The Barbie movie is good and you should see it. It's both entertaining, and a "rich text" that lends itself to many interpretations. Which is to say, good job Greta Gerwig.
But you've probably already seen it, and want some analysis of whether it is "new breakthrough in feminism or was it problematic and bad?" Okay well I am not going to address that shallow question, but there is a lot to say if you're actually watching the movie (and not just reacting to the projections you bring in.) To discuss that, we'll have to ignore all spoilers.
Before I go into the dreaded land of the spoiler, here are some other posts about the movie you may want to read. I don't agree with any of them, but they're good starting points for developing your own reading.
SuperMechaGodzilla: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-m-uGEUenHDyXIV9BlEaoimiXEnFhrsz_EhgErXwrZA/edit
Balioc: https://balioc.tumblr.com/post/723746172204941312/eh-i-take-your-point-in-many-contexts-its-an
Wild Hunt on the Goddess Inanna: https://wildhunt.org/2023/07/barbie-is-the-new-inanna.html
and the Schmidtian version of the Heroine's Journey (not about Barbie specifically, but the fit is obvious) https://heroinejourneys.com/heroine-journey-ii/
Onto my own reading:
The first thing we knew about the Barbie movie (besides it was by Gerwig, that it would release aside Oppenheimer, and the entire history of Barbie and Mattel) was that it would have gnostic themes. The Barbie World would be pictured so cartoonishly, that a journey to the Real World was inevitable. And Gerwig would name check things like the serial adventures of Lain in her interviews about the movie.
So we knew that Barbie was both a symbol and lived in the Symbolic World, and would "escape" into the Real world of real people. By this point this isn't even a new take to our culture, already saturated with the Matrix and the Truman Show and WandaVision and many other examples. But sure, it's a fine substrate for a plot to build on.
One easy key difference, is that the color Pink almost never appears in this Real.
[Note: this is a movie, and one could say that the parts that acknowledge they are fake are more truthful than the parts of the fake movie that pretend to be Real. Which isn't wrong, but right now we are just trying to delineate the worlds, not morally rank them.]
Also a completely trivial sidenote: Ruth's kitchen table is an example of one of my very favorite tropes, "the Man at the End of the World", like the Architect in Matrix 2 or the angel in Fargo Season 3.
Anyway, a lot of the metaphysics for how the Barbie world and Real world interact are inconsistent, or rather, what is explained to us clearly isn't true. Did Barbie's growing ennui about her life cause the inescapable thoughts of death, or just Gloria doodling? If the former, how does Weird Barbie recognize this symptom and know cellulite is the next step? And if the problem with Barbie "escaping" is she may harm a kid due to her fantasy-logic, why don't Ken and Allen matter, as if there is some metaphysical wall-crumbling that's the worry instead. These aren't complaints, just further injunction to ignore what is actually said and come up with your own reading for how the Real World and Barbieland interact.
***
I don't have anywhere further to go with that. But it does emphasize the point of actually watching the movie. Not taking "well what they told me isn't depicted well, so this movie is bad."
A very basic technique of film-viewing mentioned towards the very start of the blog, is to ignore the words that are being said and pay attention to what is happening on screen. If the message of the artwork could be captured in straightforward text, then we would only need a book, or maybe a pamphlet for the art. Film, as has been driven into the ground, is a visual medium.
Barbie is perhaps the single strongest argument for this perspective I've seen in any movie. It's up there with "Harrison Ford really didn't think Blade Runner needs a voiceover, but they made him do one anyway."
Everything said by Helen Mirren as narrator could be understood just by watching the movie instead, and in fact usually steps on the joke.
Similarly, the very worst line in the movie that has been excoriated as non-sensical by many already: "it's like with indigenous populations and smallpox. The Barbies don't have any defenses against patriarchy because they've never encountered it."
Not only does that not make sense, but it's not supported by anything happening in the movie either. How do we ever see a patriarchy virus that some would resist, but can't because they're ignorant? It's just flat text.
When we see, only two minutes before, exactly how the spread of Ken-patriarchy works.
"It's my mojo dojo casa house" "That's not a word. Dojo means house. So does casa." "It sounds right. Just say it. Mojo dojo casa house." And the rebellious feminist trio says it and... they look convinced. It does sound cool, and right. (And has become one of the many enduring memes from the movie.)
This is how hyponotism works! Just sounding cool was how Ken's brand of patriarchy spread among this community. It flows with your brain in the right way.
Again, this does not mean the movie is bad because of Gloria's line. Just that Gloria is unreliable, and we have to watch the movie not just repeat her and disagree.
Similarly, the way either gender achieves power is shown not told: solidarity. Then Kens are weak when they compete amongst each other, but strong when they are having a goofy blast together. And the joyetic ideal of Barbie is "hanging out with your fellow female friends, talking to each other." Solidarity is both the key and the prize.
***
Which brings us to the biggest question of interpreting the movie: who's movie is Barbie, anyway?
