The Barfy Movie

Feminist Subversion or Corporate Advertising?

“I know you know they say femininity, but what's femininity?”

—L’Imperatrice, Girl!

“Shortly, he was aboard a thermosealed interbuilding commute car, on his way to downtown New York City and P. P. Layouts, the great pale synthetic-cement building from which Perky Pat and all the units of her miniature world originated. The doll, he reflected, which had conquered man as man at the same time had conquered the planets of the Sol system. Perky Pat, the obsession of the colonists. What a commentary on colonial life... what more did one need to know about those unfortunates who, under the selective service laws of the UN, had been kicked off Earth, required to begin new, alien lives on Mars or Venus or Ganymede or wherever else the UN bureaucrats happened to imagine they could be deposited... and after a fashion survive.”

—from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

I finally did it, I watched the Barbie movie. It was, to be polite, terrible. I watched it out of morbid curiosity. I thought it would be bad, but little did I know how bad it would actually be. The Barbie movie had quite a buzz created around it last summer and people’s reactions to it were strong. Either it was hated as anti-male propaganda or it was lauded as cleverly subversive feminist counter-cinema throwing stones at the patriarchy. Of course I knew it couldn’t be either of these things for one reason: the film was produced by Mattel. Thus, the hidden goal of the Barbie movie is to sell more Barbies. By nature it could not be subversive because corporations cannot be subversive. If Greta Gerwig had wanted to make a powerful feminist film about Barbie that truly subverted cultural norms, capitalism, and the patriarchy Mattel would have sued her ass off and she would have ended up calling the movie something like “Brahbrah”. I was very disturbed that this two hour long advertisement for Mattel was some sort of a cultural zeitgeist for many, many people. This speaks to the death of culture that Aesthetic Resistance podcast, which I am part of, talks about so much. In fact, John Steppling started a series of lectures about art, film, and theatre which are applicable here. (Link below.)

Before I proceed in shredding every aspect of the Barbie movie I will provide you with a brief synopsis:

“Barbie (“Stereotypical Barbie”) and fellow dolls reside in Barbieland, a matriarchal society populated by different versions of Barbies, Kens, and a group of discontinued models who are treated like outcasts due to their unconventional traits. While the Kens spend their days playing at the beach, considering it their profession, the Barbies hold prestigious jobs in law, science, politics, and so on. Ken ("Beach Ken") is only happy when he is with Barbie, and seeks a closer relationship with her, but she rebuffs him in favor of other activities and female friendships.

One evening at a dance party, Barbie is suddenly stricken with worries about mortality. Overnight, she develops bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet, disrupting her usual routines and the classic perfection of the Barbies. Weird Barbie, a disfigured doll, tells Barbie to find the child playing with her in the real world to cure her afflictions. Barbie decides to follow the advice and travel to the real world, with Ken joining Barbie by stowing away in her convertible.

After arriving in Venice Beach, Barbie punches a man after he gropes her. Barbie and Ken are briefly arrested. Alarmed by the dolls' presence in the real world, the CEO of Mattel orders their recapture. Barbie tracks down her owner, a teenage girl named Sasha, who criticizes Barbie for encouraging unrealistic beauty standards. Distraught, Barbie discovers that Gloria, a Mattel employee and Sasha's mother, inadvertently caused Barbie's existential crisis after Gloria began playing with Sasha's old Barbies. Mattel attempts to put Barbie in a toy box for remanufacturing, but she escapes with Gloria and Sasha's help, and the three travel to Barbieland with Mattel executives in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Ken learns about patriarchy and feels respected for the first time. He returns to Barbieland before Barbie does and persuades the other Kens to take over. The Kens indoctrinate the Barbies into submissive roles, such as agreeable girlfriends, housewives, and maids. Barbie arrives and attempts to convince the Barbies to be independent again. When her attempts fail, she becomes depressed. Gloria expresses her frustration with the conflicting standards women are forced to follow in the real world. Gloria's speech restores Barbie's confidence.

