masculinity, and authenticity. Join them as they discuss books and media, as well as their (sometimes messy) personal stories, to encourage men to join the fight for their mental, physical, and emotional health--because a world of healthy, resilient men is a thriving and more secure world for everyone.
Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Hello, Barbara!
We saw "Barbie", and we have thoughts! If you haven't heard enough men sharing their opinions on culture, art, and feminism, have we got an episode for you!
0:01 Toy Movies: Barbie (Yay!) vs. Transformers (Boo!)
8:06 Outrage and Political Commentary
15:12 "Patriarchy" and Political Manipulation
24:11 Societal Expectations and Codependency in Barbie--The Story of Ken
41:40 Impact of Discomfort, Coping With Trauma
Good morning Charles. How are you? Good morning Dan. I am well. How are you? I'm well, thank you.
Charles:So what's on your mind?
Dan:Sounds like this is the beginning of a therapy session, or coffee talk. Coffee talk, a delicious dish.
Charles:Yeah, yeah. So you and I finally made it to the movies last night I believe for the last night of the Barbie I max screening. Yeah, explains why we're wearing our pink clothes. Yep, and that I Frequently would wear pink dress shirts to to work, and Sometimes people would comment on it, because people always feel like they need to comment on everything, and my favorite little joke to tell was real men wear pink and so do I. That's good. So, yeah, this is my new aviator nation polo that I ordered to go see Barbie on opening night, but it did not get delivered on time, so I finally got to Wear it to see Barbie last night with you.
Dan:So basically, you didn't want me to see Barbie, you wanted to wear that shirt and you needed an excuse to do it, so I just kind of fit the bill this was the first.
Charles:Last night was the first time that I broke this shirt out in public, because I knew I was going to be taking pictures of it, and now it's gonna work its way into my normal work polo shirt rotation, nice. But I wanted to spring it on everybody with the picture I posted last night of us at the theater. Excellent and all right. So that was my second time seeing Barbie in the theater. It was your first time.
Charles:And For some some research before going to see it with you, I watched I tried to watch Ben Shapiro's 48 minute review of the movie, where he just railed on it for like 48 minutes. Say how terrible it is. And you know, the thing that People who are glued to their ideologies will do is like it's not just about the politics. I don't just disagree with the message of the movie, it's a bad movie. And here's why it was a bad movie. One of the things he's like you know, I'm sure it's gonna do great the first weekend, but after that it's gonna fall off because this is not a good movie. Meanwhile, it's the biggest movie of 2023. Yeah, like I feel. It's like oh, I'm sorry Ben the the free market, which you and I both love it's kind of decided that it's a really good movie.
Dan:So I mean, I think part of the part of the appeal and the charm and what they did well was getting people involved when by wearing pink right yeah, promoting it and then people who get creative, and now the movie is kind of an accessory to people's you know, showing off their style and showing off what they're wearing, and and so it sure it was really you know the marketing, for it was done really well.
Charles:Yeah, I know an opening weekend they had. They had like the Barbie box set up like, oh yeah, people, mostly women, but people could go stand inside the box, get their picture taken inside the box and I mean that's fun, you know yeah, they did a great job.
Dan:I mean other movies about our childhood toys and like transformers. They could have done something similar, right? I mean, yeah, I'm, but I'm saying you know they're pulling stuff from our channel. I agree, I agree you know they could do a whole bunch of stuff. I mean it's, it's almost like the, you know, back in the day they did the Rocky Horror picture show. People get all dressed up.
Charles:I've never seen. I've never seen it either. I know.
Dan:I know how big of a production it is to go see it Right and they've got you know certain, I guess, certain things you do, a certain scenes in the movie and and so yeah, it's the original, like 4d experience, right.
Charles:Yeah, yeah, they really did miss an opportunity with transformers. Because, number one, I mean I hate those Michael Bay transformer movies. I think they're garbage. Part of it is because the story centers on the humans Instead of the robots, or robots are supporting characters, which is a huge mistake, correct? The other thing is the robots in the movie. You know they. They went for some some sort of photorealistic Robots of vehicles that transform into robots and so they look nothing like the toys or like the cartoons, like nothing like the toys or cartoons.
Dan:I mean my whole gripe was Bumblebee. I mean you are not a sports car, you are a little.
Charles:Volkswagen bug. You know why? That is because Volkswagen refused to pay Transformers to to be in the movie. Because they didn't agree with their car transforming into basically a, a machine of war, which is kind of ironic considering the roots of Volkswagen.
Dan:Yeah, but yeah, well, but no, but they're always super stuff. Listen, I got a German family and they are very super sensitive. I know they. They've gone from one extreme to the other, to be to be honest with you in insert.
Charles:No, I get that. So so I could see that I'm not wanting any type of controversy. You know, use, use Volkswagen, beatles anyway and then just not gotten paid to do it right. But instead they're like no Chevy will throw money our way and we'll just make Bumblebee a Camaro instead.
Dan:And Ruin the fan base and piss off the fan base. Okay yeah, go ahead they. They still have enough money to clear a profit.
