Have you seem “Barbie?” Oops,  I mean “Oppenheimer.” Oops, I mean “Barbieheimer” yet?  If not, you will.

Not only will these two films win most of the Oscars this year. Since opening only two weeks ago “Barbie” has grossed over $190 million in box office receipts and “Oppenheimer” has grossed over $100 million in the same period. And this comes at a time when theaters have been empty for the last three years.

So what makes these two movies so captivating to the  American mind? And why have these two diametrically opposite films been spliced together and marketed as a double feature?  One film is covered in pink and orange and blonde tones with a plastic doll as the main character, while the other film  is about death, guilt and darkness.

Let us take a moment to deconstruct these strangest of  bedfellows.

“Barbie” was co-written and directed by Greta Gerwig and stars the blonde and ever smiling Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as the haplessly neutered Ken doll.  The doll itself  was invented by Ruth Handler, who was co-founder of Mattel Toys and saw a similar doll while on vacation in Germany and was inspired to bring this kind of doll to America in 1959.  To give you an idea how popular this Barbie still is, in 2020 the gross earnings of Barbie and her accessories was over $1.3 billion.

From the very beginning of the film you know you’re in for a treat with a scene modeled after Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, “Space Odyssey: 2001.” In the  Kubrick film you see apes on an African savannah 25,000 years ago. They are mysteriously visited by a tall monolith which enables the apes to learn that the large bones of dead animals can be used very  effectively as weapons of destruction.

In the “Barbie” movie, Gerwig converts this into a scene of little girls playing peacefully with little baby dolls. They are visited by a giant monolithic Barbie which allows the little girls to revolt against this maternal role and take to smashing the little baby dolls and all other  symbols of  domestic tranquility.   If there is such a thing as heaven and if Simone de Beauvoir is there, I can picture her smiling down at this scene with pride and satisfaction.

The “Barbie”  film grapples with de Beauvoir’s basic existential question of being vs. becoming.   In the “The Second Sex,” she carefully traced the 10,000-year history of mistreatment, marginalization and objectification endured by women. Girls are to learn to  be pretty, to be nice, to be good, to be  sexy, and to be sweet.   And the  film “Barbie” does a pretty good job of addressing this problematic issue.

Now on the other hand, we have this film “Oppenheimer,” which addresses the male obsession with power, aggression, destruction and death.  “Oppenheimer” was directed by Christopher Nolan and focuses on the Manhattan Project, which was run by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in order to create an atomic bomb to be used on Japan to end World War II.  With massive governmental  support  and the creation of a secret lab in Los Alamos, N.M., Oppenheimer gathered the best quantum physicists from Berkeley, Princeton and MIT to get the job done.

The film shows how Oppenheimer slowly became aware of the power of his invention and also became aware that the government was in charge of this project not him. The conflict, pressure and guilt he experienced led to a near psychotic break, all of which was expertly shown by Nolan in this film. The end of the film produced one of many memorable lines  as Einstein whispered into the ear of Oppenheimer that no man can possibly be ready to deal with the consequences of his achievements.   My friend Bob Lipsyte of the New York Times always would remark “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Now to the question of how are these two seemingly opposing films have been wedded together. What part of the America’s collective unconscious gave birth to this odd twinship called “Barbenheimer” ?

Perhaps it relates to the polarization that characterizes America today. Red states vs. blue states. Democrats vs. Republicans. No dialogue, no middle ground. America in extremis.  It’s all or nothing, black or white and no in between ground.   If your’e a girl. you must be 5-foot-9,  slender,  sexy, young, curvaceous,  an adventurer, blonde, sweet, and non-threatening.

And the men don’t get off any easier. You not only have to be powerful but also a genius, work at Princeton,  be connected to secret agencies in the government and show off your power by making an atomic bomb that kills an overabundance of people.   And the tragic irony is that you get crucified when you succeed.

Oppenheimer was scapegoated as an atonement for America’s guilt over the dropping of the bomb. Walter Davis’ book “Deracination” explores American guilt in this regard, and I’m sure Christopher Nolan used Davis as a consultant.

Another line in “Oppenheimer“ was “Amateurs seek the sun.The powerful stay in the shadows.” The film showed that the puppet master was government and it lurks in the shadows. In “Barbie” the puppet master was and remains the toy company Mattel, which as I said makes a fast billion dollars a year merchandising Barbie.

Go see these two movies.  One is about the power of feminine beauty and the other is about the power of masculine aggression. Freud was right all along when he said there are only two basic instincts that drive mankind: the life instinct and the death instinct.

Oppenheimer said, “I am become Death…the destroyer of worlds” Barbie could respond in kind by saying, “I am become Life…the maker of worlds.”