This story begins with me failing my driving test for the second time. I came home, $60 poorer and still without the ability to drive without supervision, and cried. In this very low moment of despair and humiliation, I joined Letterboxd.
Secretly revelling in it,I quickly found and followed a (male) friend of mine and began stalking his recent activity, when my eye was caught by bright pink letters and Margot Robbie’s wide grin shining through my screen. I found his review of Barbie! I excitedly opened the review to learn what he thought, but then I saw the review: a meagre 3.5 stars.
My heart sank. This friend, a self-proclaimed feminist and someone whose judgement I respected, didn’t think ‘Barbie’ was that great. Why did he hold a film that I felt was so clearly a masterpiece in such low esteem?
Not only is the film artistically brilliant and beautiful, with bulletproof worldbuilding, stunning visuals, and fantastic characters and storytelling, it is also an enormous cultural moment. Audiences are turning up in droves to cinemas, clad in pink. “Barbiecore” has entered the mainstream, no longer relegated to a subculture, fostering a celebration of the hyper-feminine. It also made headlines again recently when the film surpassed $1 billion at the box office, as the first film directed by a woman to ever reach the milestone.
Obviously, art is subjective. ‘Barbie’ is clearly made for a predominantly white Western female audience, and represents a world far from the reality of most women’s lives. Yet, I consistently felt disappointed by the responses of men labelling the film as visually rich but intellectually mediocre, providing nothing more than rudimentary feminist messaging.
Why do I feel so protective over a flawed piece of mass media that I had no role in creating? I teared up watching it, I connected with so many people over the experience of the film. Since the advent of cinema, the role of both character, camera, and spectator have been masculine. Now, for one of the first times ever, a major film is about, by and for women, rejoicing in its femininity, saying “this is for you”.
One of the oft-repeated criticisms of the film is that it failed to live up to people’s expectations for Gerwig and Baumbach to create an iconoclastic film, especially in relation to the infamous and divisive titular doll. Many also critiqued America Ferrera’s instantly iconic monologue as “disappointing” because audiences are already aware of the gender double bind the character laments, labelling it as “Feminism 101.”
Others before me have already correctly pointed out that access to the (apparently) basic feminist messaging of the film is an immense privilege, and that for a mainstream blockbuster to engage with these ideas is groundbreaking in and of itself. Audiences deserve to be treated as intelligent beings. However, we must remember that ‘Barbie’ is a blockbuster created for a mass audience, not all of whom will be familiar with the history of feminist thought.
Is it even possible for a major Hollywood studio film funded by Mattel to offer us a nuanced take on women’s issues and experiences? As the reception of ‘Barbie’ makes clear, we probably wouldn’t accept it if it did.
What I care about is the reaction to this reportedly “basic” feminist messaging. If the only way ‘Barbie’ can be valuable to you is if it is a groundbreaking cinematic masterpiece that serves as a seminal feminist text, then I believe that you are perpetuating the very ideas the film so powerfully rails against.
It’s like the tagline proclaims: “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.” Not just a jab at Ken’s simplicity, it serves as a recognition of the war women constantly face in our lives in order to be perceived as having any value at all. Barbie has to be everything in order to be anything – the President, a Supreme Court Justice, a Nobel Prize Winning Physicist, and every other profession. In her monologue, America Ferrera highlights the perils of this bind: you must be unbelievably intelligent and professionally exceptional, or beautiful beyond belief because if you’re not, you’re “not good enough for anything.” Ken is allowed to simply exist and has for the past six decades as just some guy, never having to prove his value.
One of the criticisms that has also been echoed in these reviews has been a criticism of Mattel’s role in the film, deeming a major trans-national corporation as a problematic source of feminist discourse. The film’s positive embrace of the hyper-feminine as something to be celebrated is undercut by the fact that this message’s foundations are rooted in promoting Mattel, who have historically excluded people who are BIPOC, queer, disabled from representation in their products. While Will Ferrell’s “CEO of Mattel” character is a clear parody, the CEO of Mattel in real life is a man whose pockets will inevitably be lined by the film’s success.
What I find most frustrating in this discourse is the inconsistency in the way this critical eye is applied overwhelmingly to films that are overtly feminine.
Take, for example, Top Gun: Maverick; the second-highest grossing film of 2022, and a major cultural moment. The film played into hyper-masculine fantasies of militarism, where through the figure of Tom Cruise’s Captain Mitchell, the audience can be fighter pilots, taking joy rides through Colorado mountains and playing homoerotic football on the beach. This hyper-masculine film was also supported in its production by the US Military, who lent assistance to the production with personnel, insider expertise, and lending shooting locations and planes.
‘Barbie’ is functionally similar to Top Gun: Maverick in the way it offers a return to childhood for its audiences. Men who grew up in the 1980s loving the original Top Gun experienced a return to their childhood through its sequel. Many women had a similar experience with ‘Barbie’, with the plastic magic of Barbieland and the comically child-like mentality of the two central protagonists.
Why were so many silent when Top Gun: Maverick was being used as propaganda to boost enlistment for the Air Force, yet rage against Barbie because it is funded by Mattel? The problem is not that a movie so clearly made by, and for, women should not be above critique. It is that we must exercise this to all the media we consume, including the dominant masculine media.
Why, too, are so many male audiences refusing to acknowledge the film’s true message, which I felt was so painfully obvious?
Ken is literally the absolute worst guy, but is forgiven for it. He steals Barbie’s home and kicks her out of her job. He brainwashes all her friends to serve him and the other Kens. He organises a coup and a constitutional amendment to rob the Barbies of any and all power. While being bathed in comedy, Ken’s actions reflect very real patriarchal violence that so many men unthinkingly perpetrate throughout their lives. And after all of that, Barbie has to apologise to him because she hurt his feelings.
Greta Gerwig hides the horror of Ken’s character behind layers of comedy, most perfectly exemplified in the song “I’m Just Ken.” As he sings, he professes his love for her, lamenting that “where [he] see[s] love, she sees a friend.” Yet at the same moment of singing this song he is trying to destroy her.
Gerwig presents the thesis that it is fundamentally impossible for men to love women. The structures of a patriarchal society mean that no matter how much they profess to love women, men are entrenched in the patriarchal system. Every relationship between a man and a woman is inherently an act of violence.
‘Barbie’ may not have been a film that was particularly important to you, it may have failed to live up to your expectations and desires, but it doesn’t mean the film should or does lose any value. Even if you still believe it to be ideologically shallow, Gerwig’s film has sparked a cultural celebration of femininity unlike anything I have ever seen – shifting gendered power dynamics in film both on- and off-screen, proving the value of the female dollar, and generating conversation about the use of corporate funding in the art we consume. Even as I write this, I don’t know that I will change anyone’s mind about this film, especially not those of the people who refuse to understand that even someone they love, that maybe even themselves, can be the worst perpetrator of patriarchal violence. All I can ask is that you look back, maybe even watch ‘Barbie’ again, think more about what isn’t being said, and reconsider your perception of what I feel to be one of the most important films I have ever seen in my life.