Charles:But yeah, Gen X men like us, we're like this is horseshit.
Dan:Yeah, I mean yeah, it's no longer, it's not a cult classic by any means. It's not like I'm dying to go see the next Transformers movie because of that. Yeah, you know, like, if you, if you really kept it as close to the original cartoon as possible Throughout every movie, I I'd be there, man. I mean, I saw the cartoon back in the day, you know, the cartoon movie, you know, and I bought the and I bought the soundtrack and I mean it was unbelievable.
Charles:Yeah, it's so good, you know they. They will occasionally drop characters from the original Cartoon, and in the last movie rise of the beasts, I think, which is the first that was the first Transformers movie, the most recent one that I saw in theaters since the first one with Shia LaBeouf and Megan Megan Fox. And all that, yeah, because I heard that they were bringing in some characters from the original movie and they did a little bit better. Michael made it Directed. They did a little bit better job with it. Okay, then, they had with any of the previous ones, but it's still nowhere near as good as the 1986 animated movie.
Dan:Yeah, I saw the first one. Haven't seen any other ones in the movies and I may have caught a couple of parts of them, you know, online or something like that. But yeah, I haven't made it back out after the first one.
Charles:Yeah, and I will. It's one of those. It's not an automatic for me. If I, if I hear things about the story and if the reviews are good, then I'll go check one out. Yeah, if I have, you know, a free afternoon because I'm not paying. You know evening screening prices it's Matt Mattney prices only, but I think one of the things. Now I wonder if little girl or women our age and older and younger are having similar discussions about how they handled the Barbie intellectual property. Like, did they move too far? I mean, there wasn't a Barbie cartoon though, and all that stuff. It was pretty much just the doll, wasn't it?
Dan:You're asking the wrong dude, so I really don't know. There could have been.
Charles:I mean there's probably like straight to video movies If there's a way to make a nickel, and I'm sure they're putting stuff out like that yeah, and I'm sure they dabble with it. It wasn't the level that Transformers or NIJO was.
Dan:No, no, but I'm sure they had. They dabbled in a lot of different things. I mean she had more vehicles in that jet ski and the camper and all those. Like I mean, yeah, I knew I remember the vet and like the mobile home was kind of cool, but then all this other stuff I didn't realize like there was like a space shuttle or like a rocket ship A rocket ship, what it was like.
Dan:yeah, and then one of the Barbies had I don't know. They were showing at the end there. Actually you could video like the video in the back. You in the back and, like her chest, had the camera lens in it Stuff.
Charles:Yeah, that's super late 80s, early 90s, right.
Dan:I was like holy cow.
Charles:So yeah, so let's let's talk about the movie. I mean, obviously I saw it for a second time so I enjoyed it. I liked it. Yeah, I was. I was anxious to share it with you. You know, one of the things from Ben Shapiro's review of it was he's like I left that theater viscerally angry. I was like what it's like. I don't know anybody who could watch that movie and leave viscerally angry, unless they were viscerally angry walking in.
Dan:We got to have that in you right, that's not like it creates visceral anger, you know, I feel like, yeah, it's. You know, it's same same thing. When people talk about, you know, people who get roid rage and things like that, there needs to be a little bit of that rage inside. And then the lack of hormonal, you know, the hormonal imbalance makes our emotions go all nuts and stuff, so so there needs to be some element of there. So I mean, as long as you're not blaming and saying, hey, this created this, you know these.
Charles:I think that would be his position and I've noticed recently from Did he get specific Like was there like 48 minutes. He got specific on everything. Yeah, he, yeah. He had issues. Basically he here's the thing I mean a lot of when there are a lot of reasonable, rational people on all parts of the political spectrum.
Charles:I truly believe that, but that's your first mistake, when it becomes your job, though, like being outraged at the political opposition, is how you make your living. Then we're almost obligated. You've got to say yeah. You've got to be perpetually angry Like this one guy who is not as big as Ben Shapiro, Sean Davis. I saw a tweet from him recently after yeah, I guess it was football this last weekend, where Taylor Swift showed up at she's dating a football player now for the Kansas City Chiefs. Ok, it showed up, all right, she showed up at one of their games and it became how dare she this huge news story? Oh, why, because she's super famous and anybody she dates becomes super famous too.
Dan:I mean, yeah, but you're going to support your boyfriend or what I like, why?
Charles:is it? People were, people were and are obsessed with everyone she dates and because she frequently writes songs about them after the break up, and that's oh, I didn't realize that. Ok, sir that's interesting.
Charles:I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to the miss Swift, yeah, and I'll forgive you for that, the yeah. So, basically, this, this, this right leaning political commentator decided to, you know, get some clicks and some views off of the situation. He's like Taylor Swift is dumb and her music sucks. And then somebody on the left was like I pray that Republicans make this their platform for 2024, because that will be the end of the party. But here's what. Here's what I. What occurred to me was like number one this guy probably doesn't believe that. And number two, if he even, maybe he does believe that.
