HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” host said that he had hoped the rumors about the new “Barbie” film being a “man-hating” picture were untrue, but after viewing the film, he claimed it was everything he had feared it would be, criticizing the director for neglecting the times we are living in.
The 67-year-old comedian and TV personality claimed in a tweet to his 10.8 million followers on Monday that the Greta Gerwig-directed film about the famous Mattel doll was “preachy” and “out of touch with reality” and that it was also a “ZombieLie.”
Maher said the term “ZombieLie” means it’s either “something that never was true, but certain people refuse to stop saying it” or “something that USED to be true but no longer is, but certain people pretend it’s still true. ‘Barbie’ is this kind of #ZombieLie.”
“Spoiler alert, Barbie fights the Patriarchy,” the HBO host wrote in his lengthy post. “Right up to the Mattel board who created her, consisting of 12 white men! The Patriarchy! Except there’s a Mattel board in real life, and it’s 7 men and 5 women. OK, not perfect even-steven, but not the way the board IN THE MOVIE — which takes place in 2023 — is portrayed.”
OK, "Barbie": I was hoping it wouldn't be preachy, man-hating, and a #ZombieLie – alas, it was all three. What is a Zombie Lie? Something that never was true, but certain people refuse to stop saying it (tax cuts for the rich increase revenues, e.g.); OR something that USED to be…
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) August 7, 2023
“And not really any longer deserving of the word ‘patriarchy,’” he added. “Yes, there was one, and remnants of it remain — but this movie is so 2000 —LATE. At one point the Barbies have to win over the Kens, and they are told to do it by pretending to act helpless and not know how to do stuff. Helen Gurley Brown called, she wants her premise back.”
Maher admitted yes, at one point in history this “was a thing” but said he knows from at least one woman in her 30s this is simply not true and she told him, “I don’t know a single woman of any age who would act like that today.”
And when it comes to critics who will say the TV personality couldn’t know a thing about the patriarchy cause he’s a man, he blasted the argument as “so old and so silly.”
He said he might not know what others go through in life but can see “the world around me, and I can read data.”
“The real Mattel board is a pretty close mirror of the country, where 45% of the 449 board seats filled last year in Fortune 500 companies were women,” Maher added. “Truth is, I’m not the one who’s out of step — I’m living in the year we’re living in.”
“Barbie is fun, I enjoyed it — but it IS a #ZombieLie,” the talk show host concluded. “And people who don’t go along with zombie lies did not take some red pill — just staying true to CURRENT reality. Let’s live in the year we’re living in! Hi Ken!!!”
Maher’s remarks echoed those of Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro, who has stated that he is not a fan of the “Barbie” movies save from the way the settings look, praising the “production and set designs” as being excellent.
My producers dragged me to see ‘Barbie’ and it was one of the most woke movies I have ever seen. My full review of this flaming garbage heap of a film will be out on my YouTube channel tomorrow at 10am ET. pic.twitter.com/Lptha0p3qx
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 21, 2023
Thomas Cooper