Long ago when men were men and women did what they were told, nations went to war. Indeed nations went to war for eons, but this time the nation that built the biggest weapons of mass destruction was supreme, and the weapons of mass destruction became bombs, later the bomb, and the nation dropped the bomb and hundreds of thousands of citizens died, and the head of the most destructive singular bomb project declared, ‘Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds’ and years later they made a film about the bomb and the film came out the same day as the film about the doll and in 2024 the cinematic and cultural phenomena Barbenheimer exploded into human consciousness.

Two very different films; Oppenheimer and Barbie, one deadly serious, the other satire, one about a real historic event, the other about a toy, one without dancing, the other with ‘I’m just Ken’ but the success of both collectively suggest they’re implicit in a cultural changing movement.

I’d call that cultural movement: the restoration of connection.

At a core level both films are about disconnection. Oppenheimer glorifies disconnection, Barbie satirises it. And thus Barbie is the more evolved film for what else is evolution but towards greater connection? Oscar Wilde said in effect that as long as war is regarded as heroic, it will have fascination but when it’s looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. At its core war begins from disconnection and the core of disconnection is disconnection from life, from the giver of life. The restoration of connection is not the supremacy of matriarchy over patriarchy, for that too as deliciously satirised in Barbie is silly.

Oppenheimer, the film, devotes little time to women. Women are sex symbols and later wives, but their function is to support their men, not question them. Los Alamos, the desert town built to build the bomb and I wondered if the women there painted Los Alamos pink, would the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki be dropped? Or more prosaically, did the women there ever think of the women and children in those Japanese cities who’d be burnt, decapitated and obliterated?

Seems disconnection became all pervasive. The fruits of extreme disconnection are spoken by Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: ‘Blood and destruction shall be so in use and dreadful objects so familiar that mothers shall but smile when they behold their infants quartered at the hands of war.’

The survival of the planet depends on the restoration of connection. And connection as science and spirituality say is innate; oneness is our natural state, not divisiveness.

Oscar Wilde’s quote still holds. Just look at the popularity of superhero war films. And is that what Donald Trump is tapping into with the picture of him with bloodied cheek, right arm raised in defiance, uttering the words: fight, fight, fight, with the American flag suitably and strategically displayed above him? A photo which bears a striking resemblance to the iconic 1945 photograph of Marines raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi in the final stages of the Pacific War. Make America Great: Elect the Hero Trump, not the sleepy, stutterer Biden.

It’s about connection. One year on from Barbenheimer, it still is. But perhaps change is afoot; the superhero movies are losing popularity. And don’t forget that more people went to see the film about the doll than the film about the bomb.