Charles:But it's more important for people whose jobs it is it's their job to come comment on political stuff in this country. It matters more to them to ramp up the outrage than it does for their side to win. Like their side, winning elections may or may not actually help them put more cash in the bank. Yeah, it seems like in this country, when your side is in the minority, that's when the figureheads of your party make the most money. It's like, hey, everybody, our way of life is under attack and they're winning. We need to. We need to rally around and subscribe to my podcast and buy my book so that we can turn this around.
Charles:Yeah, and so, yeah, that's it, and I felt I got that vibe from Shapiro Like he was looking for reasons to be angry at this movie that were being created pretty much, in my opinion, out of whole cloth. Like you know, when you feel like your way of life's under attack, or the people that put money in your bank account, you convince them that their way of life is under attack. Yeah, it's easy to find things that correlate to that message in pretty much any pop culture. Yeah, you know, experiment that you can find.
Dan:I mean, look, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed and go on, and you know, I have my, my, my leanings, you know one way or the other, but I don't feel like the movie really pushed one agenda or the other based on I felt like it was. I don't want to say fair, god forbid. I said fair balance, but I feel like. I feel like I kind of kind of came together at the end, whereas kind of about like the human experience and it wasn't for me. That's my takeaway from that.
Charles:Yes.
Dan:And it was more about you know what it's like to be a good human and why why it's good to be alive and you know what we should be doing as human beings, which is, you know, experiencing our feelings and and, and you know, respecting one another. You know, yeah, and that's kind of my overall takeaway, and they did that in different little story. You know different parts of it in different ways, you know, and some of it was silly and some of it was, you know, was funny, but most of most of all was pretty entertaining.
Charles:Yeah, I mean the things that I find completely uncontroversial about the movie was I mean the production design. It looked amazing, it was. It was fun and engaged.
Dan:It looked like a big, big toy kind of yes right. And that's where Transformers missed out Exactly.
Charles:They try to make it a war movie? Yeah, instead of showing off the toys, right, yeah, and they did a great job of showing off the toys. I loved the music in Barbie. I thought all the music was like dead on. Yeah, I listened to a couple of the songs on the soundtrack fairly frequently. I thought here's the thing. So, yes, that did that movie focus more on the struggles of, you know, living life as a woman in 2023 in the West? Yes, it did. I would say that it did. It focused a little bit more on the challenges that women face in the real world than it did on the challenges men face, not exclusively, but I would say it was weighted a little bit.
Charles:A little bit, yeah, I don't I mean, but for somebody to respond to that by saying you know, wait a second. You didn't give equal time to how hard it is to be a man and how hard it is to be a woman.
Dan:Therefore, you're anti-man, which is what some of the reaction that's out there is the movie is about Barbie, I know, and it's not about Ken, right, right, it's not, you know. Yeah, I mean. So of course it's going to be weighted in that way and just as another movie, you know, could be way more about men, male stuff like I mean Like movies, like that. So you know it's not and it's not. Yeah, and the things that they were bringing up as struggles, it wasn't anything like.
Charles:Oh I didn't realize that.
Dan:Right, yeah, yeah, for sure, it was very obvious things that I think most people are aware of. Or if you take a second to breathe, you realize, oh yeah, wow, this is kind of you know. And the one thing, one of the things that I was kind of, when the main character not the main character, not Barbie, but the mom, the mom, yeah, yeah, I'm very impressed. I was talking about it basically kind of was listing out all of the issues and stuff.
Charles:Yeah, that's how she broke the Barbies out of their brainwashing.
Dan:Yeah, yeah. And you know, I think my biggest takeaway was stop. As human beings we need to. You know, men and women, there's always going to be somebody with an opinion that thinks you should be doing this or should be doing that. Because that was like a big, long monologue of should and should and should and should.
Dan:Right, and she just kind of consolidated all of these little pockets of shoulds, right, Right. And I don't. Fortunately, I think most of us don't live in a world where we're constantly being fed all of those shoulds at the same time because we go fucking nuts. Can I drop the F-bomb?
Charles:on her podcast. Yeah, we just make them up.
Dan:All right so, anyway, all right so, and to me that's the world that we're living in in terms of the amount of marketing and attention we talk. Going back to Sam Harris about, attention is the most precious thing, and I think all of those shoulds are coming from places that want our attention, and we have to find ways to be able to ignore those, avoid those, take those in and then dismiss them and push them away and not let it penetrate our blood-brain barrier and reside in us.
Dan:So I took that away as, yes, these are things that the women are dealing with, but the overall feeling and message that I was getting was, even as a man or as a human being, we're getting bombarded with all of these should messages from all of these people who don't know who we are. They're talking about their own experience or they've got other things that they are trying to sell us, and just so to me, I didn't feel like, oh, this is only about women.
Charles:Yeah, I definitely didn't feel like it's only about women. I feel like it did shine a light on some of the struggles that may be unique to women compared to men. But then with the Ken story it also did focus on some of the stuff of what it means to be a man, and one of the things we talked about on the podcast before and you and I have shared in our conversations is the energy that or the triggering that happens whenever some guys hear the word patriarchy. It's like immediately guys will go into this motive. I have to defend myself where I would encourage men to not feel like whenever you hear the word patriarchy, your personal conduct or your personal character is being attacked Because, as you and I have said, in my opinion patriarchy is just another word for the establishment, like there is a group of people that are going to be at the top of any hierarchy.
