The Chaser Report - Piers Morgan Has A Meltdown About Barbie | John Delmenico

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

Charles and Dom are joined by Chaser editor John Delmenico who a rundown on all the worst ways toxic and insecure men are responding to a movie about Barbie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles and a very special guest today, Chaser editor John Delmenico, how are you going? Hey, I'm all right. How are you? I'm good, John, but you know what? As we're three men gathered here together, I just want to get into the Barbie movie because I haven't seen it yet.

No. And I think I want to see it. But I just want to know that it's going to completely destroy my masculinity. I'm just worried that if I watch it, I'll become a cuck or something like that. John, you've researched this question. What have you found? I've seen the movie. But part of what sold me to see the movie was this clip from Pierce Morgan that I assumed wasn't at.

So it's pretty clear where this movie is going. This is an assault on not just 10, but all men. Yeah, sign me up for that. That sounds great. More on Piers Morgan and his ill. after this. So yes, John, the rule is absolutely true, isn't it, that when Piers Morgan opposes something, it must be good.

Yeah, I mean, his description of it made me want to see it. And then I saw recently, looking back, because I was interested, he's done an article and another TV segment about it. So he really, really cares about it. He claims that if he made the same movie, but gender flipped, feminists would want him to be beheaded. Right. Which, I feel like me personally, I don't need him to make a movie for that.

Yeah. And, yeah, like, there's no change there. What a brilliant insight that's something that comments on millennia-long patriarchy. If you flipped it around, it wouldn't have the same politics. That's sort of what you host, isn't it? Also, it's also what most movies are. The description of the movie is that the Ken's are just side characters, but most movies are like that for women. Well, there's literally a whole thing called the Bechdel test.

Most movies fail where virtually. No movies have women talking to other women about anything other than men. So, you know, shove that in your analytical framework, Piers Morgan. I went on to watch his second, like, his second episode on it, and I found his description of the movie very intriguing. Oh, God. The patriarchy, the word is used endlessly in the movie, even though most people, really me actually, have no real idea what patriarchy really means.

I guess it means all men are evil, so they can prove otherwise. I think that's what the conventional law says, isn't it? Yeah, so... I just love that there's a do-a-leaper clip, like of her amazing song from the movie coming up underneath. It made me happy, just briefly. Yeah. How has he got through... How old is he, about 100 years old?

How has he got through the last 100 years without learning what the patriarchy is? I mean, someone like Pierce Morgan, whose entire career has just been the patriarchy, you would think he would know. Yes. Isn't the first rule of the patriarchy that you don't acknowledge that it exists? That's what I was told at. I told a patriarchy camp. Yeah, that's it. The patriarchy is his mirror that he looks each morning.

He did say he doesn't understand what the patriarchy is. But weirdly, he also hasn't seen the movie. So he's done three, all up three different things that news collar put around the world without seeing the movie. But luckily, he has the best source possible for what the movie is, which is not his wife and kids who've seen the movie. But instead, he's watched Ben Shapiro talk about it. Oh, right. Rema who bitch. Benjaro is a right-wing, sort of like a shock jock, but less talented.

He wanted to be a screenwriter, failed, and then he decided to go to a right-wing grift instead. So he has some very strong thoughts about the movie. This movie is not just a piece of shit. This movie is a flaming piece of dog piled atop an entire dumpster on fire, piled atop a landfill filled with dogs. It is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. On every possible level, it is a horrific movie. Wow. No, it's not, sorry, is he doing about the Barbie movie or his own movie?

Obviously, he's talking about the Barbie movie, Charles. That's very unfair. I'm saying, I think if Greta Goerwig and Margot Robbie heard that clip, they would clink their cocktail glasses to one another as they celebrate the billion dollars that their movie is made. Because just from his voice, you can tell the kind of guy he is. And I don't think the Barbie movie was made with him in mind. Well, you've mentioned the billion dollars.

