Greta Gerwig on Ben Shapiro Burning Barbies: ‘Certainly, There’s a Lot of Passion’

Over the weekend, Ben Shapiro—conservative commentator and noted stranger to wet pussy—took a cue from the Will Poulter lookalike who tortured Woody in Toy Story and incinerated a trash bin of Barbie dolls in a parking lot in response to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. The film, he predicted, was “absolutely going to fall off a cliff [at the box office]…repeat business is going to be nonexistent.”

Shapiro, as he has been for every one of his 39 years of life, was wrong. The bonafide blockbuster not only earned a historic $162 million in its debut weekend but proceeded to rake in an additional $26 million on its first Monday of release. According to Variety, those are the best numbers Warner Bros. has ever seen for a Monday. Despite this, conservatives like Shapiro—who directly contributed to those records just so they could have something to whine about on their podcasts—still won’t shut the fuck up.

On Tuesday, Gerwig, the film’s writer and director, took some time out of her busy schedule as a record-wrecking legend to comment on all of the Barbie backlash. In an interview with the New York Times, Gerwig said she actually wasn’t anticipating such a response.

“Certainly, there’s a lot of passion,” Gerwig said. “My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men. I hope that in all of that passion, if they see it or engage with it, it can give them some of the relief that it gave other people.” In addition to acclaimed storyteller and Oscar shoo-in, Gerwig is a damn diplomat.

There’s something meta about a female writer and director—who just pulled off “a clever dressing-down of the patriarchy”—extending undeserved generosity to the inane, bad-faith condemnation of conservatives, chauvinistic pundits, and yes, very bitter film critics. It’s almost like that scene where (spoilers!) Barbie offers grace to Ken after he squatted in her home, brainwashed her friends, overthrew the government, and forced her to listen to both his rendition of Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” and his theories on why patriarchy is cool was inspired by…the female experience.

In case you’ve been too busy basking in the hot pink pleasure of Barbie, Shapiro has been joined by a chorus of moronic men eager to cash in on the latest culture war. Elon Musk tweeted: “If you take a shot every time Barbie says the word “patriarchy”, you will pass out before the movie ends”; Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) accused the film of “kiss[ing] up to the Chinese communist party because they want to make money selling the movie in China”; and Matt Walsh coined it “the most aggressively anti-man, feminist propaganda fest ever put to film.”

“The basic sort of premise of the film, politically speaking, is that men and women are on two sides and they hate each other,” Shapiro said in his review. “And literally, the only way you can have a happy world is if the women ignore the men and the men ignore the women.” To be fair, he is right about the first part. Generally, the world does feel a little happier when men are ignored.

While I have to celebrate Gerwig’s titanium tact, this Barbie would’ve just told anyone who shares Shapiro’s thoughts to fuck right off.