Greta Gerwig & Metamodern Meaning Within The Machine
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When The LEGO Movie was announced in early 2010s, I still remember the general response: "oh, they're making a feature-length toy commercial." After Lord & Miller were attached to the project and it was revealed that they were taking heavy inspiration from the brickfilm community, hopes were higher—but even as all the trailers began to appear, with their incessant needle-drops and product tie-ins, the movie still seemed destined to be a staple of corporate pandering.
Then The LEGO Movie came out, and all of those worries and critiques vanished instantly. The animation was innovative and passionate, the humor was clever and infinitely rewatchable, the story itself was a humorous parody of cliché archetypes, and it even achieved the oft-sought-after title of "entertaining for kids and adults." To date, it's probably one of the more beloved animated movies of the last 10 years, in no small part because of how surprising its sheer quality was. I still remember the most frequent remark from critics and people I knew in real life: "I expected it to be a toy commercial, but that was so funny."
The fact that The LEGO Movie was good despite its seemingly-boilerplate premise was a huge part of its appeal; if everyone had expected the movie to be an artistic masterpiece, it might not have been as beloved as it was. Lord & Miller, likewise, quickly became household names in the animation world chiefly because of how impressive it was that they pulled so much gold from a shallow premise.
Speaking of toy commercials: Barbie. It's the biggest movie of the year and (quite interestingly) one of the most hotly-discussed and analyzed. One of the things that makes Barbie difficult to talk about is the way that it can be described as an intimately personal reflection on womanhood and a cynically capitalistic product tie-in with equal honesty. The film tries hard to have thoughtful political commentary—no doubt, commentary deeply held and believed by Greta Gerwig—but it also cannot say as much as perhaps it would if the Mattel Corporation were not overseeing everything...and even the jabs at corporate greed that it scores are slightly undercut by the very real fact that Mattel likely felt that this self-deprecation would ultimately make them look good.
As such, any criticism of Barbie as a cynical work of capitalist faux-political posturing (with Mattel making fun of themselves for planning sequels while also planning a hundred sequels) is totally correct in its assessment...and yet it also makes you wonder what anybody expected from the Barbie movie. The fact that Barbie (Barbie!) manages to say anything resembling profundity might just be a miracle; not every director could squeeze so much thoughtfulness and subversion out of such a vapid premise.
And that's where we're at with media right now. Is Andor really a leftist manifesto by a radically-minded showrunner, or is it just a capitalist corporation allowing social commentary because it ultimately serves their purposes to have a successful television show? Well, it's probably both. So much of how we judge the skill and creativity of filmmakers today seems to rest in how well they can take what should be a totally soulless premise (like a live-action remake of Peter Pan or an obligatory show about an obscure character from Rogue One) and make something that feels truly soulful and passionate and creative within the confines they've been given. Is that good? Probably not! But it’s also a lot more complicated than being “good” or “bad.”
Greta Gerwig's particular involvement with "big studio filmmaking" has been the subject of much controversy among cinephiles for quite some time now; some are grateful to have her voice influencing projects like Barbie that could have been far less daring without her, but others are afraid she's depriving the world of more smaller indies by wasting her time on things like writing Disney's Snow White remake, which will be probably be a soulless corporate cash cow regardless of how hard she tries to redeem it. I guess, personally, I'm just hoping that this era manages to maintain the "one for you, one for them" framework that's been part of the industry for ages; if making a fun piece of pop art like Barbie is what it takes for Greta to make her next Little Women or Lady Bird, it seems like a win/win tradeoff.
An interesting aspect of the conversation that I read about recently involved the idea of “journeyman” filmmakers and their relative lack of influence today. Back in an era like the early 2000s, movies like Barbie or The LEGO Movie would have been helmed by less distinctive voices, determined by the studio as capable of managing an enjoyable comedy but not brought in for their singular vision or auteur sensibilities; a director like Mark Waters, for instance, could hardly be described as a bold or daring visionary—but he directed some of the most widely-liked comedies of the mid-2000s, from Freaky Friday to Mean Girls.
In light of what the great movies we’ve received from watching visionaries like Gerwig or Lord & Miller give their take on a toy commercial, it’s hard to imagine this alternative being preferable—but I see where the dissenters in favor of the journeyman are coming from. It seems the way of things today that every good and thoughtful artistic voice making remarkable award-winning indies is instantly snatched up by a big corporation and made to direct the next live-action remake as their “big break,” from Chloe Zhao (director of Nomadland) directing Marvel’s Eternals to Barry Jenkins (director of Moonlight) helming the Lion King live-action Mufasa prequel. Wouldn’t it be preferable to let auteurs be auteurs pouring all their energies into telling original stories and leave the toy commercials and remakes to less distinctive voices? I can certainly see the argument for it—though I’m glad we get to live in a world where Greta made Barbie.
Regardless of Gerwig’s choices to engage in studio filmmaking or not, it strikes me that in premise and concept alone, movies like Barbie and The LEGO Movie are arguably very metamodern. Metamodernism is defined by its sense of deconstruction which, paradoxically, exists in relationship with a sincere search for meaning in spite of the meaninglessness of the world. Barbie and The LEGO Movie (and Andor, and Peter Pan & Wendy, and a hundred other things) are inherently cynical, corporate products that also exist as sincere and personal works from artists who genuinely seem to cared deeply about saying something meaningful despite the IP-driven nature of the project. What artists like Greta Gerwig or Tony Gilroy working within the studio system are doing right now is a physical manifestation of metamodernism, trying their best to find meaning and truth and profundity even while aware that they are making a toy commercial. It's a sad place to be, if you're a fan of movies that aren't inspired by toys or comic books, but I suppose you have to respect these directors for trying far harder than the hired guns ever do.
The irony is that in a strange way, for Barbie in particular, this muddiness of intention actually makes the movie that much more complex. As Greta attempts to engage the messy legacy of Barbie's commercial consumerism head-on, all within a movie that does indeed intend to sell dolls based on its characters, the fact that every point she makes is undercut by the commercialism actually proves those points. It is in spite and in the midst of the capitalist machine that somehow Gerwig manages to draw on something really sincere and thoughtful, and that bitter irony makes the movie all the better for conversation. These aspects do not invalidate each other; they only make our current era more of an enigma.