To be fair, I am not the target audience. That was obvious going in. I went in as the dad taking his 12-year-old daughter to see one of her favorite actresses (Margot Robbie) in a movie about little girls’ toys. I had read enough about the movie to think there was a pretty good chance I would enjoy the content aimed at the adults in the room, but if it weren’t for my daughter I would have stepped across the hall and taken in a third viewing of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny rather than subject myself to the Matel propaganda film that Barbie turned out to be.
Warning: Spoilers follow
I’m sure the movie is resulting in billions of dollars in sales for Matel, which has carefully wallpapered every store with Barbie merchandise, but that’s a mere byproduct of the show. First and foremost, this is a film about tearing down traditional ideas of feminine beauty (the mostly unattainable standard set by Robbie, herself) and empowering girls to look beneath the surface to find their true value. That’s a wonderful message, one we have already gone to great pains to instill in my daughter, though more and more she is beginning to edge towards the beauty of “Stereotypical Barbie,” Robbie’s character in the film.
If that had been the gist of the movie, I might not have spent so much of the time wondering if Harrison Ford had caught up with Antonio Banderas yet or if they had found the other half of the Dial. That was not, however, the gist of Barbie.
Next we meet Ken in his many forms, and I will admit I didn’t know there were so many. I guess they had to make one of every ethnicity to conform with modern sensibilities, and that’s fine. Growing up my toys were mostly non-human (droids, Wookies, Sand People, Jawas), so yeah. At the beginning, the Kens (Ryan Gosling and a bunch of others) are vacuous and vain, spending all of their time desperately trying to garner even the slightest bit of attention from the Barbies, because Kens exists only for her. Yeah, got the not-so-subtle point there, but it was funny and the point was well taken.
This is where the movie got tedious for me. You see, I wasn’t raised with stereotypical gender roles, either in my homes (divorced parents) or in the media I loved as a boy. Thanks in large part to George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Karen Allen and Carrie Fisher I was raised with strong female characters as leads (Princess Leia, Marion Ravenwood), while the men could be obnoxiously masculine (Darth Vader, Han Solo, Indiana Jones), but also powerfully sensitive (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker and also Indiana Jones and even, finally, Vader). The third act of Barbie seemed to assume that the men of the world had not grown up with such heroes.
After Ken is exposed to the “real world,” a world of patriarchy as opposed to the feminist world run by Barbies, he becomes as much a stereotype of men as Barbie is of women. Men either ride horses or drive pick-up trucks, they all wear cowboy hats, drink too much beer and basically pretend to be too cool for girls while also secretly still obsessing over them. Again, it was funny to a point, and I appreciated the irony, but as the movie continued to force it down the audience’s throat I was again wondering where we were in Indy’s story across the hall.
Is this really where we are in America? Again, it’s not the world I was raised in. Neither Dad not Pop drove a pick-up truck, neither cared overmuch for beer (Pop likes an occasional Mexican beer and Dad doesn’t drink at all), both are academics who have never owned guns or horses and both were active participants in the household chores. Pop even taught me to cook, and to this day I’m the only parent in my house who cooks outside of the microwave. So no, I was not raised around the Barbie stereotypes and my daughter has not been, either, with strong, awesome female characters like Princess Leia, Rey Skywalker and Hermione Granger to celebrate.
Given a choice between redneck supreme Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood, I’ll take Carrie every time.
Once we have explored the stereotypes ad nauseum, Barbie takes aim at patriarchal society, and this part certainly has its merits. I have often said it’s time for someone besides old white men to make decisions about our ever-more diverse country. I voted for Barack Obama twice and wish his wife would run, I voted for Hillary Clinton (admittedly, partially because the other choice was disastrous), and have always put content of a person’s character above other considerations in choosing my political heroes. I think we would benefit from having more women, more young people and more people of color as the faces of our nation. The fictional board of Matel, all of them white and lead hilariously by Will Farrell, is a wonderfully poignant parody of America’s patriarchy, though again I would argue they took it too far.
Do American moviegoers no longer appreciate nuance? Does everything have to be overstated and in your face for us to pick up on things? Maybe.
Women don’t have to be supermodel gorgeous to have value. No problem. A large segment of the male population is embarrassing. Check. Patriarchy is failing us…. Ummm. Ok, with a caveat. Capitalism has failed us, and is largely implemented by greedy men. I’m good with that. Let’s just be clear that there are plenty of successful and powerful women who don’t look like Barbie, there are plenty of men who care about the common good, including old, white Joe Biden, and there are young attractive women in politics who are just as happy to sell out as the guys. This movie doesn’t do a very good job of pointing out these grey areas.
There is one broader point that needs to be made, as well. The mantra of “Go Woke, Go Broke” is circumstantial, wielded as a weapon by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis against his state’s big cash cow, The Walt Disney Corporation. Disney is, indeed, struggling and they have taken wokism out a whole new door with their long and unnecessary string of remakes. Those movies have largely been disappointing at the box office and support for the company and its top-dollar theme parks has fallen precipitously of late. Let’s be clear, though; Disney’s slide has not been driven by their social issues, but rather their poor choices. After all, Barbie is as woke as it could possibly be and it’s about to pass the $1 billion threshold after just a couple of weeks in theaters.
I may not be the target audience for Matel’s money machine, but I do recognize it as original content that doesn’t feel like a tired retread of something done much better the first time around.
-B
Ishmael's Legacy 