The Chaser Report - Piers Morgan VS Barbie | John Delmenico

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Remember when the Barbie movie came out and all the world's worst men got really mad? Yeah, that was weird hey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigall Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome the Chasher Report with Dom and Charles. Dom here. Charles is off making something very exciting which we'll tell you about soon. And we did a bonus episode on Saturday. We had a almost as live, really, reaction to the news that Keir Stamber was the new Prime Minister in the UK. We looked back on some really extraordinary moments in the 14 years of Tory rule in Britain. I was joined by Chris Taylor for that.

And then there's another episode looking at Australian politics as well and the curious fate of bald leaders. However, we've got an update for the feed for you today. And looks, most of our content is topical and fades quickly. But this one, I think, is perennial. It's the very, very funny reactions by fairly dreadful men to a wonderful film, to Barbie. John Delmenico, who's the editor of The Chase, did a bit of a deep dive into some of the more deranged reactions to Margot Robbie's cinematic masterpiece. We'll have a fresh episode for you in the feed tomorrow. but in the meantime, please enjoy this one because I certainly did.

Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles and 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 be, 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 Piers Morgan that I assumed wasn't out. 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 ilk 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 a millennial long patriarchy.

If you flipped it around, it wouldn't have the same politics. That's sort of what you hope, isn't it? 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, Morgan. I went on to watch his second episode, 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 crucial law says, isn't it? Yeah. 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, well, 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 of patriarchy camp.

Yeah, that's right. The patriarchy is his mirror that he looks at 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 NewsCol 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. Ben Chiro 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 at the top, 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. It's not.

Sorry, is he talking 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 what 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 and Greta Gourwig 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, it was a small budget movie. And they hired like Hollywood actors who can't get other roles because they've said anti-vaccs and transphobic stuff. Oh, Mel Gibson was in the movie. That's pretty good. Like, did it lose money? or did it make money on its $840 return on investment? Like, how much money did his 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 hire a female lead. Because his audience, we're 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, the 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. Redding waves is much more dangerous than people realize. You're very brave. Thank you, Barbie. You know, Surfer is 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 definitely want to see this movie because this sounds very funny. It's obviously very clear that, like, it's like, everything's in a child. 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 there being an entire scene about how his job is not lifeguard. He's not a close reading the thing. 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 Femm Shapiro because she looks and acts like him but as a woman.

That seems cool. 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. Right, I mean, the obvious solutions that are available, which would be like, you know, Barbie treating Ken like a normal human and Ken treating Barbie like a normal human. Yeah. 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. And that's how Mattel created them. They're not actually humans.

It's really... I haven't seen the ballet 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. So it's hard to tell when he is just like lying to his audience to try to make culture war and when he's just being an idiot who he doesn't understand like kids films because it's not a very like

it's not a deep stuff in the movie 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 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 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 didn't accurately describe the corporate makeup of the Mattel board. No, no, 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 of how dumb someone would argue it. Because 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.

It's at least six. Oh, they, yeah, okay. There'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 scene. Yes, because it's a parody for 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. This 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 white, 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 to him is equality.

so he thinks that a feminist film should just represent this fictional reality of women treating each other equally with men sort of thing is that is that is that that that's my guess what's your that's what he hopes the movie would go down yeah yeah i i really want to see the ben shapiro version of the movie what barbie movie 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 humour, 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 Bencher appears. Euro's version of the Barbie movie 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 it a woman. That's what he thinks they should have shown womanhood.

Making jokes about women telling out a parallel park. Oh, so he just wants a sexist version of the Barbie movie. That is like a sort of cliched stereo types of women. Now I understand, the director and one of the writers and the star who also produced the Barbie movie, they were 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 barge movie about how toxic men love the Snyder cut. And Benchberg got very offended at that joke because he loved the Snider. It'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 want 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 white. 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 at visiting Ben Shapiro, serving up till he was on 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 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 fucked hard 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 fucktards, 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 diehard Christian, despite Ben Shapiro 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 with 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 kens are gay. That's really the take of the film. They're just all homo erotic. Yeah, all the kens 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

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 are 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 will 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 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 the 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. It's important to be clear. 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 do 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 mark of Ben Shapiro 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 say the Snyder cut this time ah john thank you very much our gears from ride we are part of the iconocles network catch you next time