There seems to be a lot of backlash out there around the Barbie movie being anti-men and overly woke/feminist, which just seems like a completely dumb and pointless conversation. So it’s a relief to see Joe Rogan dismiss this most recent zero-stakes culture war drama in his latest podcast.

Ben Shapiro was so upset by Barbie he posted a 43-minute rant and set fire to dolls and Piers Morgan also had a meltdown over it (obviously). Having seen the film for himself, Rogan described it to Post Malone as a “fun, silly movie about dolls who come to life”, before explaining how he didn’t understand the outrage at all.

“A lot of it is about the patriarchy, and it’s a comedy, it’s a comedy about dolls.

People are upset that it’s this progressive metaphor for life that they’re pushing progressive politics in this, and I’m like, ‘It’s a f****** doll movie!’ It’s a doll movie. It’s a fun movie about dolls who come to life and try to interact with the real world.

No one’s ever done a movie like this before. This is not like anything else you could say. It was a bizarre movie, but it was a fun, silly movie, I laughed.”

Well I don’t know about ‘no one’s ever done a movie like this before’ (Toy Story, ever heard of it?), but anyway, he continued:

“I know some people personally who said it’s anti-men. I’m like, ‘No, it’s making fun of dorks.’”

Are we going to do this thing where we put all men as men, it’s one category, we’re not going to judge people as individuals?

It’s a movie about how Barbies are the dolls that everyone cares about, and Ken is just a f****** accessory, which is real. So when you bring these things into a movie, you make them real life Barbieland, that’s how they have to be, because that’s how it is in the real world.”

Just goes to show you should really watch and interpret things for yourself. If Joe Rogan never watched the Barbie movie and instead just listened to takes from Ben Shapiro and friends, he might’ve just rolled with whatever they were saying about it.

Come to think of it, there’s only really 3 topics that Rogan can’t resist getting vexed about: Covid, gender identity stuff, and Joe Biden. Twitter censorship used to be on his sh*t list too but I think Elon Musk changed all that. I did fully expect him to share the ‘too woke’ sentiment on Barbie so fair play to him for surprising us all with this take.

Meanwhile, a university lecturer is refusing to allow his daughter to watch the Barbie movie because it’s ‘too white’. Sigh…