Scary Blog: Your Barbarella Costume’s Days Are Numbered

Just wanted to let you know that if you, like me, have been thinking about being Barbarella for the past 2 Halloweens only to settle on something easier because finding metal capes and black body stockings that aren’t super porny is too much work, get your mofo shit together TODAY.   This is our year.  The last year.

I’m saying this not because Barbarella costumes could provide a groovy feminist counterpoint to Sarah Palin costumes, perhaps dispensing sex pills like candy at adult parties while Sarah Palin hoards all the chocolate coins and morning after pills so as to save you from yourself. They could, but I’m really saying this because I have read the Robert Rodriguez Barbarella and it is slated to come out next year (it’s possible this project is dead, but i have had it come through my company again recently and there are counter-rumors and i’m not taking any chances).

If you enjoyed the tone and spirit of the original film, I can tell you that this Barbarella is going to disappoint you.  On the other hand, it will delight teenage boys who have never seen the ‘68 version but who have recently learned to masturbate, and who will likely make it a success and talk it up, which will in turn cause teenage girls to dress up on subsequent Halloweens as Rose McGowan or whoever replaces her in the title role, thus draining the steamy, jacuzzi-sized tub of fun that was the orignal/the idea of dressing like Jane Fonda in it, down to a few tepid inches.

Look, in terms of structure and dialog and such, this script wasn’t terrible or anything. And I don’t begrudge a guy wanting to remake this movie and neither does Dino de Laurentis, who produced the original and is producing this new version.  But I do think that 79 year-old de Laurentis’s judgement is less sound than that of 39 year-old de Laurentis.  And I do think that it’s a huge mistake to make Barbarella into a big budget, exploitation-action hybrid with so much girl on girl action, topless lady fighting and other such straight-up, male-only fantasy material in it.  This version -to me at least- read like a space-themed issue of the Fredericks of Hollywood catalog, with none of the playfully strange sexiness  –exciting and appealing to both men and women–of the original, unless you consider it playful to be hit in the head with a two-by-four of Sin City-style f-ing.  I would prefer to just cut out the middle man and watch Showtime after dark than this remake, and I wish Rodriguez would look elsewhere for a presold property.  Like maybe in Russ Meyer’s catalog, which was booby, but honestly so.  Camp and the sexual ambiguity and strange power dynamics represented by a dude with angel wings are not bad, stupid things to be cast off because we’re so modern and this ain’t your grandaddy’s sexy movie.  Far more retrograde is only showing me women named Jessica riding electric bulls all the time.

So I’ve got my chainmail bodice and as I have mentioned on previous occasions, my hair is already awesome (and in Barbarella style).  I advise those of you who want to enact this fantasy while it’s still tinged with empowerment and not strictly pandering*, get on the stick.  Except if you know me personally and we are going to be hanging out on Halloween and you is stealing my idea.  Because then i will fucking cut you.  Or take a picture with you.  Whichever.

*Obviously a little pandering will be involved.  I’m not made of stone.