I Didn't Hate Barbie, I Swear...
...but I would have preferred rose-tinted nostalgia and sisterhood over Ken's tears and a Patriarchy 101 class!
I was supposed to be taking a little break but after last week’s anticipatory post I actually went to see the Barbie movie and I had too many thoughts for me to keep them to myself.1 So today’s post is a slight departure from our regular adventures down neurodivergent rabbit holes for something that reads more like a standard movie review!
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I hopped on the Barbie bandwagon as soon as the first trailer was released, plagued my girlfriend for months until she agreed to see the movie with me and even got to write about Barbie as an autistic special interest for Jezebel last week! I rode that bandwagon for all it was worth. I knew, however, that when there’s so much hype about a film, particularly a cultural figure already charged with so much love and nostalgia, the danger of unmet expectations and disappointment is all too real. But I liked what I saw in the trailers and trusted Greta Gerwig’s directorial instincts. I wanted to love the Barbie movie, I hoped I’d love it. Even so, I never expected to be disappointed quite the way the Barbie movie managed to disappoint me!
It’s Such a Perfect Day
From the opening shot Gerwig had me hooked. I was one of those little girls supposed to remain content by playing mother with my baby dolls. That was until Barbie came into my life. I revelled in the joy of their rebellion against the ideological imposition of motherhood as destiny for little girls. The playful parody of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is meticulously conceived and Margot Robbie’s statuesque homage to the original Barbie was seamless. We’re off to a great start.
Gerwig’s reconstruction of a Barbie universe is also meticulous, from Barbie’s dream house to her friends’ accessories and occupations. Barbieland is a matriarchal paradise we are told, where women’s achievements across science, culture and sport are celebrated without reserve. The Kens are featured as a mere footnote in this world, as if they were just another Barbie accessory. That is until Ken takes over the whole movie!
But let’s backtrack for a moment…
After introducing us to her world, we are very quickly (maybe too quickly) transported out of Stereotypical Barbie’s quotidian life and into existential crisis. She is plagued by thoughts of impending death and surprised by cold-water showers, flat feet and, horror of horrors, cellulite! During a visit to The Oracle — Weird (read queer and neurodivergent ) Barbie played by Kate McKinnon hamming it up wonderfully — Stereotypical Barbie learns that there has been a rupture in the space-time continuum because the human who has been playing with her is going through an emotional crisis. Barbie must venture to the real world, find her human playmate, help her heal and restore the balance between worlds. All good so far.
Oh No You Can’t!
Except Ken (Ryan Gosling) sneaks away with Barbie against her wishes. Once they arrive in the real world, Ken becomes distracted by the patriarchy, forgets he is supposed to be helping Barbie and returns to Barbieland to launch a patriarchal coup against the defenceless Barbies. At this point things start to go very wrong.
Ken effectively hijacks the Barbie movie and turns it into a (sometimes hilarious) parody of the mens rights movement. It works for a while, except we completely loose focus on Barbie and her original quest to help her human playmate Gloria (America Ferrera). This becomes a mere sub-plot as the two conspire together, along with Gloria’s daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), to save Barbieland from the patriarchy.
What follows is a rather ill-conceived, (white) feminism-101 explanation of patriarchy through a series of elaborate jokes that are too laboured and too on-the-nose to be really funny. Instead of delving into the inner lives of the Barbies, Gloria or Sasha, their relationships or the emotional crises that broke the space-time continuum, we must watch our heroines deprogramme the other Barbies from their blind acceptance of the patriarchy and retake Barbieland by exploiting the Kens’ fragile male egos and petty jealousies.
I know this is meant to be a commentary on how patriarchy works by keeping women fighting over crumbs amongst ourselves while men steal the power from under our noses, but this message is transmitted in the most belaboured and unconvincing manner possible. I too have been subject to men playing acoustic guitar or mansplaining the Godfather at me for hours, but I could have been spared reliving those nightmares through extended scenes that go nowhere. Finally, we are gifted with actual male tears as Barbie tries to comfort Ken in his distress over losing the despotic regime he forcibly imposed on Barbieland. It was partly her fault after all, for never paying him much attention!
The last half an hour is an incoherent, explainy, boring mess as Barbie tries to refocus the attention on her, which is fair, because it’s her movie and even the Mattel executives admit that no one has ever cared about Ken!
I can only conclude that this is what happens when you co-write a script with the director who brought us the faux-feminism of Marriage Story (I know he’s your husband honey, but come on, one way or another he's going to make it about him) that tries to capture nostalgia mixed with woke, ironic, self-effacing millennial sensibilities/nudge-wink humour, while also pandering to your Mattel overlords. This isn't to say it can't be fun, but god, what a mess!
