It is likely that, by the time you are reading this, the detonation of Barbie talk will have since died down to become trite explanations on how much money it made in its opening weekend and What This Means for the Movies (and for Women). You may have been part of—if not all—of the few meme cycles about this film following its viral release. During Barbenheimer or as the two sides of the Barbie vs. Oppenheimer dispute came to a cringe détente, many things would have happened. At least from what has been written by everyone who cares to write, you might have read that Barbie is an exuberant girlboss fantasia; that it’s yasss and slay; that it wants to have its cake and eat it too. However, you could also be familiar with the argument that there is no feminist anti-capitalist critique immanent to a cinematic production beholden to Mattel, Inc., just as there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. This even caused bobbleheads at Fox News to brand the movie “anti-man,” which they claimed promotes “trans grooming” among other gender issues addressing transgender employees in dog spas only.
You may have your opinions about Greta Gerwig’s shift from Indiewood to Hollywood and the fact that she is now considered a sell-out or as some people call her; Powerful Woman Who Can Do What She Wants. It may be the case that you are thankful for her declaration of career aspirations instead of Noah Baumbach, who co-wrote and produced alongside her – clearly not the partner you would prefer directing Thor among these two cinematic powerhouses. Perhaps, through an article in The New Yorker, you read about Mattel making a whole pile of movies based on their toys and wished you had never existed on earth which is the worst among many multiverses.
After seeing Barbie in Manhattan during its world premiere, someone once asked Amy Taubin whether she was “inspired” by it while they were riding an elevator together, to which she replied, “It’s about a fucking doll.” In truth yes: Barbie is a movie about a fucking doll and when we claim that producing a film about PVC doodads is stupid then it must also be argued that Gerwig is not dumb as a filmmaker. Consequently, after accepting that Barbie is indeed about a fucking doll, we should then try to understand how this can be said to be true. This issue has been well pondered over by Gerwig considering that if Barbie tends towards maximalist contradictions like its sprawling discourse then it might have made more sense. In any case where Proust is referenced along with Marx and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) in the same film surely cannot ignore what Gilles Deleuze once remarked ‘cinema is always as perfect as it can be’, given all the images and signs it creates according to their availability at any moment.’ Which brings us back to how much corporate IP eats everything around us — this being both object and subject matter for Gerwig in one completely anarchic hyperreal feast.
The plot here is not at all metaphysical. Our plastic protagonist, Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), lives in bubblegum-pink Barbieland, the place where all kinds of diverse Barbies populate and Ken is just… Ken, while her metaverse crashes one day when she asks other Barbies if they ever think about dying. This Mattel Matrix glitch has to do with the feelings of some kid in real life who happens to be playing with Stereotypical Barbie. Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) who was played “too hard” making her hair spiky and limbs super flexible tells it like it is; for instance, Barbie needs to travel through Los Angeles’s mirror dimension to find out who’s been pulling the strings and bring back happy thoughts.
Gerwig does not fall into this trap because her characters – human beings as well as others – move between imaginary and real worlds with ease. The “real” Los Angeles appears no less artificial than Barbieland which usually invites the usual jokes about Hollywood being phony but its significance for the viewer lies in a lack of any narrative reality at stake. In other words, Barbie’s pop feminist manifesto is far more convincing than its commentary on representation does.
In a sense, the film is concerned with moral representation. The Chief Diversity Officer of Mattel would be satisfied by the racial and physical spectrum of Barbies in the movie, even as it remains committed to its humorous critique of the doll’s negative influence on women’s self-image. However, taking seriously the gendered politics in question—indeed, understanding whether any politics is coherent behind it—is not to see another issue of representation richer than form and aesthetics that this movie explores.
Barbie knows that cinema is no more than images placed together; all links between a movie and our passion or history are just figments of our imagination. While this may appear quite trite, it is one strange process by which we invest movies with our beliefs, values, identifications, and desires that has been examined since film theory—particularly feminist film theory—was first developed. This is why cinema constitutes an ideological cultural form par excellence because according to Marxist theorist Louis Althusser ideology holds that “ideology represents us as subjects.” Barbie therefore shows what ideological logic can do. There isn’t a single second when reality comes into play throughout the entire motion picture.
This idea is illustrated in some of the movie’s best jokes. Following Stereotypical Barbie from her hometown to Los Angeles where she cannot believe she has experienced misogyny at last for instance , this leads Barbie’s main Ken (played by Ryan Gosling) drifts away before he finds out about something even stranger called “patriarchy”. His introduction to male power opens up through an amusing collage of US presidents, CrossFit himbos, macho cultural iconography—most erotically on his thermoplastic cortex; men on horseback—a lot of horses. On his return back to Barbieland inculturated thusly, Ken would give his reality a cartoonish überdude makeover. The Barbies then plan together how they will subvert this new wave of Kenergy by using the fact that “Ken contains the seeds of his own destruction.”
Thus, one Barbie confounds her Ken by pretending she does not know how money works; others ask for advice on playing sports; and yet another Toy Ken (specifically designed to lure in the type of man who thinks Christopher Nolan is a genius) pretends to be ignorant of The Godfather (1972) so he can mansplain film. Each of these scenes including dozens more as well continue to emphasize Barbie’s groundlessness. It is a movie about movies or better still, it is a film about nothing at all. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Southland Tales (2006), Speed Racer (2008)—these other films constitute its true sisterhood with their dominant modes being flamboyant pastiche and self-devouring reflexivity.
It is interesting however that this is where Barbie takes political effect. Postmodern liberation has robbed us of an object called “woman.” No matter what empowering or cynical reading may be given to Barbie, whether it is seen as satire or sold out , the text insists on its fantasy being constructed in nature and casts doubt on any possible relationship with reality we may think of. That’s how we get caught up in Barbie’s spikes.
In a world where patriarchy thrives in a movie that exists just to celebrate dumb Intellectual Property, “woman” can only be an illusion and a riddle to be asked. Barbie’s success is to say that we are all plastic fantastic and no one controls womanhood—not Greta Gerwig, not Mattel and certainly not a damn doll. We have redesigned the original text from start to finish by using synonyms and variety of sentence structures.
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