The host of 'The View' slammed comments from Ben Shapiro and Senator Ted Cruz about Greta Gerwig's blockbuster movie.
Whoopi Goldberg is taking her Barbie love to the next level. The host of ABC's The View showed off her quirky footwear on Tuesday's broadcast, wearing white boots with a clear platform heel that was filled with decapitated Barbie doll heads.
The style statement came as Goldberg, 67, was engaged in discussion about recent criticism of Greta Gerwig's blockbuster Barbie film, defending the movie against judgment from conservative columnist Ben Shapiro and Senator Ted Cruz.
"It’s a movie!" she declared on the show. "It’s a movie about a doll!"
She continued, "I thought y'all would be happy. She has no genitalia, so there’s no sex involved. Ken has no genitalia, so he can’t be doing -- it’s a doll movie! And the kids know it’s colorful and it’s Barbie. They haven't lived through what the adults have lived through. So when they're seeing this movie, that's now how they're looking at it."
The Sister Act star admitted, "Now, look, I love my Barbie," while showing off her shoes. "It’s a doll movie, guys. I’m shocked that that’s what’s freaking you out these days."
Prior to the film's release, Cruz accused the movie of being "Chinese communist propaganda in which the Chinese are asserting sovereignty over the entirety of the South China Sea" in an interview with The Daily Signal. He was referring to a crudely drawn world map featured in the film, which appeared to depict the "nine dash line" which reinforces China's territorial claims in the South China Sea. The image prompted Vietnam officials to pull the release of Barbie in its territory as a result.
Responding to the theory, Warner Bros. stated that the map is nothing more than "a child-like crayon drawing." A spokesperson for the studio told Variety that "the doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the 'real world.' It was not intended to make any type of statement."
Later, a video from Shapiro went viral when the pundit set Barbie dolls on fire with a lighter while speaking out against the film's themes.
"The basic sort of premise of the film, politically speaking, is that men and women are on two sides and they hate each other," he said. "And literally, the only way you can have a happy world is if the women ignore the men and the men ignore the women."
On Tuesday, The View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin suggested that conservative influencers may be "out of touch" with Republicans, as her friends on both sides of the aisle had "lined up to see it."
"It's fun," she said of the movie, praising filmmaker Gerwig as "brilliant."
"I’m so taken by some of these right-wing men who have all these thoughts on masculinity,” she added. "Like, somehow, the Barbie movie is going to make them feel emasculated. No, caring so much about it is honestly the most emasculating thing I could think about it."
Goldberg doubled down on the fantastical element of Barbie and Hollywood in general.
"We make movies about all kinds of stuff. We make movies about people who fly, we make movies about dolls who talk and walk," she declared. "They hit two things: they talk about the real world that everybody lives in, and they talk about Barbie world. And they're two different things. And it's meant to make you just think or pause. It's not meant to do anything but give you a good time."
Barbie, which stars Margot Robbie as the titular doll and Ryan Gosling as Ken, smashed box office expectations in its historic opening weekend with a $162 million debut. The film has since earned $26 million in its first Monday of release -- the highest in Warner Bros.' history, Variety reports.
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