He made a very bold prediction in the, first video, that he backs up in his second video. Week one, this thing is going to clean up at the domestic box office. My prediction is going to just absolutely fall off a clip after that. The repeat business on this movie is going to be non-existent because it was written by two people who are so smug and self-satisfied in Greta Gerwig and Noah Bomba that they have no audience. Do I detect a slight ton of smugness and self-satisfaction in his voice? But isn't that his people like Ben Shapiro, isn't that what he does?

I thought that, anyway. Yeah, that is sort of his whole brand. but he so Charles mentioned he put out his own movie this year now do you reckon it made more or less than a billion dollars what was his movie

I can't know what it's called but it did gross close to a billion it fell just short at just $840 at the box office what how does the movie was it like a home movie or something

was it a properly made movie they put a proper like they put it was a small budget movie and they hired like Hollywood actors who can't get other roles because they've said anti-vax and transphobic stuff. Oh, Mel Gibson was in the movie. That's pretty good. Did it lose money or did it make money on its $840 return on investment?

Like, how much money did these movie cost? I'm pretty sure it lost a couple million. Oh, right. So it was a proper movie. Yeah, there was one fatal error, which is that when you're making an anti-woke movie, you don't do what he did, which is higher a female lead. because his audience were not going to go see a movie with a female lead and they said it was too woke and everyone else didn't watch it because anti-woke movies just tend to suck

yeah right so this is the sort of level of movie expertise that we're talking about here who's done five videos about the Barbie movie that total about three hours long so he's done more on the barb movies than the length of the Barbie movie yeah about an hour more so I could have gone to the movies watched Barbie and come back but instead I've watched Ben Shapiro talking about the Barbie movie. But here's, so anyone who hasn't seen it, here's a clip of the Barbie movie.

Reading waves is much more dangerous than people realize. You're very brave. Thank you, Barbie. Yeah. You know, Surfer's not even my job. I know. And it is not lifeguard,

which is a common misconception. Very common. Yeah, because actually my job, it's just Beach. Right. And what a good job you do at Beach. You should heal up in no time. Actually, in the time that it took for me

to say that sentence, you healed. Fantastic. Nice. And I must say that when I heard that Ken's job was Beach, it might be think I'd definitely want to see this movie because this sounds very funny. It's obviously very clear that everything's in a child's imagination and have silly jobs like Beach. So this is where my first problem with Ben Shapiro's videos come in. There's a scene on the beach where Ken, the Ken's are supposed to be the lifeguards and the ladies are playing on the beach. So, yeah, so Ben Shapiro thinks that his job is lifeguard, despite they're being an entire.

scene about how he's job is not like that he's not reading the next maybe he saw the movie once and then it wasn't the audience that dropped off the cliff it was his comprehension of the movie that dropped off the cliff yeah so and yeah he doesn't understand anything about the movie like he had a debate with somebody from his network who gets referred to as femme Shapiro because she looks and acts like him

but as a woman that seems because she was a woman so she liked the movie and then I had a debate on it And this is part of the debate. I mean, the obvious solutions that are available, which would be like, you know, Barbie treating Ken treating Barbie like a normal human. That's completely put aside because he has to treat her like woman and she has to treat him like man, but only in the feminist...

Ben, they're just how Mattel created that. They're not actually humans. It's really... I haven't seen the Bali movie. He allegedly has. And even I know that the point is that they're fucking dolls. The joke is that they're dolls. Oh, God.

What is this guy's job? Yeah. So he didn't realize that. At this point, because he's like very early in the videos, I realized I was in for a challenge, because it's hard to tell when he is just like lying to his audience to try to make a culture war. And when he's just being an idiot who doesn't understand like kids films,

because it's not a very like, it's not a deep concept. He doesn't understand the baseline text. Yeah, it's just a complete switcheroo where the woman treats the man like the man normally treats the woman. But, like, isn't that the... I mean, it's a, it's almost as a parody of every other movie. Yeah, no wonder it went over his head.

Yeah, but this doesn't stop him trying to take dunks on the movie. Like, there's this one here. He goes to Mattel and all the members of the board are men. By the way, I'd like to see a corporate breakdown of the Mattel board. I'll bet I can find it. Like, the CEO of Mattel for 30 years was a woman. So there's that. They pretend that, like, Mattel is all run by men.

