half-baked: covid & the multiverse

Barbie (2023) spoilers

here are three different stories that inspired this post:

1. the final project made by a friend of mine in our "documentary film-making" course last fall where she made a video essay comparing how spider-man: into the spider-verse and doctor strange and the multiverse of madness use the multiverse as a plot device. and explaining just how much better spider-verse is than doctor strange.

2. this barbie/spider-man fanart by sketchbuku on tumblr captioned "the 'I got to travel to another world and got an existential crisis / trust issues' duo."

3. having an amazing trip to the beach with a couple of close friends last week. the three of us met on twitter in winter of 2020 and together we've navigated the ages of 18-22 during the pandemic. they are some of my closest and most trustworthy friends and the love we all have for each other is something very special.

here is my conclusion from thinking about these together:

Introduction: The Internet & the Multi-Verse

The internet has always been about infinite information being only a click away. Multi-verse media exploding in this age makes so much sense. We are being pulled in so many different directions and our time is something to be bought by advertisers. Asking 'what if?' is natural. There are

Add a pandemic onto that - where your options for action become severely limited - performance of gender goes digital.

I. The Pandemic & Making Friends

The pandemic really fucked everyone up. Duh. Being put 'online' at age 18 for schooling was a very strange experience, going to college it was infinitely harder connecting with classmates when we could not do anything together. It was impossible to get to know people! Besides, the equal footing of the internet was where I was doing school work now. I found other people my age online. Meeting people at parties the way my parents did became unrealistic when I graduated high school in a pandemic! It's in this setting that our group chat was formed. We would get on Zoom and take edibles, shoot the shit and watch K-Pop fancams. Since then, we've always been in each other's lives. We have supported each other (the earliest photos from when we got together in person I'm in my sorority hat, an organization I would quit the next year!) unconditionally, always in each other's corners.

At the beach, I thought to myself "We would find each other again somehow" if we had never met on twitter. I imagined walking past them in the street and not knowing them.

II. The Pandemic & Gender Performance

When everyone is online, we're trying to replicate our in person lives as best we can. 

Misogyny online is not the new trend. What I am wondering: Has the pandemic nurtured an online performance of masculinity, reflected in real world (a) spikes in misogynistic campaigns gaining momentum and (b) an increased rate of violence against women? What was happening with both of these prior to the pandemic and what changed? This is a vastly more complicated question than I can answer in a SpaceHey post. I can direct people seeking more information to UN Women's 'The Shadow Pandemic' campaign.

Gender performance online goes both ways. Micro-trends and all different kinds of 'cool girl' got their day in the sun with TikTok.

It also goes no ways and everywhere - exploration of gender identity online is an adrenaline rush. At 14 or whatever age when I questioned my gender identity, being called a snowflake and being socially outcasted was more than enough to shrink me back into my box. When I see freshmen in college, I see more young people who had these questions and the space to run wild with them. It's amazing! Of course this is not true of everyone, but being 14 in 2016 and 2020 are vastly different experiences.

III. The Pandemic & the Multi-Verse (under construction)

This is where all 4 themes converge: Barbie (2023). There is the original Barbie-land, the brutal real world, and the post-misogyny Barbie-land. Barbie-land is a separate universe that influences the real world's shopping trends. I am liberally calling it a multi-verse film. This film being made post-pandemic is key.

The online gender performance is the original barbie land, it's something that exists with the actions of a static character. The real world exposure creates doubt. Lots and lots of doubt and questioning and shrinking into the box. Trying to translate my internet performance of gender I'd grown comfortable with during the pandemic into an institution that I thought matched it (a sorority) burned me. Having faced that -- feeling shunned for trying to be a girl wrong after feeling ostracized for trying to be a person wrong five years before that as a 14 year old -- self-actualization becomes possible with the right support and the safety and community to look deeply into yourself.

There is also a huge conversation that I need to look into about the villain being misogyny. The infiltration of both post-COVID internet-masculinity douchebags and facing the music after a reprieve from existing real-world misogyny pops the bubble big time.

Conclusion: Did any of that make sense?

I liked writing this and sharing a source of meaning I found really important from Barbie (2023). And where I'm at with gender identity. The freedom I have with myself to ask these questions and not shun away from whatever my own response in is new. 4 weeks new. Gender euphoria after a breast reduction is the realest shit.