Charles:Whether you're living in a capitalist society, socialist, communist, whatever, there's going to be people at the top and those people are going to be invested in keeping the status quo, as the status quo is, because it's working out real well for them. And then, if you want to just highlight one of the demographics of that group on the top. Over the last 100,000 years it's mostly been dudes. Because of our upper body strength, because of the fact that we can run faster, the fact that we're a little bit better at executing wars against other tribes, I mean, for whatever reason, we've been at the top of those hierarchies, regardless of the system of government, for a long, long time. And the word that we assign to that historical fact is patriarchy. It doesn't scare me, it doesn't offend me and it doesn't make me feel like I'm being personally attacked for my conduct.
Dan:So yeah, I think where that comes from. So if you haven't figured out, what's interesting to me is, I like to figure out why about stuff right?
Dan:Or my ideas about why this happened, and I think it's because when we were introduced, nobody was using that word a couple of years ago, but the people who did introduce it did it from a very angry place or a very scared or fearful place. So I think a lot of us have this association with the word patriarchy, with these really strong emotions. Right, and a lot of it might be fearful, might be anger, whatever that might be, but what we need to do is take a look and go well, can we be a little more specific? Because what part of the patriarchy are you specifically talking about? So one you know need to kind of take the emotion out of it and go okay, what are you talking about, like, say, patriarchy, but that could apply to a lot of different things.
Charles:Respond with curiosity, not defensiveness.
Dan:Yeah, and so it's like okay, in what specific situations are you really? Is this making you upset? Because it's not going to be everything, obviously, but let's get specific. So I think, as humans, our brains tend to want to make things easier. So when we hear words like Republican or Democrat, or patriarchy, you know we immediately have some sort of visceral, you know reaction to those words, that they might be triggering type of words.
Dan:And now it's even more difficult to think clearly because now our emotions are like going nuts and it's like you know we're in that, in that state. It's like are we even open and receptive to having a conversation about things? Do we? Can we get curious and and ask questions and get specific? It makes it more difficult, for sure, and I think that's what the, you know the, the patriarchy or the, you know the establishment, that's what they want. They want, I think, you know, the average person to be really reactive and emotional, because if we are reacting and emotional, then we can be controlled and ultimately, I believe that's what the establishment wants is to be able to control us.
Charles:Yeah, I remember, you know, not too long ago, sean Hannity and James Carville. James Carville was a Democratic strategist, real big, bald headed guy.
Dan:Yeah, it married you Movie was the end where he came up and he was, he was. He was like one of the debaters.
Charles:Yeah.
Dan:So we had to debate him and they were like, oh my God, james Carville, yeah, I remember him being in something like a Sandler movie or something like that. Yeah, I think you're right, yeah, yeah.
Charles:But so him and him and Sean Hannity went on this like nationwide tour, doing like arenas where they would debate each other, oh wow. And neither of them wanted to acknowledge the fact that both before and after the debate they're both sitting in their green room sipping on whiskey and counting their money. And it's so much. You know. Thanks to social media, in big part, politics in this country is pro wrestling, essentially.
Charles:I was about to say that totally reminds me of the wrestlers, because they their buddies in the locker room and they hate each other on the in the ring.
Dan:What was it? Was it? Yeah, it was the rock where he had that. He had the TV show for a little bit.
Charles:Oh yeah, yeah, we're just training people, or whatever. Yeah.
Dan:And they showed the history of you know, because he come from like Samoan wrestlers and his mom was, you know, or his grandmother like ran the wrestling ring in Hawaii or whatever, and you know basically showed like the iron chic and you know, the good guys were always like hanging out and they were like really this tight knit group and that's that's really what drove it home. It's like, oh, wow, yeah, these guys are just entertainers, I know, and they actually love each other and and it's that right, it's, it's that, that ying and yang right and it's.
Charles:And it's so funny to think that you know some of the people today who are so vocally loyal to one side or the other. You know they'd be the first ones to say how stupid pro wrestling is, but it's like you're kind of a pro wrestling fan and you don't know it.
Charles:I mean these, these people are you know I'm not saying every single politicians like that. I believe there are probably some people that get in front of a camera and actually say what they believe and and work toward it, but for the most part, I mean, you know, it's the same reason that Congress, regardless of what parties in control, isn't going to do away with the congressional healthcare plan. They're not going to institute term limits. I mean, you don't. You don't see any of them, regardless of what who's in the White House or who's in charge of the House of Representatives or who's in charge of the Senate, nobody is pushing for let's, let's lower our own status compared to the average American and and make things more equitable. To use another buzzword, it's like no once. Once you get to that position, you're, you're, not you. You might campaign on those things, but you're not actually implementing them. Once you get in the in the seat.
Dan:And so what? What's? What's their incentive to do? So they don't have a negative incentive, there's no consequences for anything anybody does anymore these days, right, and and at the same time, there's no incentive for them. What? What do they get out of that?
