/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Fri Jul 28 21:37:33 2023 No.22315346 [Reply] [Original]

Like millions of Americans last weekend, I saw Barbie and Oppenheimer in theaters.
Not in that order — my wife and our friends started with Oppenheimer, assuming that we ought to end our night with the lighter film, with Barbie as the chaser to Oppenheimer’s shot. Given the emotional devastation Nolan’s film caused our group, this was definitely the right decision.
I loved both films, but this is not a review of either. Instead, this is an explanation of the two film’s surprising connection. I say “surprising” because the Barbenheimer phenomenon is predicated upon the fact that the two seemingly have nothing in common save for their shared opening day.
“Seemingly” is the operative word there. What drew my attention to the link between the two pictures was actually one throwaway line from Gerwig’s film, spoken by Will Ferrell’s character, Mother, the CEO of Mattel.
Here’s the situation. At this point in the movie, Margot Robbie’s Barbie is standing within a display box, which she mentions evokes an involuntary, “Proustian” memory, prompting the onlooking Mother to ask his corporate peers:
“Remember ‘Proust Barbie?’ That did not sell very well.”

A very funny, if incredibly niche and literary joke. Proust, of course, is famous as the tortured genius responsible for the massive In Search of Lost Time, a seven-volume, 1.25 million word, four-thousand page, early 20th-century novel focused thematically on involuntary memory.
Niche, yes, but it was this joke that evoked for me a trinity of involuntary memories myself, each connecting the two seemingly disparate films.
First, the less important connection: Oppenheimer loved Proust. He loved literature in general, famously quoting the Bhagavad Gita after the Trinity test, but he loved Proust specifically and other Modernist artists too, including T.S. Eliot and Picasso, as is actually shown briefly in the first third of his film.
Second, the more obvious connection: All three are Jewish. Well, sort of. All three had Jewish origins and ancestry, but none of them really claimed their Judaism.
Oppenheimer was born into a Jewish family, but he did not practice the religion. Proust’s mother was Jewish, but Proust was raised in his father’s Catholic faith. Barbie is a doll and therefore incapable of belonging to any religion, but her creators Ruth and Elliot Handler, the founders of Mattel, were practicing Jews.
That brings us to our final and most important connection: All three deal with involuntary memory.

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