It's called Barbie. Barbie triumphs in the end. A big climactic moment is a speech about how hard it is to be a woman. A big plot of the movie is Barbie fighting back against Ken's attempts to make her world about him. And Margot Robbie certainly does a good job playing the character's ups and downs.
But we have to admit, even in reality: Ryan Gosling as Ken steals the fucking show. In all the interviews beforehand, Margot Robbie comes across as someone excited to act as this icon. And Ryan Gosling comes across as someone who has become one with Ken and this is his best life.
Barbie often (but not always) tells us what's hard about being a woman. But Ken shows the joy at getting even enough acknowledgment that someone asks him for the time.
Barbie's climactic moment is a blog post read aloud by someone else. Ken's climax is a toy-recreation of storming the beach at Normandy with heroic poses by every-Ken, a catchy as hell song about lacking your own identity, and a balletic modern dance number in the space between all dimensions.
This is not a failure to make the movie about Barbie. It's a success at making a movie about Ken. Those twenty minutes of Ken time sure are fun as all get out.
Some of the posts I linked above think this is a mistake, since Barbie's fundamental issues are not "Ken is her enemy" or even "overcoming the patriarchy." That is true, but I think Gerwig chose rightly. One of Barbie's fundamental issues is "what is her relationship with Ken?" And cf the Heroine's Journey, "the heroine returns from her journey to the underworld finding an usurper has taken her place" is a core mythic tale. And Gerwig identified that the character who is created just to serve a role in someone else's story, is an interesting and sympathetic arc. Combine all that... and this is basically exactly the story you should tell. No notes, GG.
***
So that's "my take" as the crowds clamor for. There are a bunch of other minor reactions, but they aren't part of a bigger whole:
- For fans of Elden Ring, I've been watching the Tarnished Archaeologist lately, and his video essay on tombs showed me the gold disc jewelry used in the crypts at Varna, the oldest discovered necropolis. Which caused me to notice those gold discs are what Barbie is wearing in her famous "do you ever think about dying?" needle stopper.
- The rescue montage of women acting like bimbos to distract the men really is unfortunate. I don't mean "it makes fun of men for liking the Godfather" but rather "women do have power - the power to manipulate men" is one of the oldest anti-feminist and even misogynistic tropes. And the whole sequence is just awkward. I don't even have a good reading for it, they just should have found some other way for the Barbies to claim back their power.
- Simi Liu, Ben Kingsly Adir (OA alum!), and Kate McKinnon were fantastic.
- There sure is a lot to say about Will Farrell's CEO. He runs Mattel, and acts offended if you think it's hypocritical that he is a man. He rather have a tickle party than a board room meeting. He doesn't care about the profit in selling boys toys, he cares about the dreams of little girls. He and his gaggle are the most Wes-Andersonian part of the movie as they journey across dimensions. Part of me is tempted to identify him as a transwoman egg, but the full story is surely most complex. I'm really interested in it, whatever it is.
- Allan... sure is something.
- Seeing the antifa tween in a princess dress by the end, with no comment on her transformation, was honestly kind of sad.
- "Is Barbie a fertility symbol" the greatest thread in the Toys & Archaeology Forum, cruelly locked by the mods after 11,387 pages.
- Balioc noted that little girls playing with role-model toys probably do need a role model for what a healthy romantic relationship should look like. Barbie/Ken doesn't end that way. I think the movie, and discourse-progressivism doesn't have an answer for that though, which is why it ends with the only model about romantic relationships that modern progressivism is sure about: you have to find yourself first (see the end of Buffy.) Which I don't have a problem with, but it is kind of astonishing how the movie just lacks any good romantic relationships. Even Gloria's husband is a sad example: he's not controlling or abusive, he's just pathetic. Gloria still wistfully remembers the driving skills she learned from her cooler ex. And her husband never even speaks in his own words. All we hear of him is him foppishly trying to learn other languages. He's the symbol of inauthenticity and that's the only way he's able to be palatable to a woman. I'm not one to say "because a male character sucks, this film is anti-men!" Many of the Kens are great. Just the lack of romantic relationships you can say are actually good, sticks out.
- For a movie about Barbie's impact on the world both positive and negative... we all noticed how little commercialism came up. You can't be surprised really, but that does rob the movie of some of its bite and authenticity.
- Also while the movie doesn't discuss class, it shows class a great deal. A lot of Barbie's interests are upper-class coded, while Ken's interests when he can be his truer (not really true) self are lower-class coded. Beer, man caves, and working on cars.
- "Barbie has a vagina now!" is probably the best power-statement to end the film.
Didn't expect to ever see SMG and Balioc referenced in the same place lol. That Inanna post was also pretty entertaining.
ReplyDeleteThe movie wears its 2010s pop feminism on its sleeve in a way that was sure to generate discourse (makes me wonder if it would have been received differently had it came out just a few years earlier) - and probably partly explains your astute observation that the movie considers Barbie's emancipation to be much more easily talked about rather than shown (including eluding a positive counter-model to Barbie and Ken's relationship, probably too much of a thematic minefield to deal with).