People might argue that Barbie is an “event” movie, one that encourages people to get dressed in pink and act out. Yet twenty years ago, The Passion of the Christ was a hugely controversial movie that was the focus of huge media attention. It would seem ripe for public displays of emotion. Yet at the screening I went to in Washington, the only sound was the two women in the row in front of me gently crying.

Our narcissism has infected our politics and our television … why not our cinemas? We are not a nation of strong-willed egoists, but fit-pitching babies. In his seminal 1979 work, The Culture of Narcissism, the brilliant social scientist Christopher Lasch argued that the human personality, its psychology itself, had changed over the course of the later 20th century.

Americans had been transformed from strong, religious and well-adjusted people into those showing a “minimal” self: a personality that is weak, childish and dependent on government, corporations, radical politics, loveless sex and bureaucracies for a sense of meaning. It’s why Barbie is a cipher who fills her empty soul with feminism and resentment.

[Mark hits the nail on the head — narcissism. But it goes way beyond movie theaters. It even predates social media, although that has fueled it exponentially. Pro athletes doing look-at-me celebrations were an early warning signal that the NFL initially tried to quash and finally gave up on preventing. People throw things at live performers to make themselves the focus of attention. The values of humility and meekness — which are not synonymous with “weakness” — are out of favor. And that’s an outcome from the relentless secularization of culture as well as the promotion of physical pleasure without regard to consequences. — Ed]