Barbie; a triumph in pink!

Despite what some seem to believe, the film is not simply Mattel propaganda and does not shy away from the discomfort many women feel towards Barbie and her idealised depiction of female perfection. The teenage Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) expresses this mindset telling Barbie “You’ve been making women feel bad about themselves since you were invented”. On the flip side of this, her mother Gloria (America Fererra) represents the women who were inspired by Barbie. The movie pokes fun at Mattel’s faults, referencing controversial discontinued barbies such as ‘Sugar Daddy Ken’ and ‘Growing up Skipper’ a barbie who’s boobs you could inflate. As well as pointing out the irony of the fact the Mattel CEO and higherups are all male. However, it also reiterates the core ideal of Barbie, that dolls don’t have to only train young girls to be mothers, Barbies can show girls that they can be anything they want. 

Therefore, in Barbie land, the Barbies run everything from construction to government. Meanwhile the Kens are ‘just Ken’. Ken was created to be Barbie’s boyfriend, but he has no aspirations of careers, he’s merely an extension of her. That’s because, real little boys were already being taught to have big aspirations and career goals, they didn’t need a doll to teach them. This presents Ken with a fascinating character arc when he finds himself in the real world and introduced to the concept of patriarchy. He returns to teach the other Kens about manly things like trucks, horses, subjugating women, and The Godfather. Whilst the film clearly presents this as tongue-in-cheek satire it holds up an all too real mirror to the increasingly prominent slew of men’s rights activists and ‘alpha male’ influencers easily found on most social media or podcast platforms these days.  

The film is undeniably a feminist work, particularly poignant was the scene where Barbie first enters the real world and is gawked at, objectified, and disrespected whilst Ken is praised, an experience plenty of women everywhere can resonate with. However, some have argued that the film doesn’t go far enough, it’s too safe to be truly poignant, too Hollywood. Whilst I do agree that the feminist ideas explored are basic ones, I do not think that is a detriment to the film as it is supposed to be targeted towards a mass market and needs to resonate with a vast array of women and girls. Moreover, the idea that Barbie is too safe seems to contradict the outrage and discourse it has garnered. Certain social media users have argued that the message of the film is indoctrinating children into hating men and encouraging a matriarchy. Unsurprisingly right-wing political commentators such as Ben Shapiro have come out against to movie for its ‘woke’ brainwashing. Even the most surface level feminist ideas of equality and not treating women like objects can be so drastically misinterpreted by people, so I cannot blame the Barbie movie for ‘playing it safe’. At the end of the day the movie is not for those people anyway. The movie is for all the people who know how Barbie felt when she’s being stared at in the street, or when she is overcome with the anxiety of having to live up to others’ expectations. It’s for the children who loved Barbie in secret because it was ‘too girly’ or simply the kids who grew up drawing on their own ‘weird barbies’. It is a film for all of the real women shown in the compilation towards the end. 

Ultimately Barbie is fun! The set and costume design is impeccable, the attention to detail is phenomenal, the cast is wonderful across the board with standout lead roles from Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. I also cannot mention cast without referencing the brief but hilarious performance from Michael Cera as fan favourite, Allan. The soundtrack is well curated with a variety of popular musicians making original songs for the film. It is also incredibly meta, with references to other films such as The Matrix, The Godfather and the Snyder cut of Justice League, not to mention Helen Mirren’s narrator often breaking the fourth wall and addressing us directly. If you took nothing political, philosophical, or symbolic from the Barbie movie, I hope at least you had fun. And with it raking in over $200 million at the box office in its first week alone, the Barbie mania doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.