I’m actually glad the Barbie movie is, at least for now, so successful. It has us talking about important issues and, in part, is kind of fun. But (and I know I’m risking making a lot of people angry) can we be honest and accept that it’s really pretty much of a mess? So boring in part that my daughter, who is on the cusp of Gen Z, dozed off during it? And, more importantly, it’s a mass of missed opportunities. (Warning–spoilers ahead)
Let’s begin at the beginning. Cute reference to the 2001: A Space Odyssey prologue. But, Greta, little girls bashing out the brains of baby dolls? And even if the image weren’t so disturbing (my daughter felt bad for the young actors), girls didn’t immediately hate their baby dolls when Barbie was introduced, or have the sudden realization that playing with them was a way of trapping them in a limited gender role. I played with the first iteration of Barbie (and Ken), and also with my Ginny doll. And my darling Betsy-Wetsy. I had a mother who worked and emphasized education, but it took more than a new doll to bring me to feminism.
Ultimately, the premise of the movie makes no sense. A grown woman is playing with a Barbie because she’s sad? Why is she so sad—suicidal, almost, if the whole “thoughts about dying” meme is to be taken seriously? Here a mental health issue becomes a throw away. This character and her “bad” relationship with her daughter are never explained. But her situation raises the question—what is the connection between all the other Barbies and their “owners”? What are the other Barbies’ consciousnesses that have been transferred from the previous girls (or boys) who played with them? One would have to assume these were uniformly positive, allowing for the sunny vibe in Barbieland—except for the one instance a Barbie’s face was Magic Markered and her hair chopped off. What was the emotional fallout for this Barbie? In the movie, she just seems to be, well, Kate McKinnon. There is an implicit message that it took becoming “Weird Barbie” to make her funny and street wise. To have a personality. And what of the discontinued Barbies? Wouldn’t it be interesting to explore the reasons that led to their demise?
Then there’s the tired trope of the all-male board at Mattel that just wants to put Barbie back in the box and the silly chase scenes that ensue. (And, forgive me my pettiness here, but amid all the gender and racial issues the movie fails to address, what almost rankled me the most was the missed chance for a game of telephone joke when the whispered message of Barbie’s escape is passed along to the chairman!)
I was struck by Gerwig’s observation that Ken exists only as an extension of Barbie, a mirror image of traditional gender roles. But—and I hate to agree with some the conservative criticism—why is the movie’s message that the world can be set to rights only if women are in charge—that men are too immature to take on any responsibility? I found the naïve masculinity Ken adopts amusing, but does he learn anything beyond that? No thought is given to how men might act in a world free of patriarchy. How we all can share power.
How do the Kens brainwash the Barbies into becoming subservient? How does one good talking to change them back? And once we’re being lectured, we’re way deep in tell-not-show territory. Greta—you had two whole hours and resorted to that? Why is making the Kens jealous the way the Barbies, using their feminine wiles, retake their status?
And what power, really, do the Barbies regain? They get their houses back? What is Issa Rae accomplishing as president? What are any of the Barbies really doing in their “professional” capacities? I would be interested whether it’s ever been studied if, or to what extent, Barbies are played with according to how they are dressed. Or are these clothes just outfits to be changed in and out of? It’s fun to put a variety of dresses and pants and accessories on dolls, to imagine them in different scenarios. But how many girls has Barbie liberated?
Why, too, are Barbieland and the “real world” so binary? Maybe there’s a hint of gender nonconformity in the character of Allen. But why not explore the possibility of other expressions, especially in a place where the female and male characters live separately? Going even further, what is the significance of Barbie and Ken being, at least in terms of physical characteristics (except for breasts), sexless? Could a deeper point have been made about how, removing sex from the equation, the world might be different? And the whole question of body image seems to have been handled by including one bigger-than-size-2 Barbie. I am glad some Barbies with disabilities are included in the background, but, of course, as in life, they remain in the background.
While Gerwig makes America Ferrara a major character and White Ken’s main adversary is Asian, everyone else in the multiracial cast is secondary to the story. The underlying question, brought up only in passing in the narration, is why is “stereotypical Barbie” blonde? Ruth Handler, a Jewish woman, created a plastic blonde bombshell in 1959, the era of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield. She read the room, didn’t change attitudes. The movie doesn’t acknowledge, and certainly doesn’t examine, the racial inequalities that Mattel has been trying to address by playing catch-up with its inclusion of “ethnic” Barbies. Gerwig could have made more pointed references to the racism and misogyny that have been poisoning the U.S.
I’m not sure either the doll or the movie deserve all the attention they’ve been given (including by me). It seems a bit like a tempest in a doll house. And maybe I am taking too deep a dive into the Dream House pool by raising these concerns. I know I’m asking a lot of Gerwig, whose Lady Bird and Little Women I loved. Certainly there have been many positive reviews and other opinions and interpretations. Gerwig had a lot of thoughts about Barbie and stuffed many of them into her movie. She wound up with a mishmash. And her thinking didn’t go nearly far enough.
Even so, despite all of it, I am happy she stuck it to the Ken.
wordsonthewing 