With the assistance of Sasha, Weird Barbie, Allan [the only non-Ken male doll], and the discontinued dolls, Gloria uses her knowledge from the real world to deprogram the Barbies from their indoctrination. The Barbies then manipulate the Kens into fighting among themselves, which distracts them from enshrining male superiority into Barbieland's constitution, allowing the Barbies to regain power. Having now experienced systemic oppression for themselves, the Barbies resolve to rectify the faults of their previous society, emphasizing better treatment of the Kens and all outcasts.

Barbie and Ken apologize to each other, acknowledging their past mistakes. When Ken bemoans his lack of purpose without Barbie, she encourages him to find an autonomous identity. Barbie, who remains unsure of her own identity, meets with the spirit of Ruth Handler, Mattel co-founder and creator of the Barbie doll, who explains that Barbie's story has no set ending and her ever-evolving history surpasses her roots.

After sharing goodbyes with the Barbies, Kens, and Mattel executives, Barbie decides to become human and return to the real world. Sometime later, Gloria, her husband, and Sasha take Barbie, now going by the name "Barbara Handler", to her first gynecologist appointment.” -from Wikipedia

So what is Barbieland actually like? For one thing, prior to the aftermath of the Kens’ uprising the men had practically no acknowledgment or “rights” of any kind. Even after the Barbies and the Kens come to some sort of an agreement, the Kens are told that they still must be subjugated, earning their freedom over time, much like women did in the real world (to borrow a phrase from the movie). In other words, Barbieland is not a world of equality between the sexes. The Kens form some sort of underclass. To me, then, one way of reading the film is that Ken organised a revolution which Barbie proceeded to crush with counter insurgency tactics ending in the triumph of a Barbie counterrevolution. Sexual politics aside Barbieland was still no utopia. It was, in essence, capitalist. Where all the Barbies’ stuff is produced is not shown, perhaps it is produced by Mattel, in which case the Barbies clothes and accessories are coming from the toil of severely underpaid women and children in third world countries… Barbieland is a classed society, with a touch of racial bias, surprising due to the film’s purported diversity. Stereotypical Barbie, who ultimately is the most capable, deep, and intelligent of all the Barbies, does not work in garbage disposal. In fact, she appears to not work at all, unlike her fellow Barbies of varying ethnicity. (Incidentally,  the sanitation worker Barbies are Latina.) She also inhabits a much larger house than the other Barbies. Is she some sort of heiress/queen presiding over the president of Barbieland?

Basically, Barbieland is exactly like the real world except everything is pink, women are in charge and people are nice and friendly to each other all of the time. It is a capitalist matriarchy instead of a capitalist patriarchy. Friendly capitalism…kitsch…fascism underneath the surface. I’m riffing. Anyhow, is the subliminal message implying that if women were in charge they would be more cooperative and supportive of each other than men? Either way it’s a classed society, which is antithetical to a utopia. The saddest thing about Barbieland is that it portrays a matriarchy as farcical. For example, whenever the Barbies are at their “White House” (Pink House?) doing serious political work they act in a most immature fashion. When they reinstate their constitution after the Kens tried to seize power the Barbies are all dressed in pink jumpsuits that look slightly like pyjamas and they squeal like school girls. Women in charge, yet they behave like imbeciles. Perhaps this is another reason Stereotypical Barbie decides to become human at the end of the movie. Wouldn’t that say then that she, in some sort of way, realised that patriarchy is superior to matriarchy, at least on a subconscious level? That doesn’t sound very feminist to me.

The Barbie movie was purported to be empowering to girls while promoting healthier beauty standards, attempting to make up for the havoc reeked by Barbie on the self esteem of countless women and girls. I did not notice this at all. For one thing, Margot Robbie (Stereotypical Barbie) is free of blemishes, bloating, folds, sags, and body hair. She conforms perfectly to the white western standard of beauty. Even though the cast is ostensibly diverse, the Latina and black Barbies still have bodies that nominally conform to the white (male) standard of beauty. Incidentally, the only body “deviant” Barbie in the film, a heavy set woman, is explicitly called “Fat Barbie”. Although the other Barbies are not overtly demeaning towards Fat Barbie, the name alone implies a tone of condescension. (Why, then, is the transgender actress that plays one of the Barbies not called Dick Barbie? Oops, I’ll probably be cancelled for that…)

