Hello dear readers,
It’s been a while. I never published the last blog post I wrote way back when because fact-checking revealed something about the author that I’ve been struggling to reconcile. Then, the Barbie movie brought me back.
I know, I know—this is a surprise because I seldom played with dolls as a kid, I regard myself as a feminist who survived the anorexic experience, and I’m reviewing a movie instead of a book. The Barbie movie prompted a thousand thoughts the morning after and made me think of a book: Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. So you will get some insight into a book after all, but I won’t share all my one thousand thoughts.
For context, it would be useful to first give a quick summary of the plot. Most of the action happens in Barbieland where all the different versions of the Barbie and Ken dolls commercialised over the years by Mattel play out a typical, perfect day. However, everything gets ruined when a tear appears in the membrane between Barbieland and the real world. Stereotypical Barbie, aka Blonde Barbie, must travel to the real world to fix it. Ken only feels important when he’s noticed by Barbie, so naturally he finds a way to tag along.
The real world is not what Barbie and Ken expect it to be and they both return independently. Ken tries to impose patriarchy with what he’s learnt. Meanwhile, together with a real mother and her real daughter, Barbie escapes the Mattel executives who aim to capture her and put her back in a box. Now these three women must send the real world back where it belongs and restore Barbieland.
You can tell that this is fertile ground for more social commentary than anyone can possibly fit in a single blog post. As with all my other posts, I’ll review what’s good, what’s bad, and how to be enough a la Barbie and Ken in the movie.
The Good
If you haven’t already seen this movie, you should definitely watch Barbie. You’ll both laugh and cringe as you appreciate the attention to detail, dialogue, and design. It’s obvious that Warner Brothers did not skimp on expenses or pink paint to make this humorous satire that spares few gendered ideas or archetypes, except possibly mothers (I’ll come back to this in the section on what’s bad).
The way this movie is put together is delightful:
- The dialogue reflects the type of language used when girls play with Barbies, and the people from the real world speak like their characters would.
- The sets are put together in a way that mimics the ratios and proportions between the Barbie and Ken dolls and the toys that come with them.
- The pool is a sticker and for this reason everyone can walk on water.
- The closet looks like the box a collection of Barbie outfits would come in.
- The screenplay is also very clever; watch for iconic scenes that reference other movies and important world events.
- The strategic but infrequent use of a narrator gives helpful asides in moments that could be confusing or open to misinterpretation.
- The performances of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as stereotypical Barbie and Ken respectively really lean into the characters and the humorous spirit of the movie.
- The feminist critique of the Barbie phenomenon is built into the plot.
The Bad
While you watch the Barbie movie, you should bear its limitations in mind. The first is that it remains true to the Barbieland and associated paraphernalia that Mattel has commercialised (including dolls that were withdrawn or canceled). Therefore, expect the story to be almost 100% heteronormative. Also, inclusion happens to the extent that Mattel’s Barbie and Ken dolls are inclusive. In other words, there are superficial hints at inclusion but no more than that.
Then, the movie rolls for 114 minutes. The length feels right but it’s too short to introduce nuance to most of the themes running through it. Not to mention that any parody is often at odds with nuance.
The fact that the film is parody and satire introduces another limitation. For it to work, the screenplay has to be close enough yet far enough from “reality”. Naturally, the ambiguity here makes it difficult to know which commentary is really just meant to make you laugh—which you’ll do a lot—and which commentary is serious. So, I may have gotten different messages from the ones intended by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the screen writers.
I found two things in the Barbie movie that don’t ring true for me, namely the treatment of:
- Mothering and–or motherhood; and
- War.
A movie that spoofs patriarchy (among other things) would be incomplete without a nod to war. The Kens go to war against one another when the Barbies strategically provoke jealousy amongst the Kens. I’ve seen men hit other men for hitting on their wife or girlfriend uninvited but not when it’s the other way around. In my experience, men seldom punish the other party with whom ‘their woman’ (sic) is provoking jealousy; more often than not, they subtly and overtly take their jealousy out on her. Personally, I think the Barbies’ jealousy strategy is more likely to end in intimate-partner violence than war against the other Kens.
Do not be deceived by the Barbie movie or Homer’s claim that the beautiful face of Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships. The masterminds of war are not motivated by a woman. I believe that war is the maximum expression of patriarchy because war leverages power to dominate and control of resources. The authors of war are artful at masking their real motives, though, by motivating others to do their dirty work for them in the name of defending the honour of a woman, including Lady Justice and the Motherland.
