We finally watched "Barbie" on Max last night as we had tried twice after its release to see it, but missed out due to over-crowdedness with no decent seats, and once, when we walked out after five minutes as too many kids were crying and screaming in a matinee. I mean, we are old people, now, right?
My take on the film was that it was a wonderfully crafted film from the dialogue to the sets to the cinematography and direction. I found it a brilliant film not about feminism per se, but gender in the "gender theory" way. It was at least as much about Ken first being confined in Barbieland, but then confined in a different way when he instituted patriarchy. It is also how we see where patriarchy also creates hierarchies among men, but they know they are still "better" than women.
What I found myself grasping toward, but needed our daughter to take me there, was this was actually a "coming-of-age" story for both Barbie and Ken. The review below this post from a young woman writer from India nailed what our daughter explained when I asked her how it was a "coming-of-age" story for both Ken and Barbie. I said she should write up that explanation as I had not seen this. She replied, and I paraphrase, "Dad, if you research the Internet, you'll find something. I saw it, but I was not the only one saying this to all these people who only looked at the film from the 'girl power' angle." She is again correct. This young woman's review below nails it and I urge all to read.
What I was most impressed with the film was director Gerwig's recognition her desire to tell the story of Barbie dolls' relationships to young girls meant she had to always run it by the corporate suits. The film was ultimately green-lighted to sell more plastic dolls and plastic accessories, which was a short term consequence at best. Yet, Gerwig directed a film that should be studied in sociology classes--and not just film-as-literature classes. Gerwig got away with telling a story that one as an adult should first and foremost transcend mindless consumerism. This was even more so than the "Lego Movie," which was itself subversive in that Cheap Trick song, "Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away." But more than that, and most importantly, "Barbie" is a film about human liberation. It is a film about telling us not to confine ourselves to cultural expectations based upon our genitalia. Greta Gerwig and her husband Noah Baumbach crafted a primary color filled and fun series of sets--and a great trip through west Los Angeles area--for an enlightened, yet humor-filled hopeful story for us striving to be better human beings all around. This point also appeared in the film's re-evaluating the meaning of all of the other Barbie dolls that were tried and which failed to make a public impact. That last was definitely brilliant because it was a re-imagination of these now discarded toys through a sociological lens. In that regard, too, the character arcs of Weird Barbie and especially Alan were structured in this idea of giving an individual yet societal meaning to plastic toys on our own imaginations and our own psyches.
With regard to specific scenes in the film, I loved how Gerwig had Helen Mirren as narrator break the fourth wall completely and critically, saying "Note to filmmaker" that maybe having Margo Robbie try to say she is not pretty is actually impossible as Margo Robbie is our era's personification of pretty. That made me laugh loudest in the film, I think. Gerwig also allowed Rhea Perlman to kindly and poignantly tell the real story of Ruth Handler, the co-founder of Mattel and creator of Barbie, including two mentions of the IRS actions against her and the co-founders that ended in her (and their) conviction for tax fraud--and even her breast cancer which ended with a radical double mastectomy. There were multiple instances in the dialogue, which was fast paced in that Preston Sturges manner, where a Chomkyesque analysis of society came through.
However, as is, alas, usual, amidst the popcorn and soda, and corporate marketing, too many Americans got focused on the "girl power" Sheryl Sandberg "lean in" feminist neoliberalism against what were most definitely atavistic, hateful, reactionary responses of the FoxNews media machine. This film was and is so, so much, more.
Everyone who hated this film, from the right wingers (again mostly men) to leftists too focused on this being produced within a big budget corporate environment, missed the overall brilliance of this film. I think right wingers really need psychiatric help as their responses were so filled with violent and disturbed emotional reactions which revealed, deep down, they emotionally understand these types of analyses. However, they are afraid to engage with that type of analysis for fear of becoming what they fear. Behind right wing violent bravado is fear, and the loathing that arises from that fear. But let's not stop there.
For those who thought this was essentially about "girl power," such persons (mostly women I think) need to interrogate this much further. They miss the part about gender theory that says patriarchy limits men's conceptions of themselves as human beings, even as it exults men. There is definitely "girl power" in America Ferrera's now iconic speech, where I wanted to stand up and applaud for how many of the levels women suffer even today in our supposedly more enlightened society. But, we need as humans to go beyond mere feminist neoliberalism and recognize liberation is to see beyond gender, genitalia, and physical power.
As for those lefties who simply accept the corporate assumptions, what I would say is get yourselves more imagination. "Barbie" gives us a way to engage in the important conversations. Gerwig miraculously and mischievously got this by the corporate suits, even the women Board of Directors at Mattel who were left out of the film, as the otherwise odious and shallow Bill Maher noted. I think the reason there were no women was the attack on women neoliberals, and their complicity in continuing the patriarchy in its main form, would have been too obvious--to the point of their not approving them being exposed. Bill Maher, of course, is too shallow to see that dynamic and went for the cheap shot.
Here is the review I spoke of from Mahi Goyal.
