Barbie (2023)

Rated PG-13 and mainly for a few jokes.  The most offensive one is in the trailer, which shocked me because it almost begged kids not to see it.  There's a joke about genitals that's pretty funny and there's one more that's slightly scandalous.  But the movie, overall, is pretty tame.  It's more the concepts are pretty depressing.  We let my daughter watch a few minutes and she didn't really seem interested in watching beyond that point.  Still, PG-13 seems accurate-to-harsh.

DIRECTOR: Greta Gerwig

Do you understand the sacrifice I made while changing the MPAA rating from green meaning "not offensive" to pink meaning "I'm comfortable with change"?  That being said, I'm also patting myself on the back for being as equally clever as everyone who has even heard of this movie.  There are times that I think that I'm the bastion of progressive politics in a deeply red Q-Anon drenched world.  I like to think that the past eight years have caused me to be so much more knowledgable than everyone else about what it means to fight for the oppressed.  Barbie reminded me that I'm still completely blind to the ills of society and that gender politics be complicated.

It's funny that this movie is made.  I mean, we can thank The Lego Movie and its quasi-subversive tongue-in-cheek attitude towards its sponsored product for Barbie existing.  Yeah, The Lego Movie does little jabs at the history of Lego, but Barbie has some complicated history going on.  The very notion of Barbie is paradoxical, which is the jumping off point for Barbie.  (Okay, you think that I think that this movie is about a doll instead of a bright poppy discussion about the patriarchy and feminism.  I'm going to get to that.  I'm just afraid to tackle it in blog form.) The movie --Thank God --addresses it point blank.  Barbie, on one hand, has the intention of being this doll that could serve as a role model for young girls.  She is every profession in every color...after a certain amount of time.  But on the other hand, she's a supermodel.  Even the Barbies that aren't supermodels are supermodels. They gave unrealistic expectations for what it meant to be girls.  I'm really surprised, actually, that given the deep dive that Gerwig does, that she doesn't call out the animated world of Barbie and her obsession with dancing and horses. (It's weird that Ken's into horses, given that real world history.) 

The movie needs to go after its own brand to work. We realize that studios want to advertise brands.  But when a work is too loving --and I say the same thing about fan documentaries --it almost comes across as an advertisement.  There's something seemingly impossible about how successful the Barbie movie was.  Because Mattel and Gerwig were willing to kind of call out major problems with the brand in a way that really addressed these concerns almost canonically, I gained such a respect for Barbie as a concept.  I'm always been eye-rolly about Barbie.  I actually didn't really want them in the house because I thought that they were going to give my daughter an eating disorder.  But between the fact that the board of directors of Mattel were all men (highlighting the real problem with that while allowing Will Ferrell's character to oddly be an ally and a punk at the same time) and the notion that Barbie represents a world where women, without concerns or interruption, could be literally anything that they wanted to be without fear of reprocussion, that made me want to rethink my entire stance on the Barbie brand.

But again, Gerwig didn't let it rest there.  I mean, it could have been a movie simply about Barbie's polarizing perspective in today's society and it probably would have done just fine. But Gerwig and Baumbach did the thing that I ask my students to do constantly: Ask "Why".   Why is Barbie so polarizing?  Why is it easy to laugh Barbie off as something that is associated with stupidity and vapidness when there is a Black president Barbie?  Gerwig's commentary is that Barbieland should --IN SOME WAYS --be the standard.  (I know someone's going to go after me. Listen, the very notion of a utopia is impossible because a utopia, as demonstrated in Barbie, means accidental enforced classism.)  The "why" sucks.  Everything has to be shown through the lens of "It's a comedy".  The patriarchy is over-the-top, but not a lie.  Just because it's a comedy doesn't mean it's untrue.  It's just seductive.  Filtering the patriarchy through the eyes of Ken gives us an understanding of why the notion of a patriarchy is so pervasive.

It's so weird that Ken's the villain in this movie.  My wife and I commented so much that so much of Barbie was spoiled for us.  Like. I didn't even giggle for "Mojo Dojo Casa House" because so many people have been saying that, so it lost all effect.  (We still laughed at "My job is beach.") But the one thing that I didn't really understand was that Ken was going to be the big bad of the movie.  I'm talking about Gosling Ken, whom I assume is "Stereotypical Ken".  Everyone loved Ken.  "I am Kenough" was the phrase of the summer.  So big bad?  Didn't realize that.  But okay.  Let's discuss the patriarchy through Ken's eyes.  Ken does some of the awful stuff that men tend to do pretty quickly.  He goes from having nothing (a problem in Barbieland) to wanting to do surgeries and run companies.  While women scoff at him, men secretly have the attitude  of "Just try a little longer.  It'll come to you." He does all of those things like treat women like servants, literally encouraging all of the other Barbies to dress like French maids.  

But there are things that Ken does (that I'm probably at fault for too) that seem like they are inoccuous.  I mean, having all of the Kens pull out guitars and sing "Push" to impress women hurt a little.  Showing Barbies The Godfather as the greatest film of all time, that's a thing.  (I felt seen, even if I am not the biggest Godfather fan.)  But it is also trying to make women like men instead of seeing women for who they are before men, that's the accusation that hit me.  I mean, my wife owns quite a few Dalek shirts that I bought her.  That's on me.  I'll own that.  The big aggressions make Ken villainous.  But those small aggressions enforce the big ones.  

And it's so sympathetic. Like most well-written villains, Ken doesn't see himself as the villain of the piece.  There's actually quite a lot about Ken that is sympathetic.  Barbieland isn't great for Ken because he doesn't know his sense of self.  He's always viewed himself as as second class citizen because he's only defined himself in relation to Barbie.  I mean, I'm spelling out the message of the movie here, but this is the notion that women can only define themselves in relationship to the men in their lives.  It's hard, at this point.  I mean, I largely define myself as "my wife's husband."  That's something that we do in life. Mostly, it's great.  The movie isn't telling us to throw our relationships out.  But it is telling us that we must be fully realized individuals while allowing others to foster their sense of individuality.  In Barbieland, that fostering is easy.  For the Kens, it seems like they might be able to be whatever they want as long as they don't just define themselves as "Barbie's boyfriends."  But in reality, women --as pointed out eloquently in America Ferrara's speech that made the Facebook rounds --can't just have the luxury of becoming anyone that they want to be because there is a standard for women to maintain.

As much as we can throw stones (and I just figured this out) at Barbieland for subjecting the Kens to second class citizens, it seems like the Barbies want the Kens to be fully realized individuals outside of their tastes. Stereotypical Barbie genuinely wants Stereotypical Ken to discover who he is outside of a relationship to her.  It may mean not encouraging him and his advances to her, as much as that may not seem warm-and-fuzzy.  It's the movie that says that maybe that relationship shouldn't be the ultimate goal. Maybe, just because people ship them, it might not be healthy.  I love that Ken's the ultimate "nice guy villain" (coming from a dude who starred in the The Nice Guys...) because the nice guy villain is hard to define.  There's something toxic that's festering.  With Ken, there's a quasi-good reason, but it is still toxic as getout.  We're never meant to hate Ken.  But we also see how easy it is to foster toxic masculinity if properly encouraged.  

Barbie crushed guys.  Yeah, it's not going to be my favorite movie (despite the fact that I now own a digital copy.  It's weird that it's always a five dollar distance between renting and owning.  I'm sure it's that "popcorn price" rule of medium to large.), but it is a powerhouse of a movie.  It's also still really weird that Greta Gerwig directed it and that a Noah Baumbach co-written script is crushing this hard.  But I love it.