So I just, now I want to know. I can't believe that it accurately described the corporate makeup of Mattel board. You know what? Will Ferrell is not on the Mattel board in real life either. But you know, but that's not true.

Have you fact-checked this, John? Well, you don't need to fact-check this because in the movie there is a joke where someone from the patriarchy says that the Mattel board being men doesn't matter because a previous CEO was a woman.

So he's just actually just arguing the point that is a joke in the movie if how dumb someone would argue it. Because, like, genuinely, the current CEO is a man. Yeah, the current CEO is a man. And I believe that the current board has one woman on us. I'm looking at it's at least six.

Oh, yeah, okay. It's one more man than woman on the board. Oh, okay, right in. But in the movie, they obviously played up to be every single person on the board is a man in a season. Yes, because it's a parody of the fucking patriarchy. And also because that is what most corporate boards are, even in 2023. even not in movies, but are parodies. Oh my God.

Yeah, so this is the sort of like deep tier analysis that he comes up with. Later on, he tried to dunk on the movie being like, they don't tell you this, but the original creator of the Barbie was a girl. They do tell you that because there's a character in the movie who is that person. And they actually show

real life images of her in the movie. And they discuss her. There's a whole scene dedicated to her coming up with the Barbie. But obviously, he has some criticism of the actual writing itself. Like, there's a scene where Barbie gets sexually harassed on the street. And he fact-checked one bit about how one guy says, give me a smile, Blondie.

And he's like, well, no one said Blondie since the 1960s. So his main argument against his, oh, well, they've used old-school sexism and we're into new-school sexism. But what do you think he thinks would be a better way to represent what women go through on a daily basis? Presumably he thinks that the way to sort of have a feminist film is to represent the ideal feminist state, which is equal to him is equality. So he thinks that a feminist film should just represent this fictional reality of women being, treating each other equally with men sort of thing. Is that, is that, that's my guess.

That's what he hopes the movie would go down. Yeah. Yeah, I really want to see the Ben Shapiro version of the movie what Barbie should be. It sounds very funny and extremely sharp. It's just people talking to each other in like men treating men as men and women treating women as women but as equals with no sense of humor and then going and talking to the Mattel board and saying,

hmm, this board seems to be quite well balanced. Did you know that Barbie's former CEO, that Mattel's former CEO was a woman and that the inventor of Barbie was women? I didn't know that. Thank you very much for this informative lecture on Barbie. How much money would that make at the box office? We know, $840. The Chaser report.

More news. Less often. Well, if you want to know what Ben Shapiro's version of Barbie would be like and how he would represent what womanhood is, luckily I have a clip for you. And the low-level man says, I'm a man with no power. Does that make me a woman?

No, you can't parallel park. That's what makes no woman. That's what he thinks they should have shown womanhood. Making jokes about women's thing out of parallel park. Oh, so he just wants a sexist version of the Barbie movie. That is like a sort of cliched stereotype types of women. Now I understand the director and one of the writers and the star who also produced the movie, they are all female.

What they needed was a smug man to make the Barbie movie. And then it would have been the sort of movie that a smug man, liked. Yes. And there would have been a superhero in it as well, which is another criticism I have of the Barbie movie. So there's not enough superheroes. Yes. Well, there is a joke in the Barbie movie about how toxic men love the Snyder cut. And Ben Shapiro got very offended at that joke because he loved the snider cut. That's a very sharp joke. I like it. Intertextuality. Wow. I'm definitely going to see this movie. So Ben Shapiro, he claims that in real life, the patriarchy isn't a thing and not a problem. And it's all equal.

So which of these do you think, I'm going to give you four options. Which one do you think is not an argument from him as to why the patriarchy doesn't exist? Is not an argument. One, that the movie was approved by a man. Two, that men gave women the vote. Three, that the washing machine was invented making it easier for women to wash clothes. Or D, that more men get stabbed than women. Okay.

