Ben Shapiro has a new obsession: Greta Gerwig’s summer blockbuster Barbie.
In a wild 43-minute-long tirade posted on YouTube, the 39-year-old conservative political commentator appeared to try and spark mass protests against the PG-13-rated film. Shapiro begins by burning Barbie dolls, then launches into a rant where he shames a trans woman cast as a Barbie, and walks through his other criticisms in the “pages and pages of notes” he took about the film while watching it.
Shapiro saw Barbie on Wednesday. Though he hasn’t officially made the connections, social media users pointed out that he wore the same outfit Ken (Ryan Gosling) wears in the movie.
“If you look in the audience, it’s mostly moms,” Shapiro recalls of his viewing experience. “Young-ish moms, middle-aged moms with their 6-, 7-, 8-year-old girls. That’s the entire crew.” (And let’s not forget Shapiro himself, who was obviously in the audience.)
In the caption for the video, Shapiro whined that Barbie was “one of the most woke movies I have ever seen.” He goes on to explain in the video that he was upset by Ken’s portrayal. Shapiro argues that Ken has become “annoying and ridiculous,” which contradicts the original Barbie dolls.
Then, Shapiro takes interest in Hari Nef’s Barbie. Nef is a trans woman and plays a bubbly Doctor Barbie in the film.
“One of the Barbies is a trans Barbie,” Shapiro says. “And this is true! Totally normal, as if this is a female Barbie—with a voice deeper than my own.”
He also claimed the film was “explicitly designed to divide men from women,” describing it as “angry feminist claptrap that alienates men from women.”
Social media users have flocked to tease Shapiro for his fixation on destroying the Barbie movie. “Ben Shapiro is a 40-year-old man who’s so upset over a kids’ movie about Barbie dolls that he made a 43-minute review,” one Twitter user shared. “It’s… pathetic.”
