Elizabeth: You won’t get anything in life if you’re hoping for answers from an entity.

Julio Torres wrote a SNL skit “Wells for Boys” which was a Fisher Price spoof skit where a play-house well toy is created for “sensitive young boys to wallow and wait for adulthood.” Four years later, Julio Torres will go on to write and star in his feature film Problemista. And I couldn’t help but see a similarity between Problemista and Barbie. Less literal than being both toy movies, but that we must bend the archetypes that we see ourselves in. For Barbie, it was femininity, masculinity, humanity. For Problemista, it’s taking up space in a place that you don’t belong in. One where you are an alien inhabiting in.

Alejandro is an El-Salvadorian immigrant that is tied between two worlds in the movie: one world where his mother is in El Salvador working on a children’s book and another where he is struggling to navigate the American Dream as an aspiring toy maker in New York City. His mother’s children’s book acts as allegory to Alejandro’s time in NYC, telling of a dream where there is a boy who grew up and went to explore a cave that was filled with unknowns (i.e. America). His mother only being updated through brief yet valuable phone calls by Alejandro– ones that he carefully considers the amount of disclosure for every time (a very real 20 year old thing to do). We first see Alejandro work a job at a cyro-freezing company where the rich freeze themselves in a cylindrical tube until they are thawed out to live in a different, far-out millennium. It’s with this job where Alejandro meets Elizabeth– the tyrannical, humanoid version of a New York chihuahua. Elizabeth is stuck to being a client with this company as her husband Bobby has freeze himself and have left his egg paintings behind, in order to see them be recognized and appreciated in the new millennium. Altercations occur that leads to Alejandro needing to find a cosponsor ship for his visa within 60 days or else he will have to go back to El Salvador where he won’t have the chance to work for Hasbros. The story goes on to follow the unlikely pairing where Elizabeth’s co-sponsorship is reliant on Alejandro’s efforts to assist her in selling Bobby’s egg paintings in a showcase, which will be easier said than done.

The Metaphor of Toys For Humanity What does it mean that children’s toys are being used to tell stories about mortality? Present day adults were once children that grew up with Barbie and Fisher Price and we’re starting to find that nostalgia for toys are going away with iPads and screens becoming more common with children now. In Problemista, the toys that Alejandro creates include:

• a toy truck with a flat tire, to remind children they’re running out of time.
• a Slinky that can’t go down stairs, forcing kids to “take the journey for themselves.” It’s important to remember that these toy ideas come from both Julio Torres and Alejandro, both immigrants when they were children. These toys take on a realism that takes you out of the “play thing” and more of metaphors on adulthood, childhood being the first time you experience these harsh truths. Perhaps its’ Torres’ way of showing how fast immigrant children must grow up, allowing the audience to see the duality that adolescence can have. This isn’t only a story about immigrants but immigrant children.

The Exploitation of People for Art’s Sake We watch Alejandro provide free labor for establishing an art gallery in order to get a sponsorship to live in the United States. The grind to not achieve the American Dream but to get the rights to do it are stringent on Alejandro’s willingness to go all the way. Where is the source that Alejandro seeks to in order to commit himself to this grind? Reddit. A surrealism portrayal of Reddit; a mystical sorcerer who can grant your wishes through job postings of sign tossing and sex solicitation, near the ads for barely used IKEA nightstands (you’ll have to see the sorcerer for yourself in theatres).

The exploitation of people’s art is not an uncommon event in the industry. One instance is Petra Collins and Euphoria; Petra Collins had worked on Euphoria for 5 months until she was dropped by HBO because of her being “too young.” A year later, she discovers that the show has been aired under Sam Levinson’s name and without any credits mentioning her. Both instances, Petra’s and Alejandro’s, are an issue of humans handling and crediting art wrongfully.

Free work for the sake of art is an issue that has to do with the undermining of creative work in the world. There are many factors that have contributed to this issue:

• Recent statistics of the lowest salaries after college, being those holding college majors focused in humanities and the creative arts. In this Fortune article, quoted “Some of the other lowest-paying majors include hospitality, anthropology, early childhood education, history, and fine arts—all of which lead to an underwhelming $40,000 salary five years post-grad.”
• Generative AI being used to replace real writers and illustrators. The Writer’s Strike. What can we do about this? Problemista may be posing a solution that we, as every day people, can do. To reclaim creative integrity; take up space in this world. How do you gain confidence in one’s own art in a world that undermines it economically?

My thoughts on this is to embrace technology and its uses for creative work. Every industry has had to do this to survive. The archetype of the tortured artist that isolate themselves in a cabin for months at a time writing with only quill and papyrus seems to me, more exploitative than any generative AI. This goes into another form of exploitation.

The Exploitation of People for Art’s Sake In this blog post by Sherwin, he states examples of when the art itself can be destructive– where manipulators are added to the scene of ‘the drug crazed artist’, ‘the tortured artist’, ‘the slacker artist.’ This is a theme in Barbie when the real world questions whether Barbie empowers or threatens an archaic archetype of blonde bombshell onto vulnerable, impressionable girls. The methods of painting eggs is not destructive. But there is a “tortured artist” method of getting to these egg paintings by Bobby that can be seen as destructive. Boundaries were crossed and relationships were severed by Bobby’s commitment to his art. This is a dangerous mindset to have for any prospective artists like Alejandro. We see this in the house cleaning scene. This is exploitation of people for art’s sake.

If the world undermines the artist, how could the artist not undermine themselves as well? There is also a correlation between artists and mood disorders. In this clinical study, “there appears to be a strong association between creativity and mood disorders.” However, in another study, it found that creativity personality (creativity competence) can also come from both students that are studying bioengineering as well as the fine arts. The reasons for artists undermining themselves could be both biological and sociological.

Problemista poses an important message to artists everywhere, coming from Julio Torres whose been in the industry for over 12 years and having his first directional debut out in 2024. That the big boss, Jordan Belfort mindset doesn’t have to come from only Wall Street but can come from Disney or Hasbro. That creatives can simultaneously own their quirks or whimsicality as well as be unapologetic in taking pride in themselves. While we know of the boastful artist archetype, there is a beauty in a creative not defining themselves by anyone but themselves.