By Spandan Sahu
Editor’s note: This controversial article is not intended to offend anyone. It is purely intended to provide an alternate, and less popular, perspective on the Barbie movie.
Estimated Reading Time: 6 Minutes
When the Barbie movie released on the 21.07.23 as part of the famous Barbenheimer double feature, it was heralded in 2 manners; a brilliant work of creativity and story telling, and also a 2 hour spiel against males. What did Greta Gerwig truly intend with the Barbie movie? Has this been grossly misinterpreted or was this the pointed message she was pursuing?
A Plot Summary – Heavy spoilers for Barbie (2023) follow
First, a recap of what occurs in the film. The movie begins with the titular character, Barbie, spending her normal day in Barbie Land – this a matriarchal society where women work at the highest levels of society, whilst the Kens just play on the beach and consider “Beach” to be their job. Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, is seemingly in love with stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and spends most of the film to convince her to be his girlfriend even though he is constantly rejected as Barbie would rather focus on other activities and female friendships. Barbie suddenly begins to develop cellulite and bad breath and even starts having thoughts of death. After consulting “Weird Barbie,” a rejected model living on the outskirts of Barbieland, she’s advised to travel to the real world in order to find the child playing with her. Ken, the infallible lover, follows in her footsteps. Once they arrive on Venice Beach, California, they are propelled into a plot culminating in Barbie being hunted by the CEO of Mattel (Will Ferrell) and Ken bringing the patriarchy to Barbieland, “indoctrinating” the Barbies into stereotypically submissive roles such as housewives, girlfriends and maids. Gloria, the mother of Barbie’s former owner Sascha, makes a passionate speech about the struggles of womanhood, and how as a woman you never win in the real world. This reverts the Barbies, and they formulate a plan to turn the Kens against each other. As they fight during the Golden Globe winning song I’m Just Ken (sung by Ryan Gosling himself), the Barbies reclaim the parliamentary building and prevent a patriarchal doctrine being engrained in the constitution of Barbieland. After experiencing suppression themselves, the Barbies seek to establish a society where the Kens are hopefully, one day, treated better. They create a society where the Kens have a similar role to modern day women. Barbie then consults Ken, who wallows in self-pity as he feels he has no identity without Barbie; to quote Ryan Gosling, it is always “Barbie AND Ken, not just Ken.” She encourages him to discover himself and find his own identity, while she decides to go to the real world and become a human.
Aims of the Barbie movie
Greta Gerwig seems to have wanted this movie to be an inspirational, empowering film. The original Barbie doll was a step up from children playing with baby dolls; rather than being a mother and a caregiver, you could be an adult woman with a job (a fashion model) who is able to shop and buy whatever clothing she wants. That is exactly what Barbie has achieved. Barbie was no feminist message in the 1950s. It was a push for young middle class women towards consumerism. In order to make one’s Barbie look better, it was necessary to purchase additional clothing options for the doll. This evolved into different Barbie models, spreading the message that Barbie, and every young woman, could be whatever they wanted. Barbie could be anything. However, the Barbie movie leads us to believe this is not what Gerwig wanted the movie to be about. The main ideas of the Barbie movie that do stand out are the concepts of identity and societal expectations. Throughout the movie, we have the message of female empowerment – after all, it is women who run Barbieland. There were multiple opportunities to delve into the issues of this topic, such as a mother daughter dynamic (with Gloria and Sasha) and body image; this could’ve been ignored if it wasn’t for Gloria’s speech in the final act of the movie. The feminist message of Barbie shows that Barbies have power while the Kens do not. The Kens are powerless and ignored rather than inferior, all while the patriarchy imposed upon the Barbies by the Kens is one where the Barbies are actively subjugated into demeaning roles. The Kens being second class to the Barbies is meant to be a reflection of women in society today. Gerwig’s message is a statement that there is still much progress to be made in order for women to truly feel in place in modern society.
Ben Shapiro’s Views
Let us look at the flip side. As inspiring as ever, Ben Shapiro has had a multitude of criticisms about the “dogsh**” that for him is the Barbie movie. It is not a simple children’s film with a feminist message; it is a violent “fascist emblem” dividing men and women. Shapiro gives multiple examples for these. These include weird Barbie, a Portland-style lesbian who enlightens Barbie and sends her on a mission to the real world, as well as helping to her save the other Barbies from the brainwashing of the patriarchy that Ken brings as a plague upon Barbieland. Sascha’s outpouring about Barbie being a sexualised, capitalistic model establishing unrealistic role models and body images for women is grossly misplaced in what is meant to be a normal movie about a toy. Indeed, the patriarchy is the bane of humankind and so the only solution is allegedly, the matriarchy. Women should manipulate men as the Barbies did to the Kens, turn them against one another so they can oust them from power and claim it for themselves. Dividing women and men is the only way to save society because when men rule, women cannot fit in. It is blatantly obvious how the Barbie movie’s message can easily be manipulated by the hands of the right wing. Every media reference is an attempt by the left to make the right look absurd, and feminism is not a movement but a weapon the left uses to try and radicalise society and overthrow the conservatives.
Summary
This is exactly what the Barbie movie is; ammunition for misogynists and incels to attack feminism. With a surface-level exploration of the issues that actually affect women and the inequality that remains in society, intertwined with forced comedy on the matter of a children’s toy, it is no wonder that there has been such backfire from the right on a film that at its heart was meant to be a movie on a plastic doll. Although Gerwig has done a brilliant job in the past with films such as Little Women, such an explicit and basic feminist agenda may have caused a greater divide in society rather than unite men and women as rightfully intended.
More articles about the in/famous Barbie movie and the Barbenheimer trend of Summer 2023:
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