We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
from T.S. Elliot’s poem The Four Stanzas:
Judging solely by the movie preview, it seems that a suddenly introspective Barbie is forsaking her insulated life, driving off in her pink Corvette convertible searching for truth, the plastic paradise that is her home now but a receding reflection in the rearview mirror. And where will Barbie go exactly? Where will her exploration take her? My answer: Barbie finds her way to the side of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and together they behold the world’s first nuclear explosion as he ominously proclaims, “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
I’m playing with magical realism here, marrying together fictional and nonfictional worlds. Many on the internet are doing likewise. Ever since word got out that Barbie and Oppenheimer are opening in theaters on the very same day (today as it turns out!) people have been creating and posting mashups of the two, juxtaposing and conflating images from these polar opposite films. Atomic pink and atomic blast. Malibu beach house and Manhattan Project Bunker. Bubbly Barbie and Overwrought Oppenheimer. Together they are Barbenheimer!
Some of the memes are pretty clever! I like the one of Barbie and Ken parked in her convertible, a pink atomic blast cloud mushrooming on the horizon. Or the meme that prints the I-am-become-death quote in the pink and loopy Barbie font. Yes, they’re images of annihilation, but I don't see them as nihilistic. Instead, I’m choosing to interpret many of the Barbenheimer memes as symbols of awakening. Barbie’s exploration of the real world will change her. Her sojourn in the atomic age will disabuse her of her illusions. And once her eyes are open, she’ll arrive where she started, going home to her Malibu beach house, and, knowing the place for the first time, she might not feel quite so entitled.
When Karen and I land at the Honolulu airport someday, I too will have arrived where I started. I’m a Navy brat, you see, born in Hawaii before statehood. When I was two, however, the family moved to the mainland, so I have no memories of my life on Oahu. All I have to go on is a family photo of me as a toddler in a sagging diaper wading in the surf of an Oahu beach, my shirtless father standing behind me, holding my arms above my head as small waves lap at my feet, the light of the sunset casting the scene in a timeless, golden glow. But I’ve never made it back to the island of my birth, so Karen and I are planning a trip, and the fact that a family friend who lives on the island has offered to show us around motivates us even more. I asked him during his recent visit if he could guide us to the place where the photo was taken. Luckily, the two small islands in the photo’s background were all he needed to identify the place. “That’s Bellows Field Beach,” he said. “But I can’t take you there. Not yet. An old bomb was found buried in the sand.” My idyllic beach playground, as it turns out, was once a WWII bombing range.
That’s why when we finally make it back to my birth state I intend to go on a guided Detour, an alternative tourist activity that I read about in an article printed in SFGate just before the pandemic. The aim is to drive visitors around Oahu to see the sights. Or, rather, the sites. As in Superfund sites! And old firing ranges and colonial mansions to boot. This way visitors will see for themselves the impact the tourism industry and the military have had and continue to have, on the island. One would learn, for example, and I’m quoting from the SFGate article, that “the military controls 21% of Oahu, and that there are 115 different sites on the islands identified as having been poisoned by decades of ordnance testing and other military activity.” It’s a safe bet that Bellows Field Beach, where I once frolicked in the waves, has been added to the list. As for “other military activity", my dad informs me that when he was stationed at Pearl Harbor, he served on the USS Moctobi, a fleet ocean tug, whose mission was to moor the barges from which engineers suspended submerged atom bombs. These nuclear tests were conducted thousands of miles away from Hawaii, but Pearl Harbor was the logistical hub.
“It was always striking,” says one of the founders of De-tours, “that when people would think about Hawaii, their critical thinking would sort of turn off.” A de-tour can turn it back on. Barbies and Kens come for the Waikiki Beach life; they’ll leave with the truth.
If only.
The good news is that Bellows Field Beach has been reopened. Families are once again playing in the waves and basking on the sand. The unexploded ordinance has been disposed of. Erring on the side of caution, however, authorities have posted warning signs. No sandcastles! No digging! No staked canopies! No beach umbrellas! Now photoshop this sign into an old family photograph of a young sailor walking his little boy into the surf and, there you have it, the perfect meme to express my Barbenheimer world.
I always enjoy reading what you have to say. This latest offering is no exception. For a fraction of moment, I thought “Hey, is Mike even a U.S. Citizen?” Duh.