Charles:Yeah, so let's let's talk a little bit about the Ken story, which I found very interesting and compelling, and one thing that occurred to me is that and I'm I'm sure the Greta Gerwig, the director and I think she was also, I think she got a writing credit on the movie as well would probably just be appalled to hear anybody say this about her work. I saw some parallels in the Ken story between with a lot of the stuff Jordan Peterson talks about.
Dan:In what way?
Charles:Basically having a society full of and we'll refer to Ken as a man or a young man even though obviously in that universe, you know, there is no reproduction. There doesn't seem to be any jobs for pay, so they're the incentives and the drivers of those characters aren't exactly the same as what they are of people in the real world. Yeah, but nobody beaches like Ken, that's true. Yeah, I knew you were going to like that that joke. I knew, like this is the part Dan's going to really enjoy.
Dan:I am so immature.
Charles:But essentially a society full of men who have no mission, no purpose, no reason for waking up in the morning. It's like they're just, it's like we've got loaded guns just walking around all the time and as soon as some ideology makes them feel like they're important, makes them feel like they belong, they're going to go off and do potentially irreparable harm to the society that we live in. And I mean Ken's story is a story of co-dependence, like right out of the book. And he, you know, at the beginning of the movie, he is living for the purpose of getting validation from the woman he's in love with, and when she doesn't give it to him, he's just, you know, an open wound waiting for something to crawl in there and infect it. And that's what he found when he comes to Los Angeles which is what Los Angeles does to people. And sure enough, he got corrupted by the worst parts of our society and then brought it back into Barbie land and started changing things not for the better, Right.
Dan:Yep.
Charles:So, um, yeah, I thought that it's. It's interesting to to see the message of you know how, how destructive codependent men can be to themselves and to others, which is a story I don't think we see enough in modern media.
Dan:Absolutely yeah, yeah, and I mean even right at the end there I think it was a good consolidated couple of minutes where, right before Ken discovers that he's enough, I love that, that's great, Sure, he. He's like, he tries to kiss Barbie and then, and then he's just completely confused. And I feel like a lot of men also feel that way in society. It's not knowing what to do, like, oh, you know, oh, he grabs her and kind of gives her a dip to kiss her or whatever, and she's like no, that's not what I want, right, you know. And then he's like well, and then he starts crying, and then he's just, he's like all over the place, he's just absolutely confused, right, and I feel like that was a.
Dan:That was a very also accurate reflection of what a lot of guys go through in terms of, and you know, to bring it back to actually, you know Ken well, with our atomic attraction, one of the chapters he's talking about. You know how, how Valentine's Day people do, yeah, yeah.
Charles:I can't look forward to getting to that one.
Dan:And you know, listen, man, I, I have acted as one of the in the story that Ken will talks about in terms of you know, having these expectations based on you know programming from wherever, from you know people's society, wherever. In terms of, yeah, how to behave on Valentine's Day and then, just when things don't go the way I think they should go. In the past, I'd get really upset and, yeah, I've. You know, I'm a little ashamed to admit. Yeah, as an adult, I've gotten so confused I was crying at one point in relationship because I was just like I, I don't know what's going on, I don't know what to do.
Dan:And I all I know is, you know, my expectations haven't been met Right, and I don't know how to handle it and I don't know what to do, and I just completely broke down one time. So, yeah, and I was not a child.
Charles:I was a full grown adult. No, I've learned from it.
Charles:I've been in the exact same position and I I did like that. You know, at that part we're talking about the end of it. I mean, barbie did apologize to Ken for taking him for granted and you know she, she did play a part in treating him like oh he's, he's an accessory to my life and you know it's not clear how aware she was at the beginning of the movie that he was in love with her. He wanted to be her boyfriend. He wanted to, you know, move into her house with her eventually and and have have that relationship. All right, we don't know for sure how. At least I didn't pick up how aware she was that that was going on the whole time.
Dan:Well, you know why? Why, it was Ken had full of. We use full covert contracts. True, he didn't express anything, he was too scared to communicate anything. Remember, yeah, like he was. And they show him like kind of walking off. After she's like oh, it's girl's night every night, and then he's like kicking. He's like you know, pretending to kick and by himself.
Charles:Oh, he said I love you too. Yeah, like, yeah, pretending like, yeah, you're right. There were things that he was scared to tell her.
Dan:So not totally Barbie's fault here.
Charles:No, no, I was, I was, I am not. Yeah, I didn't know how much of that she was clued in on. She may have suspected it, but yeah, ultimately, you know, like you and I talk about all the time, you don't, you know, you know you're not going to get credit for their unspoken needs.
Dan:And you know and now again I'm going to blame Barbie here a little bit in this world that Ken was living in was, you know, it was so focused on women and and that Ken wasn't feeling secure enough or confident enough to express himself or to feel like, hey, maybe I have enough value, I don't have enough.
