There’s a little something Jewish in everything, even BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER. Courtesy of CNN.BARBENHEIMER. In the future, history books will tell about this insane, unforgettable week of cinema in 2023 where two films – both with absolutely nothing in common – blew the box office out of the water and created a catchy phrase that every person on the street says. BARBENHEIEMR. BERBENHEIMER. It’s everywhere! If you haven’t been following movie news, which is totally fine, this word stands for BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER¸ the two movies that have been revered by audiences and critics alike and are already generating serious Oscar buzz. The term, if I’m not mistaken, was born on social media in the weeks leading up to their release dates. I expected the word to trend for a short while on Twitter or Instagram, but when I started seeing big news publications with “Barbenheimer” at the top of their covers, I knew this was a huge deal. Hollywood has indeed had a very strange year with the Writer’s and SAG-AFTRA strikes taking place, and Barbenheimer has only added to the surrealness of Hollywood, marketing, and the crazy world of social media in this day and age. Everything is weird!
Now, of course, this is PJFM’s blog. Why should I be writing about two movies that don’t appear to be Jewish? Well, my fellow readers, you are mistaken! OPPENHEIMER, Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” features many Jewish characters and is set – for an hour, at least – during Hitler’s regime and its increasingly antisemitic policies. BARBIE may seem like a stretch, but who was the creator of the Mattel doll? None other than Ruth Handler, the daughter of Jewish-Polish immigrants. She is even played in the film by Jewish actress Rhea Perlman.
So before I get into the movies and the real-life people portrayed in them, let’s take it back a couple of steps. If BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER weren’t big Hollywood productions, would they be screened at Jewish film festivals? I’m not totally sure. Let’s start with BARBIE. Although Perlman does play a small yet very important role in the film, I’m not sure if festival screeners would “qualify” the film as strong enough to be guaranteed a spot. Maybe if Barbie herself, played to perfection by Margot Robbie, identified as Jewish, they’d change their minds. OPPENHEIMER¸ on the other hand, is a big yes, despite research stating that the real Oppenheimer was a non-practicing Jew. The other scientists involved in the Manhattan Project were also Jews.
I bring this up because it goes back to a big question we get asked a lot at PJFM: what makes a movie “Jewish enough?” HOW can a movie be Jewish enough? BARBIE isn’t set in a synagogue or contains Jewish “Kens,” but the creator of the iconic doll was Jewish. AND she’s portrayed in the movie by a Jewish actress, except she doesn’t mention that she’s Jewish in her scenes. Does that qualify the movie as Jewish enough? OPPENHEIMER features many Jewish characters, including Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and several discussions about how the creation of an atomic bomb could be used to defeat Hitler. Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) also speaks about how his people are slaughtered in Europe by the dictator, thus galvanizing his group of scientists into action. (This is before Hitler’s Final Solution.) However, there are only a few of those scenes. The rest of the movie is all about the bomb and, well, we all know how World War II ended… “Jewish” or “Jews” aren’t even mentioned in the final hours of the film.
The “Jewish enough” question may give you a headache if you think about it for too long. What do I believe? Yes, BOTH these movies are Jewish enough. In fact, we shouldn’t even say “Jewish enough” anymore. The fascinating thing about cinema is the history behind movies, the true stories, the making-of, etc. I continue to be flabbergasted by the immensity of Jews who have played a part in films we don’t expect at all to be Jewish. Think back to the olden days of Hollywood and the high number of Jewish producers and directors who crafted some of the most iconic films of our time. Watch a movie based on a true story and research the lead subject. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), for example, features Melissa McCarthy as real-life writer Lee Israel, whose life is truly nuts. A struggling writer, she forged letters of famous authors and actors. The letters sold and Lee was able to pay her rent. Even after she was caught, the fascinating thing is that she, a stumbling writer, discovered her craft all along through this forgery since so many people believed the letters she had forged. She’s now considered a genius. (Although, of course, you still shouldn’t forge letters like her.) In the film, there’s no mention of her religion, but what was this extraordinary person in real life? Jewish.
If you want to go even further, you can argue there are Jewish hidden meanings in BARBIE or OPPENHEIMER. Hey Alma recently published an article titled “Is the ‘Barbie’ Movie the Greatest Biblical Retelling Ever Made?”
“The soul of BARBIE is a contest between the seeming binaries set up in the story of the Garden of Eden: good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, creator and creation, woman and man,” says Abigail Weil. “[Director Greta Gerwig] zooms in on the implications of two major relationships that the Bible takes for granted: man and woman, and God and manpersonkind.”
Huh?! That was my first reaction, but upon reading further and seeing this movie, I couldn’t have been more surprised by the hidden Jewishness of BARBIE. This segues to the broader topic here: there is “Jewishness” in SO MANY MOVIES that we may not know. I remember after Toy Story 3 (2010) came out, movie buffs discussed how the entire film was a metaphor for Jews and the Holocaust. The “Jews” are the toys waiting to be “tossed out,” and the film’s climax takes place in an incinerator… A dark coincidence? You decide.
Cinema and Judaism are intertwined in ways we have yet to discover at first, but the more we analyze these kinds of movies, the more holes are unveiled that show the Jewish meaning behind them.
BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER are now playing in VERY packed theaters! See them while you can.