As an aside, the body positivity movement has turned into a farce. Promoting obesity is sure to engender a backlash, which it has. For example, I came across an article on Substack telling Christian men that they shouldn’t let their wives get so fat. (??!!) I think we need to reappropriate a, at least partly, body positive movement encouraging health and fitness for women of all sizes. I will write about this more later, because as someone who has suffered personally from the beauty standards imposed on women (an eating disorder for all my tween and teen years) I think this is a somewhat important issue.

I also found the Latina mother/daughter duo that accidentally cause Barbie’s “existential crisis” to be highly stereotyped particularly in their mannerisms. They are sassy, flippant, and yet somehow obsequious. At one point the daughter calls Barbie “white saviour” once Barbie’s confidence is restored, which only occurred after the mother gives a monologue to the contradictions women face in our society. (The monologue seems incredibly contrived.) Although the daughter, Sasha, was using the term “white saviour” in jest, Barbie had to remind her that it was her mother who restored her confidence. Sasha is on to something though, stereotypical Barbie does save the day. She even brings Sasha and her mom back together. She is the “white saviour”. To circle back to Sasha, the only teenage character in the film with a decent amount of lines, her progression in the plot is pivotal. When she first meets Barbie she is extremely jaded towards her. Barbie shows up at Sasha’s school during lunch and makes her presence known. In response, Sasha throws back the typical feminist critiques of Barbie’s negative effects on girls’ body image, criticisms of consumer capitalism’s excessive waste, and ends with calling Barbie a fascist. Of course, all of Sasha’s critiques of Barbie are true, thus they serve a powerful function in the narrative arc. As the film goes on Sasha warms up to Barbie, and by the end she is a pink clad Barbie convert. In this way the ubiquitous and valid criticisms of Barbie are addressed and dismissed; Barbie is empowering to girls.

Something I have noted before about the transgender movement applies strongly to the Barbie movie. Societally, we are seeing the erosion of the categories of biological sex combined with the ossification of performative gender stereotypes. In the Barbie movie it is revealed that the Barbies and Kens have no genitalia. If they have no genitalia and cannot biologically reproduce, they have no biological sex, only the external performance of gender. Thus in Barbieland the necessity for performative gender roles disappears because gender roles arose around the needs of social reproduction, i. e. child rearing and the sexual division of labour. Perhaps this is the reason Barbies perform all of the different sorts of jobs. They are not women, merely a spectacle of femininity. Even though the Barbies are supposedly liberated “females” in Barbieland they still conform to the male standard for female beauty (because Mattel is a patriarchal company?). The fact that many women did not notice this absolutely un-liberating aspect of the movie shows how normalised and internalised those standards of beauty are.

The Kens are not much better off. They are merely a spectacle of masculinity, they seem like ripped out gym bros, and after they discover the patriarchy they become even more ridiculous. In this way the Barbie movie reinforces the dominant narrative that biological sex does not exist yet gender stereotypes are immutable facts of life. This also serves to infantilise all of the characters male and female alike because, in my view, conforming to gender stereotypes is antithetical to deepening as a human being and finding your authentic self. Ostensibly Ken is encouraged by Barbie to find his authentic self at the end of the movie, but this does not come off as a deepening of self.

There are, however, two somewhat sane and normal (as in normal human behaviour) acting characters in the movie. There is Allen, who is the only male doll not named Ken. Allen does not have the body builder physic that the Kens have, yet he is only male who can physically fight other men in a non homoerotic way. There is a scene in which Allen has a brawl with some construction workers on the side of the Kens and he fights them in a typical punch/duck fashion. When the Kens have their fight scene, however, they are all wearing these TINY shorts and it seems more like a war ritual than an actual fight. It seems as if at any moment the Kens will start fucking each other… The other sane character is Weird Barbie,  who is the only female character who speaks in a normal voice. Weird Barbie lives in an interesting house, is very flexible, and is intelligent and knowledgable. These characters seem to be the only ones with their heads screwed on straight. Yet according to reviews, Allen and Weird Barbie are the “queer” characters of the film, queer as in not conforming to heterosexual gender stereotypes. Yet shouldn’t we try to move past gender stereotypes? The first definition of the word “queer” is abnormal. Why should it be abnormal not to fit perfectly into a prescribed box? No wonder so many young people are identifying with the LGBTQ+ movement when their other options are to be a Barbie or a Ken.