Every Night Should be Girls Night
The whole point of Barbie and Barbie nostalgia is the relationship we had with the dolls as children and how we connected with others through Barbie play. This the premise of the whole movie and the reason for the rupture in the space-time continuum but this plot point is more or less abandoned in the first half. We never get to see if Gloria manages to reconnect with her inner child, nor the hopes and dreams she had for herself. Gloria and Sasha fade into the background in the struggle to banish patriarchy from Barbieland and help the Kens love themselves for who they really are (mediocre straight men).
As a child I didn’t need Barbie to be a feminist role model and as an adult I didn’t need Gerwig to explain (white) feminism nor patriarchy to me. Don’t get me wrong, I laughed at all the shenanigans and all the jokes (except for the one about smallpox which Gerwig only gets away with because it came out of Gloria’s mouth, and even then, ick!). But, for most of the second half I caught myself thinking, OMG can we please just forget about Ken and get back to Barbie???
What would I have liked to have seen from the Barbie movie you ask?
Well, let me tell you:
A script written by Gerwig alone would have been a great start, she’s proved more than once that she’s capable! Gerwig could also have taken some lessons from The Matrix (the inspiration behind the simulated universe and more than one joke) and let us spend a little more time in the quotidian world of Barbieland before the existential dread trickles in and Barbie rushes off to the real world for answers.
Also genuine — not tokenistic — diversity! It was great to see Wheelchair Barbie (Grace Harvey) front and centre in the dance scene but then she disappears for the rest of the movie! The Kens’ dance-off was one of my favourite scenes (yes, I know I’m contradicting myself) but it would have been even better if they had channeled all that big gay energy into a big gay orgy. The inclusion of queer actors like Kate McKinnon and Hari Nef is great, but their presence feels like queer-baiting in a movie that never quite commits to doing anything openly gay, nor smashing heteronormativity along with the patriarchy.
And, in my alternative ending, instead of taking her to the gynaecologist, Gloria gives Barbie a hand mirror so she can explore her body for herself first. Knowledge is power bitches and self-knowledge is the most powerful of all!
Mostly, however, I wanted a movie about sisterhood and friendship and childhood imagination. A movie where Ken is a just footnote rather than the main feature. This would still be feminist, perhaps even more so, and is much closer to what Barbie actually meant for so many of us!
There are no do-overs of course, especially when the trade mark, artistic licence and financing remain with Mattel. Nor did I hate the Barbie movie, I swear. The cast is stellar, they all play their roles without fault and there were laughs to be had from beginning to end (because it’s always fun to make fun of men and the patriarchy).
I just think Gerwig missed the point about Barbie: every night is girls night and that’s the way it should be in Barbieland!2
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Ok rant over, now’s the chance for you to tell me how wrong I got it and why you loved the Barbie movie - drop your comments below!
Many of these thoughts were teased out with my girlfriend over multiple conversations into the wee hours of the morning. Thank you for putting up with me and my myriad obsessions Marcela! <3
This week’s cover photo is courtesy of https://twitter.com/TechnicallyRon
This is really interesting to hear, as someone who's still trying to decide whether to go and see it. Reading your post, I realised I had been unconsciously hoping for Barbie to be something akin to The Lego Movie, which was made by anarchists, and it really shows in many aspects of the storytelling. I'm still amazed they skewered the authoritarianism of policing with the Good Cop/Bad Cop thing, especially given that it's another licensed feature, and The Lego Group obviously continue to derive considerable revenue from selling police toys...
I would've loved to see the Kens just being gay - like these overlooked dudes turn out to have been having their own party on Doll Fire Island or something. But it sounds a bit like the ways feminist reimaginings pitched at a mainstream audience in the pre-Me Too era could sometimes be very simplistic and on-the-nose in their messaging and humour.
I loved reading this, Aisling. So the Barbie thing flew over my head as a kid, and I was handed one and couldn't, for the non-diagnosed autistic kid in me, understand what I was to do with it, so I cut the hair off her head. My dad was in the army, and Action Man appealed to me more, so he got me one too. I find Barbie just too much to deal with from a sexualized stereotype perspective; even the recent Down syndrome doll started me on an autistic rant as I found it a bit disingenuous, but I totally get the nostalgia it brings for many. I don't think I will be going to see it personally, but I enjoyed your insight. I hope the thesis is coming along okay. I loved doing my MA, so I'm tempted to do a PhD, but it will have to wait for now.