This “Barbenheimer” summer has produced some fascinating interactions for me. And when the first half of that double bill sailed into hyper-hype across our cultural landscape, I was ready to believe there must be some serious substance there. Looked at all the “Barbie” trailers, and was stunned at how inane they appear. Is this another spoonful of emotional pap out of Hollywood, or does it have something to say beyond feeding populist dogma to the masses? Where to begin?

Hmmm. Reaction to “Barbie” seems categorical along gender lines. And it matches a recent poll that shows high school females trending liberal as white males are blamed for everything, and males trending sharply conservative for the same reason. Personally, gender stereotypes don’t speak to me; but then, I’ve never claimed to fit society’s wardrobes. To be clear, I haven’t seen the flick, so I’m not responding to it per se. Just responding to the reviews and comments. Apt enough. The fingerprint left on society is what I’m interested in.

Anyway, “Barbie” – as best I can tell from viewer reactions – is pure gender persuasion. And before following up on that, I need a couple paragraphs to define where I’m coming from. Must confess that I don’t get the idea of persuasion or competing when it comes to relationships; never have. It’s live and let live for me. I’m all for any cookie-cutter or self-defined life anyone wants to live, values and identities inclusive. More power to them. When you discover who someone is, it can be a joy of compatibility; and mutual joy may deepen into a relationship. But if you have to persuade someone’s emotions as if to win an argument, especially for love, what you end up with is your will usurping someone else’s. Like exclusivity, if it isn’t voluntary, what is its value?

I know those are generalizations and simplistic, but essentially it means I’m a romantic idealist. Not 50-50 but 100-100 in relationships. I grew up in that kind of family, a family where attraction led to bomb-proof bonding and indelible relationships. To me, if sparks of magnetism don’t lead to deeper discovery, competing and persuading are like buying votes in an election. They might win the appearance of love or lip service, might turn out to be practical, logical and sensible, but that’s incidental to the magical reflex of the heart, the soul, the instincts, the genetic pre-disposition, the lightning that leaves you breathless and blushing when you meet someone who matches what’s imprinted on your deepest radar. Real love isn’t a product of indoctrination; it starts with your core instincts and requires discovering yourself apart from societal templates. Reasoned love has shallow roots. What’s the song? “He’s everything you want, he’s everything you need/but he means nothing to you, and you don’t know why.” Romantic passion goes bone deep. And when the two are combined…well, again, real love.

OK, back to “Barbie” being pure persuasion and freighted with trendy dogma, an object-lesson in self-glorification and negotiated rights. Goodie. I’m all for both sides of the (pardon my blasphemy) binary getting whatever they can out of whatever they call it. Stick to your guns. I applaud, endorse and encourage anyone’s fulfillment as they see it. If it’s not my brand of love, it won’t matter to me personally, won’t become an insecure, unstable, competitive factor in my life. Does my fantasy of something more altruistic even exist, then? It does within me. I was resigned early-on to never finding it in the society that was evolving around me anyway. Didn’t look for it, really. What came to me – at me – from my earliest years was an education that I probably used badly. But that’s life. I’m still in the wonderful, crazy, ironic waters that toss us all galley-west as we sail to destinations unknown. I’ve had to truncate what is profaned, redefine what I cherish, discover the many ways to balance the imperfections and double standards of life, but always – always – I’ve found a way to preserve the Holy Grail of romantic idealism that allows me to love whether I’m loved back or not.

It’s a jigsaw puzzle sometimes, but “Barbie” and the reactions to it sound like the straight-edged border pieces that everyone puts together first. Boiler plate. Predictable. Peripheral around the center of the puzzle where life’s inner sanctums of romantic idealism dwell. Again, I’m all for everyone getting whatever they can, and clamoring for it in the medias of our culture. Females especially – being the funny-looking ones who network way better than the egocentric males – are welcome to their negotiated dreams. May they each be the Queen of Sheba, while the males are each Superman. To the extent that Barbie-branding by either sex can be taken seriously, the over-reaching thing is not that it defines gender justice or equal behaviors. It’s that it goes beyond defining what’s good for one sex by defining what’s good for the other.

The trouble with that for “Barbie” aficionados may be the inherent conflict that drove Freud nuts after 30 years of research when he asked in frustration “What do women want?” In my experience, women often get what they ask for, but seldom get what they want. A cat toys with a mouse until it’s dead, and then what? At this point in American culture the eternal gender squabble seems to have emasculated a lot of men (ooh, those sinking testosterone levels). Has the “male chauvinist pig” of the 60s finally devolved into a feckless “Ken”? Romantic idealism is all but extinct, but so be it. Ken can still become…pick a masculine name (but not Butch or Hunter). Every individual still has a choice. The love of my life and I have a couple of maxims that appeal to us: one is that if you have to ask for love, it’s too late to get it; the other is that if you get love by demand, you’ll never truly have it. You can see that as the litmus test for Barbie Heaven or you can see it as the creed of the romantic idealist. In the end, you get what you give. Kind of self-regulating, despite society’s facades. Different strokes for different folks. Which, I guess, is what people come out of the theater with after watching “Barbie.”

Thank you for all the feedback over last month’s pictures from my week spent building on a school in one of the poorest areas in the western hemisphere. Below are some more photos of Villa Esfuerzo in the DR…

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan