“Barbie celebrates humanity.”
There’s a headline I never thought I’d write.
I have an innate reluctance to watch girl-power movies. Not because I’m against successful women, but Hollywood usually makes the case in such a ham-fisted way that I can’t control my eye rolls.
Yet the debate over Barbie intrigued me because conservative commentators I respect came to wildly different conclusions.
It’s fair to say that the film has drawn more commentary in conservative circles than any other in recent history. The National Review, the highbrow conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley published no less than 14 pieces on it, mostly negative with a few notable exceptions.
Most conservatives reflexively panned it, like this aptly titled video: “Ben Shapiro DESTROYS The Barbie Movie For 43 Minutes.” Yet others went so far as to call it a subversively anti-woke morality play, or explained how fellow conservatives missed the entire point.
How on earth could Barbie be so confusing?
I had to find out for myself, and went on a double date to the theater. Both women wore pink.
So, is it a good movie?
From a strictly movie-watching point of view, it’s pretty good, certainly earning its 88% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
It’s a fun, goofy comedy full of bright color and a beautifully crafted Barbie Land, with fun musical numbers and great acting by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
(Full disclosure: just watching Margot Robbie bop around in Barbie outfits for two hours justified the $15 ticket for this Ken. For others, Gosling only occasionally wears a shirt, and looks as though he’s been chiseled out of tan marble.)
Dolls notwithstanding, the film isn’t for kids. Not because of swearing or sexualized content, but because much of the dialogue will fly right over their heads. Its target audience is adult women who want to see a light-hearted comedy, and for them, it doesn’t disappoint.
Beyond that, though, this is one of the more interesting and thought-provoking films I've seen in years if you actually take the time to think it through.
(Spoiler warning from here on down.)
Here’s a quick plot overview
The movie opens with a perfect day in Barbie Land, which isn’t unusual because every day is a perfect day in Barbie Land. The inhabitants wake up cheerful in the morning, fill their days “Hey Barbie-ing” one another, and end them with “just a giant blowout party with all the Barbies and planned choreography”.
It’s a world run by women, where everyone from the president to the cheerful garbage-collecting Barbies looks pretty, compliments each other, and wins Nobel prizes. It’s non-stop happiness that feels fake and plastic, a childlike fantasy of the ultimate matriarchy.
The Kens in Barbie Land essentially exist as neutered accessories for the women. And the Barbies treat them as such.
Trouble starts for Barbie on the dance floor when she inexplicably asks, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” The next morning, her perfect world starts to crumble: the toast is burned, the shower is cold, and, worst of all, she discovers cellulite on her leg.
To restore her perfection, she journeys to the Real World, with the goal of finding the girl who plays with her and whose bad thoughts are causing Barbie’s problems.
The Real World isn’t Barbie Land, though. For Barbie, it’s sexist and scary.
Ken, who stowed away with her on her journey, finds it the opposite. For the first time in his life, he’s treated with a modicum of respect and attraction. He sees men in prominent roles, riding horses and running the world. To him, this new patriarchy is amazing.
Barbie and her new friends are pursued by Mattel executives fearful of a looming PR disaster. Before long everyone goes back to Barbie Land, where Ken and his fellow Kens have revolted against the system, creating an honest-to-goodness patriarchy that would make Archie Bunker proud.
Supreme Court justices now wear mini skirts, and the Barbies have abandoned their careers to fetch beer and rub the feet of the lounging Kens.
This sets up a battle-of-the-sexes, which restores Barbie Land to its initial state, although the Kens are given a few small concessions to keep them happy. Our main Barbie, however, must choose whether to stay in her perfect, plastic world or become a human.
What’s with all that “patriarchy” talk?
More than any other movie in recent memory, Barbie is a two-hour Rorschach test.
If you’re looking for self-empowered women fighting and beating male domination, it’s there. Virtually every male – doll or human – is fundamentally stupid.
There’s catcalling, mansplaining, and a ton of patriarchy. The Barbie gender wars color the entire film, but critics who decry it as a feminist screed just didn’t look deeply enough.
The director, Greta Gerwig, continually toys with the audience, juxtaposing gender and political labels against a Real World that’s much more nuanced.
When an angsty tween derides Barbie for her gender stereotypes and calls her a “fascist”, it outraged critics like Ben Shapiro, who completely missed the point. The girl’s junior-high-level philosophy is both woke and a joke. Even the insulted and crying Barbie saw through the logic, “She thinks I’m a fascist? I don’t control the railways or the flow of commerce!”
Ken, having read up on feminist literature, expects the patriarchy to give him a powerful job, but they won’t let him perform “just one appendectomy” because he’s a man. And who tells him that? A female doctor who’s confused by his assumption that doctors are men.
He can’t even get a job as a lifeguard or a high-powered executive. “Isn’t being a man enough?” he asks one recruiter. The response: “Actually right now it’s kind of the opposite.” The recruiter then admits the opposite, that they’re still doing the patriarchy, they’re just hiding it better.
And that’s the rub. The rhetoric throughout the Real World continually contradicts itself. Is it any wonder why critics fight over the movie’s meaning?
The gender mantras that repeat themselves throughout the movie have one thing in common: they have no consistent theme. They’re immensely more nuanced and complicated. Just like the real world.
The underlying message
It’s easy to get lost in the inconsistent gender themes until you realize that the movie isn’t about gender, it’s about embracing humanity.
We see this clearly in Barbie’s character journey.
She starts in a perfect world, where there’s eternal youth, no pain, no death, and no self-consciousness. If that sounds familiar, you may have read it before … in the Book of Genesis.
Barbie leaves Eden not because of banishment, but on a quest to ease the suffering of her Real World girl. Along the way, she discovers humanity.
She cries for the first time. She feels glimpses of emotions, and in a wordless scene, Barbie observes humans being humans. They laugh, argue, and play with both joy and sadness.
She questions her plastic, perfect life. Before long, she realizes how poorly she’s treated Ken, and in a touching apology, helps him discover himself as his own person, not just her accessory.
In the end, Barbie rejects Barbie Land – even with the matriarchy restored – and instead chooses humanity, with all of its messiness and imperfections. And mortality.
The story is a twist on the Garden of Eden. It may not have the disobedience or expulsion, but it explores the similar relationships between men and women, and between God and humans.
In Barbie, the stand-in for God is played by an ethereal Rhea Pearlman, portraying the creator of Barbie and co-founder of Mattel, Ruth Handler.
The first time we meet Ruth, the film’s director gives us a hint as to who she might be, mirroring Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” painted on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.
And, in case viewers missed it the first time, the film offers a second, identical shot in the final decision point for Barbie, where she chooses humanity.
The creator warns her that “being a human can be pretty uncomfortable.”
“Humans make things up like ‘patriarchy’ and ‘Barbie’ just to deal with how uncomfortable it is,” the creator says, blowing a hole in most of the conservative rants against the movie.
When Barbie officially asks to become human, her creator tells her she needs no permission. Barbie asks a question that many people have wondered about God: “You're the creator, don’t you control me?”
Barbie learns that like humans, she has free will. And with that knowledge, she rejects a life of superficial happiness, everlasting beauty, and materialism. She chooses human connection, love, and loss.
That’s not too shabby for a goofy film about a doll.
– Ken
OK, Human Ken, you get an A for your film-literary analysis.
The first review of Barbie that has actually made me want to see it. Although, I'll wait until it is streaming for free.