This summer, the worldwide success of the Barbie and Oppenheimer films, which topped the global box office, gave rise to the neologism “Barbenheimer”. And that was without imagining that Barbie Oppenheimer really existed!
Barbara Oppenheimer, known as “Barbie”, is a former professor of language pathologies at Boston University in Newton, now retired in Massachusetts. In an interview granted to the American media Slate, she confides that she spent a summer that was, to say the least, agitated. “I’m on vacation right now, and when I checked into the hotel, I said, ‘Barbie Oppenheimer!’ The guy was like, ‘Are you kidding me?
Oppenheimer is his married name. Her husband is indeed a third cousin of Robert Oppenheimer, the historical figure who inspired the film on the father of the atomic bomb. This grandmother of five says she first went to Oppenheimer’s opening weekend. And after seeing Barbie for the first time with her husband, she intends to return with a group of friends. “We’ll all be wearing pink, I’ll be sure to wear my Barbenheimer T-shirt!” she exclaims.
Unable to choose between the two films that she says she loved “in different ways”, Barbie Oppenheimer confides: “It was a brilliant idea to launch them together. It really brought people back to movie theaters.”
