The New Barbie Outfit
Review of the film Barbie
“Fuck the patriarchy”
- Taylor Swift, extended version of ‘All Too Well’
“She’s everything. He’s just Ken”
- Tag line for Barbie Movie
“Peace in patriarchy is war against women”
- Maria Miles
Barbie has been a strange tabula rasa since its creation in 1959. It was based on a German doll sold as a gag-gift to mostly men in European tobacco shops. One can only imagine the role play ideas for the original crowd. The American redesign was crafted by an aerospace engineer who worked on American military missiles. He also had been the sixth husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and he died by suicide… this isn’t covered in the film. The force behind Barbie’s creation was Ruth Handler, who named the doll, and her companion Ken, after her children. The sibling roots of their namesakes were also not covered in the film. Ruth’s forced resignation from the parent toy company, Mattel, was mentioned, but financial fraud is not something you want to dwell on… which brings us to the strange questions surrounding the storyline of a Barbie movie. What to talk about?
Ms. Gerwig & Mr. Baumbach are art house sensations. How do the creator of Lady Bird, a film showcasing the struggles of girls in 21st century America and the co-creators of Frances Ha, a movie showcasing a struggling woman artist, keep their credibility? They will be making what is essentially a product placement film for Mattel, “the leading toy company & owner of one of the strongest portfolios of children’s and family entertainment franchises in the world”. The boilerplate from Mattel’s website reads like fodder for corporate shills, rather than respected artists. And then there is the doll itself… yes Barbie has “evolved,” eschewing the pre-civil rights, Mad Men world of her birth by embracing careers et al. But does any woman, aside from the mentally ill , want to be Barbie? Isn’t the name itself still a pejorative term for any female over the age of 14? How on earth can Ms. Gerwig create a film that won’t end in career suicide or corporate disaster? Talk about building tension!
Well they did it… sort of. The film is a smash hit. Warner Brothers is making bank. Mattel’s girl is on everyone’s lips and audiences are stampeding, many in pink, to the theaters. There are some humorless cranks who are offended, but this only adds to cache. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach worked very hard… and you feel it. That’s the problem. The sweat of pleasing the many interested parties produces an extremely clever film… but not a good one.
Things begin very well. Barbie parodies the paradigm cinema moment of man’s achievement from Kubrick’s 2001. Instead of the bone morphing into a space station, Barbie the astronaut floats above the world,. As we enter Barbieland, the portrait of this pink plastic paradise is… pitch perfect. Margot Robbie is a superb incarnation of the “stereotypical ” Barbie, with her trademark blonde locks. Sharing the synthetic aryan look is Ryan Gosling as the paradigm Ken. Both these characters are individuals, but they exist in a world of types. In other words Barbieland is ruled by the Barbies, plural, with a cast of supporting Kens (plural). Gosling’s Ken rival is an Asian “Ken”. They both exist to attract the attention of the Margo Robie . The weird and wonderful land feels as if the Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City was dropped on the beaches of Malibu.
There is a strange conceit that gives this world the simulacrum of an actual child’s play area. All liquids are hard or invisible. Imagine a little girl giving Barbie a “pretend” drink and you witness what it is like for stereotype Barbie to sip coffee in the morning. Ken tries to “surf” the ocean and is blocked by hard plastic water . The playfulness and slick recreations are marvelous. Sadly the tone of the film shifts and we enter a very convoluted drama that relies on Barbie having an existential crisis, interacting with the “real world”and confronting, for the first time, the dreaded PATRIARCHY.
Ken, played delightfully by Ryan Gosling, is the foil in the story, but this never quite works because he is, by definition, a subservient dolt. One can feel the screenplay writers bending over backwards to give this professional idiot some standing. Are we really to believe that upon entering the real world Ken goes to a library to read about patriarchy? The gags regarding male arrogance and macho foolishness are hysterically funny, but in the end there is a narrative pull for Barbie to say that things will change in Barbieland in terms of Ken. She feels she has taken him for granted. Ken can stand tall. Ummmm…. No. I’m sure of few things in life but one might be: no one will ever buy a Ken doll without him being subservient to Barbie… The movie forces a very adult notion that fails to mesh with child’s play. It’s never a good thing when kids are forced to act as if they are adults. It doesn’t work dramatically either.