I reckon I know the answer to this, which is it's a trick question. and he uses all four of those arguments. What do you reckon, Dom? They all sound pretty potent, but to me, the stabbing one, I think, is the one that really is the shittest of that.

I mean, if all the shit sandwich is there, that's the one I'm most envisaging Ben Shapiro serving up to all the planet. Weirdly, the stabbing one is the one he didn't say. Right.

Because Piers Morgan said that instead. Oh, I protected the stench of Piers Morgan's brain. Yeah, one of his guests brought up. up that women are sexually assaulted, like rates of women being sexually assaulted. And he was like, ah, yes, but men get stabbed more. Is it just me? Is it just me?

Or are the bloviating fuck-tard commentators in the media overwhelmingly male? I feel like they might be, John. I feel like they might be. Yeah, well, these, yeah, but these fuck-tards, they have great ideas. So Ban Shapiro said that he's one of his criticisms of the movie is that the movie doesn't solve death. Okay. And feeling angst about death.

So he comes up with solutions, being either becoming a, die-hard Christian, despite Benchapiro himself being Jewish, or getting married. And one of his biggest complaints is that Barbie and Ken are not married in the movie. However, there is one slight issue which is something that he thinks is the point of the movie that would mean that they probably shouldn't get married. Really, the take of the film is that all the Ken's are gay. That's really the take of the film is it's all homoerotic. Yeah, all the Ken's are gay and they should be married to the Barbies.

Is Ben Shapiro's take for how the movie should have gone? What I understand the key to successful marriage is for both members of the marriage to be deeply unhappy and all repressed. I think that's the traditional version of marriage and I'm glad to see Ben Shapiro sticking up for the enduring misery that marriage can bring. John, can I give you my psychoanalysis of Ben Shapiro having been forced to listen to those 11 clips, which is I've been doing a bit of therapy and one thing that is common, especially in narcissists is this thing called projection where somebody accuses other people of something

that they themselves are doing themselves, right? And I think that last clip, to me, just completely sums up, I mean, all of them really, just projection. But the whole idea that, well, that Ken's very sexy, isn't he? Oh, he should get married. He shouldn't be gay. He should just get married to a woman, I think, said something. It says more about Ben. Well, he did, he did accuse the Canadian Prime Minister of being gay for watching the movie, which Ben Shapiro has also watched the movie. But also, the other suggestions we have had is that he might be emasculated by the movie, but clearly that's just not true. As far as feeling emasculated on a personal level, I just had my fourth kid, man. Like, give me a break. My reproductive success

has been assured at this point, folks. I'm not, I'm not particularly concerned about the emasculation charge. I feel like he, you know, protested too much there. It's fine for gay men to be dads. Yeah. Whether or not Ben Shapiro is. No.

You can't go. You can't go. I've had a fathered a child, therefore I must be straight. That's not how things work in 2023, Ben. You know what the problem here is. The problem is that Ben and Ken sound very, very similar. Yeah.

So whenever he hears that a notion, I'm just, I'm just Ken or I'm and Ken, or anywhere else I'd be a 10, he's hearing Ben and you know what he's not wrong he really is and Ben or just Ben or more commonly fuck Ben

but not in that way but Dom you know like there's lots of fuckwits out there who are called Ben but not all Ben not all Ben not all Ben

it's true important to be clear yeah not all Ben John what a valuable service you've done for the podcast not just have you watched Barbie which Charles and I really should

Yeah, no, well, I keep on wanting, because I want to go with my wife. Yeah, me too, and no one will mind the children. Yeah. But also, you've mired through the muck of bench, Piro and Piers Morgan's takes on Barbie. Did that make you want to go and watch Barbie again? Yes, it makes me want to go watch Barbie again just to make sure that I've watched the right movie. Because after hearing them describe it, I'm pretty sure I might have seen the wrong one. Well, you should see the Snyder cut this time.

John, thank you very much. Our gear is from Ride. we're part of the Iconicalist network. Catch you next time.