BARBENHEIMER: “Which of your state’s senators is seeing the Barbie and which is seeing Oppenheimer? (you have to choose).”
That was the big question ricocheting across political Twitter this week.
The question—a sign of the two new dueling summer blockbusters’ cultural influence as they debut today—is revealing. Does a senator favor the dark intrigue and science of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” the biopic about the man who brought us the atomic bomb? Or does a senator prefer the light and pink critique offered by indie film darling Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie?”
Rather than venture my guess, I put the hard-hitting question to Sens. Todd Young and Mike Braun.
Young, according to a spokesman, favors “Oppenheimer,” though he has no immediate plans to see it because he wants to see the new Indiana Jones movie, “Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny,” first. Young, who has three daughters, could’ve gone either way. Still, my initial suspicion was that the Republican co-sponsor of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act—which creates a directorate for technology and innovation in the National Science Foundation and provides funding for semiconductor manufacturing, research, and development—would be all in on a film about the federally funded Manhattan Project.
Braun, according to a spokesman, favors neither. Instead, he’ll see “Sound of Freedom,” the anti-child sex trafficking film based on the true story of Tim Ballard, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The choice fits the senator running to win the conservative base in a gubernatorial primary.
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