This film is strongest when it simply plays, rather than preaches. The tone instead resembles that of the social satire of Citizen Ruth, a film poking fun at both sides of the abortion debate. It would seem more appropriate, given that subject matter is a doll designed for pre teen girls, if the film had the spirit of a lighthearted musical comedy, like Mamma Mia, or issue-less satire, like the original Batman TV Series. In both cases fun is paramount while concerns about messaging take a back seat. Obviously this is a tall order given Barbie’s odd place in the social order. As I write this a news story broke about a sports commentator who was fired for using the term “Barbie” to describe another reporter. How could the writer/director avoid making our heroine more than a… Barbie doll. Strangely this also forces the issue of Ken’s status a professional flunky. In the world of Barbie… who cares? but the real world has real cultural baggage. And how to manage the baggage-handler?
Whereas Ken is a miscast delightful character, Will Ferrell, the CEO of Mattel in the “real world,” and his male Mattel minions, are simply a drag. Their role as clownish, corporate villains is muddled. Their cartoonishness belongs in Barbieland, rather than the “real world”. Kudos to the real Mattel executives for green-lighting the project. Certainly the filmmakers pushed the limit in directing jokes at the corporation. They are openly marked as chauvinistic with Barbie’s outfits being dictated by taking advantage of social changes, rather than championing women. The real life suits are now laughing all the way to the bank, but had Barbie laid an egg, they might have lost their jobs. There’s some real drama.
As for Gerwig and Baumbach, their creation might not be an artistic triumph, but has been genuine gold for the bottom line. The blatant errors are there and go beyond the odd storyline and the portrayal of the corporation. Does this film need to be 2 hours long? That’s the same length as the the bio pic of Alan Turing, and he invented computers. And what are we to make of Michael Cera as Allan? Mattel never really knew what to do with Ken’s brief sidekick and neither does Gerwig. Then there was an odd technical matter. This is a first rate spectacle with the fantasyland brimming with state-of-the-art props and special effects. There is a divine smoothness to the fakery — the houses, the ocean, the campfires. These are moving dioramas that are really captivating. I felt like a child pushing my nose against the glass in the Museum of Natural History. I also wanted to jump in during the choreography of Ken’s ridiculous battle where weapons never hurt… and despite all this I felt the character’s faces to be under-lit in many of the scenes. It is as if the basics were ignored in order to spend artistic energy on complicated social satire.
Perhaps there would have been more gold for everyone if the film stuck to Barbieland and eschewed reality and its never-ending source of conflict. This fantasy world already had its strange corner of intrigue: the character, “Weird Barbie”, played by the brilliant comedic actress Kate McKinnon. She represented dolls that were mistreated by their guardians. Interestingly when Barbie is faced with thoughts of death, the other Barbies point her to “Weird Barbie”. It seems not all little girls have wholesome role-play fantasies with dolls. In some cases Barbie becomes a whipping post for anger and aggression. It is interesting to note that McKinnon is often splayed on the floor, as if being nearly torn apart is “natural”. Once again there is no need for this film to plumb the depths of all social ills, but it is interesting that the filmmakers felt the need to go outside. Perhaps they were channeling the Wizard of Oz’s use of a separate plane of fantasy. The failure of Barbie is that the split between Barbieland and “the real world” is cloudy and confusing. There is no neat black and white vs. color delineation that showcases the clear line between the drudgery of real world cruelty and the joy of escapist fantasy. Would Barbie, while experiencing Los Angeles, ever want to click her heels three times and return to Barbieland? It’s a complicated question and that’s a problem. Why not simplify everything? There is enough drama “in house” to shape a story about Barbie facing her demons. The arc of the plot, however, needs to be rooted in the anodyne innocence of playfulness, rather than the meanness of adults.
I might be the wrong demographic to comment on this movie but I did find the most profound aspect of the film lay in the audience’s laughter. In my years of going to movie theaters I have never heard so many older women guffawing. This film touches something, despite what I perceive as a strangely muddled script. I never played with Barbie dolls and maybe to get the overall joke, you need to really live that experience. I felt this modern take on the meaning of Barbie fell short… too much stereotypical Barbie, not enough Weird Barbie… too much real world, not enough Barbieland…. Too much talk, not enough dancing…. Too much figuring out, not enough enjoying the moment.… but maybe I’m just another Ken, without the looks; or worse yet… an exploitative male Mattel executive. But in the end Gerwig’s work has grossed over a billion dollars. At present she is at the top of the pecking order of ALL Hollywood directors… including the Kens. For that, everyone can thank… Barbie.