Dan:You know, I think he was basically under the impression he didn't have enough value to express his needs, like it doesn't matter what I, what I want or what I need, because I'm not worth much. And in that world he wasn't. And I think that was what was good about the, the movie, was that it showed an extreme that you don't want to. You know, yes, we want to absolutely encourage women and support them and everything else like that, but but to go to that extreme of the Barbie land beforehand, that's that's not good either. And I think it's a nice way to kind of I'll be honest with you, you know send out like just a hey, a warning, like hey, look things. If we continue to get really extreme with things and think in extreme ways, this is the type of society we could end up with, and that's not good either.
Dan:Right, so, so not don't let that pendulum swing from all the way from one side to the other, which tends to happen and a lot of times when it comes to society and culture and politics and things like that.
Charles:Yeah, no, that's definitely true. I mean in in societies where you know the oppressed either revolt or rise up or politically become the majority. The human, the very human impulse is OK. I've been oppressed long enough. Now it's time for you to feel what it's like.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:Instead of, you know, pushing for equality. Sometimes it's like, ok, I didn't like it when I was on the crappy end of the stick. Now we'll see how you like it, right, so I mean yeah.
Dan:So I think where we got to be careful is realizing that because things are changing. People do empathize, people are feeling and understanding the suffering of the other people. Yeah, they didn't experience the same suffering. However, they can at least recognize that hey, this isn't right, we need to do this. They feel and so, yeah, and then, as human beings, we tend to get vengeful sometimes. Yeah, yeah.
Charles:Unfortunately. So yeah, I did, I did really enjoy that. The ending where, you know, he kind of figures out that he doesn't have to define himself by whether or not she returns his affections. And you know, I don't know what the next step for Ken in Barbie 2 is going to be.
Dan:Yeah, so we talked about that and that's what I was. That that's where I was kind of a little bit critical of the movie, I guess I should say, because to me it was like a vacuum, like I didn't see an obvious reason why Ken all of a sudden was like I'm enough, you know it was. It was just, you know, all the guys go, all the Ken's going. Well, you know, ken is me, I'm Ken, ken is me, and I didn't see really other than, yeah, well, like where, where did you go? I know where you came from in terms of feeling like you weren't enough and you didn't have any value, yeah, and so it just wasn't as obvious to me where you know what exactly happened or what, you know where they were going.
Dan:So, but I agree with you, it's got to be first. The first step is, hey, look, this isn't right, and then there's a little bit of vacuum, but then it's like OK, then who is Ken Like? What does he like to do? What's his mission? What's his purpose? Why is here? That wasn't clear to me in the movie, but I think, yeah, maybe that's a great question to answer in Barbie too.
Charles:Yeah, it's I. Yeah, now that you. One of the things that just occurred to me is, as you were saying, that was, I wonder. It almost seems like another facet of his codependence in that. Hmm, you can't be To to get that sense of identity, in that sense of self that is separate from your relationship with other people. In my own experience, it's like you need to go through some sort of a journey to earn that.
Charles:Yeah but in that movie, you know, thinking about it, it seems like she talked him into no, you're valuable on your own and that doesn't seem to be the way that it really like it might be a way of at least opening your mind to the possibility, right.
Dan:But for it to like sit with you and for you to believe it, you need to get your senses involved, you need to experience it. Like I just said, you need that journey Right and kind of like you do, like what you do is you go on. You know a lot of these solo trips and things like that. You, these journeys, and you're experiencing life and you're, you have time by yourself To then process things and and and think by yourself, and so that's something I'm trying to do a little bit more as well, and I really forget how much value there is in doing those and how much, how much I enjoy that. But I, yeah, I agree there was no real journey yet, but I mean maybe. I mean maybe they're smart enough, maybe maybe they've thought about this already.
Charles:Yeah, for the next movie, yeah, which I mean, yeah, look at how much money it made there's there's almost no doubt that there's gonna be a sequel and you know, hopefully they keep the same people involved and they're they're able to turn into something. You know it's it's always tough to live up to the original, but I mean that that creative team seemed to have a very solid vision of what they were trying to pull off and a studio that let them do it, and even Mattel. I mean that's a big gamble for Mattel to put their, their name and their intellectual property and to have that, you know, the character of their CEO be kind of a bumbling, wacky guy. I mean that that takes some guts, I mean what will?
Dan:Farah could have been much more bumblier and yeah, wacky I think you know, they probably put the reins on him a little bit.
Charles:Maybe, but I mean that that is a risk for a, for a you know, public company to take with their, with their brand of the reputation. I'm curious.
Dan:How Mattel has been doing up onto that movie, like were they struggling at all? Where? Like, maybe, like I'm just wondering, like how much of a risk was it? Because it could have been an investment like hey, yeah things are struggling and now maybe I'm sure they got a nice little boost.
Charles:Oh, I'm sure they did absolutely yeah, I mean I just yeah in in Walmart there's, there's big Barbie displays now with, you know, the different vehicles and houses and stuff from the movie tied right into the toys, so that's probably paid off. I'm sure that, yeah, I'm sure yeah, when you yeah it's.