Speaking of mothers, for me the movie inadvertently traps real girls and women just as Barbie inadvertently traps them. I’d love to have a conversation with Greta Gerwig about this. I suspect that the message I’m getting isn’t inadvertent at all. The message I’m getting is:
Barbie smashes a girl’s interest in being a mother to smithereens (see the opening scene). Barbieland does this because it excludes children, as well as cancels Skipper, the babysitter, and Midge, the pregnant woman. It also makes Ken an accessory to Barbie’s perfect life and self-actualisation. But it’s a real mother who repairs the rip in the membrane between the real word and fantasy by articulating the impossible standards imposed on women. It’s also the mother who frees her daughter to be whatever she wants to be and ‘stands still so that her daughter can look back and see how far she’s come’.
That final phrase is what Ruth, Barbie’s creator, says to Barbie as Barbie tries to decide who and how she will be after her brush with reality. Then they hold hands and Ruth transmits images of motherhood to Barbie. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out what Barbie does after that.
Other than perhaps to set an impossible standard to which our bodies should return after giving birth, as a mother I can confidently say that Barbie has hardly made a dent in the mythos of motherhood. I have mothered in three different cultures in three different countries, and motherhood is alive and well in all of them. Actually, what needs an overhaul is the mythos of motherhood and mothering. It starts with ending this idea that you’re only a real woman once you’re a mother.
When mothers—and the cultures they’re embedded in—choose to act differently, then things will change. For instance, standing still is the last thing a mother should do in my experience. If mothers stand still, so do their children of all genders. I realised this when one of my own children repeated the unhealthy things I said and did. That was my wake-up call to act differently in my marriage and eventually divorce their dad. While this was difficult for everybody, my children have wisdom now that I wish I had had at their age. I can only hope they are going to act differently in consequence.
It’s also a fantasy if we think that mothers can save women from patriarchy by vocalising all the contradictory ways in which the culture tells a mother she is not enough. Women have already been doing this for a long time to little avail. And this is where I think the Barbie movie gets interesting. A theme that emerges towards the end is how Barbieland is not enough for Barbie while both the real mother and Ken feel like they are not enough. To my mind, the movie doesn’t solve the not-enough feeling for mothers, although it does show how to solve the not-enoughness for Barbie and Ken.
How to
Be enough a la Barbie and Ken
As I said at the beginning, the Barbie movie brought to mind the book, Women who run with the wolves. More specifically, it brought to mind two stories—Manawee and The skeleton woman—that Pinkola Estés analyses in her book. It’s when Barbie is willing to entertain the skeleton woman, that is the spectre of death, that she rends the veil between fantasy and reality. Doing so sends everyone and everything in Barbieland and the real world into crisis with each of them going on a journey of their own to resolve it.
It’s significant that although Ken goes along with Barbie for the ride, in the end, each of them has their own experience and makes their own independent decisions. As a result, Barbie must come to terms with the dark side of Ken, and Ken must acknowledge what he doesn’t like about Barbie. To manage that, they must both also make peace with what they don’t like in themselves. Integrating the dual nature of life and death, good and bad, beautiful and not-beautiful is what love and life is all about according to the Manawee story that Pinkola Estés tells.
As they both untangle what makes themselves and Barbieland not-enough, Barbie learns that Barbieland is not enough for her because it is perfect whereas sadness, death-awareness, and difficulties are what make life worth living. Ken learns to face his fear of becoming nothing without the female gaze valuing him, and discovers his inner worth on his own.
The details of how Barbie and Ken do this are obviously not given in the movie; there’s no time for that. You can read much more about how to do this in the Manawee and Skeleton Woman stories along with the analysis Pinkola Estés provides. I strongly encourage you to do so. I know I need to return to these stories time and time again because integrating my dual nature and learning I’m enough is a life-long journey.
Conclusion
Even if you were always just an observer, the Barbie movie will take you back to your childhood. As a parody, this well scripted and beautifully designed movie will be entertaining and make you laugh. If you choose to, you can ignore that it’s satire as well. If you engage with the satire, there will be much that you can appreciate and that will make you think. Just remember that ultimately Mattel sold the movie rights to Warner Brothers. So, don’t expect it to be too nuanced in its critique of consumerism, the industrial-beauty complex, war, patriarchy, or how Barbie has furthered or fettered feminism. Still, the message that you are enough comes through, and that life’s richer when it’s not eternally picture perfect.