Let us return to Weird Barbie for a moment. In the film it is acknowledged that every girl had one “weird” Barbie. One Barbie whose hair they cut, who was given makeup with Sharpies, and who was often physically mutilated in some way. Yet this is laughed off as some sort of humorous thing about playing with Barbies that girls can bond over. In reality, the collective or individual experience of mutilating one’s Barbie as a child is a powerful ritual with deep symbolic meaning. Barbie represents the oppressive standard of beauty that holds girls and women in chains. We aspire to be Barbie, yet subconsciously we loathe her and know she is our oppressor, so to speak. Thus the ubiquitous phenomenon of Barbie desecration is girls’ way of letting out their hatred towards the beauty standard. For the Barbie movie to laugh it off in this way cleverly acknowledges the sadistic rituals performed on Barbie while obscuring the real reasons behind it.

There is one scene in the movie that is such overt advertising it is staggering. (Considering the entire Barbie movie is an advertisement this says a lot.) When Ken takes over Stereotypical Barbie’s dream house he throws her clothes off of her balcony. As the clothes are flung into the air they hang suspended for a moment while text appears in the screen and the narrator announces “Barbie’s paisley disco pants” or something to that effect. What an ingenious way for Mattel to resurrect defunct Barbie clothing styles. This level of advertising was also apparent in the journey from Barbieland to the real world: the journey consists of taking every Barbie vehicle imaginable. It is quite strange to me that people actually paid to see a two hour long advertisement for Mattel.

The strangest thing about the Barbie movie is the ending. Barbie going to see a gynaecologist could be interpreted in various ways and one is not overtly given clues as to the correct interpretation. Is Barbie going to the gynaecologist to see if she grew proper reproductive organs when she decided to become human? Is she trying to get on birth control so she can be a wild gal? Or is Barbie trying to get pregnant? Perhaps this was just a way for the medical industry to get a piece of all the action. (Healthy, liberated, Barbie loving women: come get a gynaecological checkup!) However, I would argue that Barbie was thinking about being able to get pregnant. As strange as it sounds, towards the end of the film I felt a bit of a “natalist” styling. For example, when Barbie is learning “how to feel” so she can become human the montage that plays in her mind is a string of images of children, mothers, and grandmothers. There is only one image in the entire montage that does not involve one of the three. Of course, children, mothers, and grandmothers are important, but in light of the reactionary trad wife movement this hits my tongue sourly. I suppose one could say that Barbie was ultimately unfulfilled by the “feminist utopia” of Barbieland and realised that there is more to life than partying with your girlfriends. In a sense, it is as if the Barbie movie takes everything about feminism to an extreme and at the end dismisses it all together. This I feel like it points back to the reactionary trad wife movement. Feminism seems to be a dead discourse. (For my readers who are unaware what a trad wife is, it is a movement of women who are being “traditional” wives. They stay home with their children and have loads of them, bake bread from scratch, homestead, dress as if they’re from the 50s, and their “greatest joy” is serving their husbands’ every whim and obeying him. Often they are Christians, in some cases affiliated with the Jesus movement. The trad wife phenomena is bothersome to me, as its main claim is that women are happiest at home with babies obeying their husbands. I could rant for a long time about all this, but I’ll leave off with one remark. The trad wife movement seems to be occurring in response to the transgender moment, yet in reality they are two tines of the same fork. Both are an attack on women, and a reactionary force against all of the gains women have made in the last two centuries or so.)