Dan:It would probably be difficult to put a number on what that movie contributed to the economy as a whole when you consider the marketing and the thing, how brilliant it is, because the people who have the money now are the ones who grew up with Barbies and now, right, their daughters or you know whoever are like, excited about the toys that like. So, if you know, if we had kids and they were into transformers, you know, or Legos, yeah, we're a lot more likely to, because we're gonna get that thrill as well.
Charles:So I I don't have kids and there is a. You know, there's a new series of transformer toys that's called, like, gallery 86 or something like that.
Charles:Okay, it's like familiar, reimagined Way, better looking Versions of the characters from the original series. Oh, and like they're, and like they release a new one every so often. It's not just like you know, boom vomiting a whole new toy line, it's like the latest one is like the version of Starscream that is at his coronation in the movie where he's becoming the leader of the Decepticons. He's got the little crown on. Yeah, I mean I get ads for that stuff because occasionally I'll watch transformers related content on YouTube and it's a pretty cool looking stuff, do?
Dan:you still have any of your no, no they.
Charles:I mean I've got a couple in the other room.
Dan:Okay, yeah, soundwave is my favorite. I mean that because the open that the cassette play. Yeah, it's a little transforming, because that's oh, my gosh man, that's my favorite guy.
Charles:Yeah, I remember one of the one of the frustrating things when I was a kid. It was Soundwaves main Cassette that had the most screen time on the TV show. Was laser beak right? Laser beak, yes, but the easiest one to find was buzz saw, who looked like laser beak but slightly different colors, it was, it was got, it was gold instead of red.
Charles:Yep, yep. And so you would be right. That's right. Yeah, laser beak was hard to find in stores, but buzz saw was very easy to find and you had to explain to your parents. No, I don't want buzz saw, I want laser beak.
Dan:It's the same thing. No, no, no. This one's red, this one is red, I want this matter so much you have no idea.
Charles:And so, yeah, I remember, I remember what, going through that when I was yeah nine years old, ten years.
Dan:I went through the same. I remember going yeah.
Charles:That's hysterical, all right. So let me see was there anything else I wanted to Take away from from that movie? Yeah, I thought it was. I thought it was great. It helped me understand things a little bit more. Just seeing how much it resonated with the women in my life was was a big deal. I'm being able to just connect with some of them over what that movie meant to them and Again, the the big part where America, for ours character, sort of has that monologue where she talks about all the frustrating Pressures of being a woman. It's like I know that really that hit a nerve with with a lot of ladies that saw the movie and I've had some good conversations With them as a result of it and I appreciate that yeah, yeah, I it's.
Dan:I'm. Hopefully, you know, most people take away from this and just just ignore all the noise. Right, do what you can. Be a good human being. Yeah, you know, feel the feelings be alive and that's kind of was. You know the ending there. I mean, I am a little upset that Barbie stole the Pinocchio ending, but you know, yeah, that does make for interesting possibilities in the sequel.
Charles:I mean, I think it's been out long enough, we don't have to worry about ruining it. But yeah, now that she's human, you know what's Like. I like the symbolism to that she. At the end of the movie she's wearing a pink pair of Birkin stocks instead of the high heels.
Dan:Oh, I didn't see that. I didn't. I missed that they were pink. But the thing that I appreciated that was funny was in the movie when Barbie was complaining about how ugly she was.
Charles:The yeah, the narrator broke in.
Dan:It was just like you really don't want to cut. You know cast Margot Robbie. Yeah, you know for for this, for this specific scene, and I I Appreciated that they didn't take themselves so seriously for sure and I think that's why any of the slight you know the political or cultural, social type of commentary or scenes that they had, it was a little bit easier pill to swallow because you know it wasn't to me, wasn't preachy.
Charles:I was gonna say the same. You know, I didn't feel like I was being preached at at any point in the movie. I felt like I was being entertained by yeah, yeah, and and I really thought it was gonna be more preachy based on again, what some? People react. Well, how people reacted to it.
Dan:Yeah, that was. I mean, I even walked in with some preconceived notions and stuff like that, but I, you know, you were, you really were raving about it and I was like, okay, all right, I'll be open to it. And I got an excuse to buy another shirt, so it's good.
Charles:Yeah, yeah, so did I, I, yeah, and I I look forward to, yeah, putting this in the rotation weren't to work, so that people can make their little comments about me wearing a pink shirt, mm-hmm, and then I get to do my little joke back to them and then Step three take over the world. I don't know, I don't know what happens. All right, I think. I think that's yeah. So if you haven't seen Barbie yet, I think it's on Digital media now I think you can get it off of bite, on Amazon and wherever you get your your movies, pirate Bay, and you know we're don't do that that's.
Charles:It's a lot very wrong. Don't do that. Yeah, but I would say, check it out if you haven't seen it already. I think you'll be entertained. And, yeah, there may be some parts, depending on you know what your Social and political ideas are. You may get a little uncomfortable and I promise you'll survive. Be a little uncomfortable, it's not gonna kill you.
Dan:It's I think it's part of the human experience is getting uncomfortable.
Charles:It should be. I mean, I I think that you know, I've said to multiple people over the years as, as adult men in particular, we sometimes find ourselves in situations with our personal and professional lives where, after we leave high school or college or the military, we don't ask ourselves to do anything uncomfortable anymore.
