COAPN Volume 50: Barbie is Gratingly on the Nose, But That’s a Good Thing
Yes, the title is click-bate. No, this is not a bash the Barbie movie piece. Haters, take your dripping fangs elsewhere.
Full disclosure, I’m not a massive Greta Gerwig fan. I can academically appreciate the strides she has made for female directors, and I applaud the skill with which she assembles her films and attracts talented people with whom she creates good working relationships. I just don’t really like her movies that much. I enjoyed Lady Bird because it was the most character driven of her work that I’ve seen. But Little Women, while possessed of a smart enriching of Amy March and an interesting meta narrative with Jo’s publishing journey mirroring Lousia May Alcott’s own, was structurally a disaster. The jumbling of the timeline made it nigh incomprehensible to anyone unfamiliar with the novel. When Beth’s death, a heartbreaking and formative moment for legions of young readers, is rendered unmoving, something has gone terribly wrong. The changes made to Little Women that scores of articles praised as groundbreaking were, I felt, smart, but a little shoe-horned. Too on the nose. They felt, rather than like grand revelations from a particular artist’s perspective, like obvious points to anyone who has studied women’s history for five seconds. But then again, the average 2010s teen flocking to drool over Timothée Chalamet or Saoirse Ronan hasn’t studied women’s history, which makes the changes important and effective, if unsubtle.
These opinions formed, I watched the Barbie trailers with a sceptic’s squint. Clearly, the piece was satire. Clearly, it had a political bent to its satire. These facts screamed from the trailer with all the understatement of Barbie’s staple Pepto hued wardrobe. That these themes had been farmed from the history of a doll was about all that intrigued me. I slated it to my when-it-hits-streaming to-watch list and went on about my life.
But then came the flood of reactions on social media upon the film’s release. Having landed firmly on the Oppenheimer side of the aisle in the advertising blitz that became Barbenhiemer, I’d already gone to see the later with still no intention of seeing the former. But young men were posting TikToks about micro-dosing mushrooms and being shocked at feeling moved by Ken’s story, and husbands were posting about having unexpected conversations with their wives. America Ferrera’s monologue on the frustration of existing as a woman began to make the rounds, and I found myself intrigued. Had Greta Gerwig surpassed my expectations? Had she made a movie that was deeper than the trailer suggested? Was I being a Christopher Nolan fan snob by ignoring Barbie?
After seeing it, yes and no. I legitimately cackled at the humor in Barbie. Like, laughed so hard people gave me funny looks cackled. The opening sequence, which I refuse to spoil, was my favorite part of the whole thing. What a fabulous reference to draw us in and nod to the dominance of the male gaze in filmmaking. It was a clever, genuine hoot. I likewise found Kate McKinnon’s character clever and hilarious. The cameos of classic Barbie clothes and accessories were a treat for me who spent a massive chunk of my childhood playing with a substantial Barbie collection. The production design was a joyful, nineties nostalgia trip. Then came the plot and the satire and the return of the on the nose feminism from Little Women. Barbie Land is a feminist utopia where the dolls believe they have solved the problem of patriarchy and toxic masculinity for all woman kind back in the real world, where our heroine has to journey to meet her human owner after Barbie finds herself suffering from very human thoughts about death and sadness and depression. Barbie brings Ken, who in Barbie Land is superfluous and important only in how he exists in relation to Barbie, with her to the real world. Ken discovers patriarchy and brings it back to Barbie Land. Chaos ensues over how to restore Barbie Land and reconcile Barbie’s owner’s effect on Barbie herself. Patriarchy is bad for everyone; one gender ruling over all is bad; life is complicated; being a woman under conflicting expectations of the twentieth is century hard; let’s all think harder and be kinder to one another. It's feminism 101. It’s women’s studies 101. And it’s conveyed with all the nuance of a pink brick.
The style of satire, the broad comedy, and the in-your-faceness of the whole thing is not my taste in movies. I find the style and directness of the message’s delivery grating. So I like Barbie, but I don’t love it. But whether or not I love it is irrelevant to the impact it appears to be having on less finicky filmgoers than I. Generations of women are going to see this movie together. At the theater I saw huge groups of grandmas, moms, and daughters bedecked in livid pink with popcorn in-hand. Hordes of young women having a girls’ weekend, crowded together for photos into a giant Barbie box the theater had on display for advertising. Boyfriends and husbands galore accompanied these thickets of females, and gamely took pictures with or of these women. Queer people of every stripe in the rainbow likewise flocked to the box. In my showing, I heard men laugh every bit as hard as women at the humor, and I suspect most of us, regardless of sex and gender, got a little weepy at Ryan Gosling’s final monologue. I did. With the atrocious state of U.S. education becoming subject to the whims of an entitled vocal coterie of conservatives, and the price of higher education rendering it impractical for many families, Barbie being out in the world saying the obvious bits from a basic women’s studies course is nothing but a force for good. In fact, what is impressive is that it manages to make the material of those academic, removed arenas accessible to the masses. That is a talent specific to Greta Gerwig, her unique artistic lens. The fact Barbie is slamming its viewers over the head with the brick of its politics and humor is bringing people together in a world that is heartbreakingly divided. It gives me hope for people. Very little does these days. So, thank you Barbie, for being on the damn nose.
Thank you for reading,
B
Image source: Warner Brother's Pictures. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-66325653