So was the Barbie movie feminist? In a sense, I suppose one could say that it was. Feminism was originally a bourgeois movement, so in that sense it continued that legacy. Yet the film also came off feeling very post feminist and, as I said, with an undertone of female subjugation. (After all, the Barbie doll is emblematic of female subjugation even though she can “be anything”; after all, beauty standards are a form of subjugation.) Any way you slice it the Barbie movie is in no sense subversive. It did not subvert capitalism, it did not subvert the outward image of gender stereotypes, and it did not subvert body image ideals. I suppose one could say that it “subverted” the patriarchy by making women aware of it. This comes back, I think, to my own personal issues with feminism per se. To truly champion the cause of women is to champion the cause of all women regardless of race and, more importantly, class. There is no liberation for all women while working class women are subjugated, meaning while imperialism, capitalism, and colonialism exist. My main issue with feminism is that it tends to declare “first sex, then class”, but to me the opposite is true. Class is the most important thing. Not that intersectional analysis isn’t important, it is. After all, capitalism is inherently racist and sexist due to the imperatives of colonialism and social reproduction. Another issue I have with more recent feminist strains is that I do not think women are superior to men, or that women should dominate men. I believe that men and women should be equal. Good old fashioned equality! I seem to be digressing…

All in all, Mattel’s marketing was superb. They preyed upon three generations of viewers, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers (and more). For the older generations there was the element of nostalgia because Barbie has been such a prominent feature of American culture for so long now. For the younger generations who were cynical towards Barbie, the doll was revitalised as a symbol of feminist resistance. Really though, there was “something for everyone”. There was eye candy for the (straight) men, with all the women in skimpy outfits behaving girlishly. There was eye candy for the (gay) men, with all of the ripped out Kens and their homoerotic fight and dance scenes. This was eye candy for women as well, I’m sure. Not to mention Barbie’s house and extensive wardrobe. Mattel covered all of their bases; old, young, male, female, straight, gay. They did miss one, however. One they could never catch: people who know advertising when they see it. (Perhaps we need to invent an anti-advertising vaccine…) So please do NOT watch the Barbie movie, unless of course you do not trust my analysis. I will warn you, however, that I would have rather spent two hours cleaning my cat’s ear wax. (It would have been time MUCH better spent.)

“[chorus]

Since in the end we all become dust

I don't care about being pretty, I don't care about being pretty

I don't play if it's just to please you

I don't care about being pretty, I don't care about being pretty

(I chose for myself) It is through the cracks that the light passes

I don't care about being pretty, I don't care about being pretty

Because beauty is under our eyelids

I don't care about being pretty, I don't care about being pretty, I don't care about being pretty

Take a good look at yourself, you're not attractive

Make an effort for once

Nothing is acquired

They decide and you disappoint, the right symmetry

It's never over

I have to tell you

I don't want a body like in the movies, purity bores me

I prefer to be in pajamas than in a monokini

All women in the same format, the monomania

Of the mini model

[chorus]

It took me a while to tolerate my singularities

To cherish my highs, my lows, all my folds

To not point a finger at anomalies

And neither them of others

The road is long

I'm leaving feathers behind and in places I chip the varnish

And I sometimes abandon myself to my old demons

But I just want to have the choice, a little pause

I disobey

[chorus]”

—L’Imperatrice, Me Da Igual

“Feminism has never emerged from the women who are most victimised by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually - women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority.”

—bell hooks

“The feminists seek equality in the framework of the existing class society, in no way do they attack the basis of this society. They fight for prerogatives for themselves, without challenging the existing prerogatives and privileges.”

—Alexandra Kollontai

The L’Imperatrice song:

Eating disorders are still a problem: https://anad.org/eating-disorder-statistic/

Trad wives: https://www.parents.com/tradwife-meaning-and-why-its-controversial-8656603

Addressing *some* of the issues with the Barbie movie: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/8/4/sorry-american-liberals-barbies-feminism-isnt-for-all-women

This sums up the Barbie phenomenon:

The infantilization of modern societies

John’s lecture about art where he touches on kitsch: https://substack.com/inbox/post/145257898

BARBIE IS KITSCH