Dan:No, because we were so uncomfortable, I think, for so long right just like I need a break, you know. Yeah, alright, take your break, but you? But if you really want to feel things and live that human experience and have some meaning to your life, you got to get uncomfortable every now and then, not all the time right, and I'll tell you what voluntary discomfort beats.
Dan:Oh, a lot of involuntary discomfort you can handle the involuntary Discomfort, because that's gonna come at some point. So practice with your voluntary discomfort so then when the involuntary discomfort comes, it's a lot easier to handle.
Charles:Yeah that reminds me of one thing I heard that when it comes to PTSD, for more time Special forces operators get PTSD far fewer than just normal, quote-unquote, normal soldiers, guys who are like infantry and Stuff like that. And the reason is because when your special forces, you're the one that is initiating the violence, you're not just trying to drive down a road and then a bomb goes off. It's because you're the one who is, you know what's coming and you're choosing to put yourself in the situation. They often leave those Very brutal, very bloody situations with less PTSD than the guy who's just randomly working on fixing a truck and then a shell comes down and blows up near him.
Dan:Wow. So my question is does that, though, make you a little bit more of a sociopath?
Charles:I mean, it might, it might or give you those tendencies.
Dan:I mean, you are then completely numb to the craziness that you're inciting, right?
Charles:Yeah, that's. That's a good question, I mean, you know?
Dan:there's a question? I'm not. Yeah, I.
Charles:I mean assuming what I know about Sociopathies. Psychopathy, you know, there's always got to be a mix of. You've got to have a certain genetic profile and then a certain set of experiences, and then they kind of come together to make you into one of those things. And you know, generally you don't get into the military till you're at least 18. I doubt you become a special forces operator, for it's got to be a few years after that.
Charles:I feel like those kinds of disorders either already have them or you don't by the time you hit legal age to to sign up, and so your coping skills can certainly be impacted and the way that you deal with problems. I would imagine and again, this is the the opinions of a Humble, uneducated genius, so keep that in mind. I'm sure that there's people out there that could correct me on this, but I don't think that being in that position where you're having to take out the enemy is going to turn you into a psychopath if you're not already one, yeah or a sociopath, but it could certainly impact how you, how you cope with trauma and yeah, things like that.
Dan:That's that's something I'd like to for us to look into at some point is understand what kinds of coping skills or, or you know, support mechanisms are there for people who are in those positions. Yeah how do you deal with that? If you're not associate a path or psychopath like how you know and you're doing these things, how do you live a normal life? Or do you even live a normal life? Or how do you function, yeah, and and handle that type of situation? To me, I, yeah, I'm ignorant when it comes to that.
Charles:Yeah, I can't speak to it from a medical standpoint, but just from a historical standpoint. It seems like the way that that has been accomplished is a Process of other in your enemy, where that's what propaganda is for essentially. You know when you, when you sell the entire population of the United States on the idea that, well, these Germans or these Japanese, they're not really like us, they're not humans walking around you know, doing their jobs, loving their families, they're not like us. So when it's time for you to get on a boat and go across the ocean to kill as many of them as you can, it's a little easier if you don't see them as being human in the same way that your friends are human or your buddy, you know, in the boat next to you's human. Yeah, and so that that seems to be the way that we've pulled that off for the last 10,000 years. It's like that's, that's over now.
Charles:Yeah, I hope so.
Dan:I mean Hopefully there's. I mean between communication and how much we travel and global communication and it's. I think it's a lot More difficult to get more people. I think there's gonna be absolutely there's gonna be people that we can talk into that garbage, yeah, but I think it's gonna be a lot. It's a lot less, and so there's got to be a lot more tricky psychological manipulation that's being done at the establishment levels in order to Control us and get us to do what they want us. Yeah.
Charles:I'm, but I would say that, you know, there's probably still a little bit of that goes on with certain Arab countries and With probably the Chinese as well, and I don't know if our government does it on purpose or it's just something that happens, but it is. It is hard to think of people in those distant lands with with very different Objectives and different lifestyles than us, as, oh, they're just like me, those, those are just, you know, moms and dads and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters, just like us.
Dan:Well, yeah, that's why it's difficult to get any type of news media directly from those countries right in our country. A lot of times people think, oh yeah, we're land of the free, uh-uh, we don't have all the information. We're, you know so, and we can get it. It's just difficult. It's just, it's really difficult to get that information. So anyway, let's get another. Do the Barbie.
Charles:Let's call it a day here, okay, yeah, barbie, I I love the movie the most for the conversations that have happened as a result of it.
Charles:I think that's you know, that's where the value of art and media can be found, where you know you don't have to agree with everything that the writers, directors, painters, sculptors put out there, but if they're putting out stuff that is is worth having conversations about, that I'm all for that and I feel like that's what the purpose of art is. And so, yeah, it was a good one. Go see it if you haven't seen it. All right, thanks, dan, I appreciate you going to see it with me. I had a great time and and I enjoyed I enjoyed talking to you about it. All right, take care, see you next time. Yep, I have a good one. I.
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