Do Oppenheimer and Barbie represent two sides of the modern Middle East?

Cillian Murphy in a scene from Oppenheimer. Universal Pictures via AP

After watching Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a biopic of the father of the nuclear bomb, I was left terrified by the protagonist’s legacy, despite his best efforts to bring us back from the brink of nuclear war. The film highlighted how humankind will almost always use a weapon once it has been given to them. We really are only a hair’s breadth away from total annihilation. Without giving too much away, a telling scene in the film is about disaster being averted at the last minute, when Robert J Oppenheimer was a student in Cambridge in the 1920s.

Meanwhile, Barbie, which focuses on the eponymous doll come to life and her man-accessory Ken facing an existential crisis after leaving the seeming utopia of Barbieland, brings with it fewer direct horrors but triggers no less serious thoughts about where modern society has taken itself.

Christy Lemire, a film reviewer at Rogerebert said: “This bleeding of stark reality into an obsessively engineered fantasy calls to mind the revelations of The Truman Show and The Lego Movie, but through a wry prism."

These two films being released in most regions simultaneously has galvanised cinema goers in a way not seen in years. The box office phenomenon, coined "Barbenheimer", is interesting for the Gulf and Middle East – not because it is proving popular, even though Oppenheimer is a hit, while Barbie will only be released in the UAE at the end of next month – but because the themes of these works of cinematic art are so relevant to the course of the region in 2023.

The opening of Oppenheimer and Barbie movies, in Los Angeles, California, on July 20. AFP

On a daily basis, the forces of conflict – unleashed following the end of the Second World War – and the forces of progress – economic, social and cultural – vie for our resources, attention and emotion.

For example: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, fuelled by the Cold War between nuclear powers. Another example, is how competition between the French, British, US, Russia and China – all armed with nuclear weapons – has affected Syria and Iran.

Consequently, Iran’s nuclear programme and the concerns over how it might develop its own bomb are direct results of the success Mr Oppenheimer and his team had in the desert of Los Alamos as well as their subsequent remorse over what they unleashed upon the world.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf, we are fortunate to have seen such rapid development in recent decades that stability and security are now the norm. While there have been many snipes and japes over the years – from outside the region mainly – about "plastic" lifestyles, it is not quite Barbieland over here, nor hopefully, will it ever be so but affluent societies can be overtly materialistic. Both Oppenheimer and Barbie explore the stripping away of naivety and how priorities and opinions can change through making mistakes, leaving us wiser.

So, there are questions to discuss about the ultimate goal of progress. At what point does the personal journey towards comfort and security cross into a lack of awareness about the other side of our reality and the challenges we face. We should always be vigilant of such uncomfortable prospects. To not do so would be as if you only went to the cinema to watch Barbie without buying a ticket to see Oppenheimer.

Equally, only being interested in the warnings and the fear, would mean taking on board quite a depressing world view – as beautiful as the cinematography and wonderful the score, Oppenheimer is Nolan’s least optimistic film.

He has found more reasons to be hopeful when discussing war (Dunkirk), climate change (Interstellar) and reality (Inception).

Only watching Oppenheimer would be counter-productive as it could result in a feeling that progress is futile if it could all end suddenly.

However, Oppenheimer and Barbie share a theme of how we should use technology and what limits should be placed on it, whether wielded by states as a deterrent or in the hands of the individual searching for outward perfection.

With artificial intelligence now being met with a similar mix of excitement and trepidation as those scientists working on the Manhattan Project viewed the potential impact of their work on the world, it is worth asking if we can fully appreciate the Middle East and all of its complexity and nuance enough to know that we need a little bit of both Barbie and Oppenheimer in our heads to make the best of the future we are hurtling towards.