While Hollywood has never truly been unencumbered by the demands of capitalist processes, the modern filmscape is perhaps in an unprecedented age of opportunities for vertical integration. Enter: Warner Bros.' Barbie, another film which sells itself on its cutting edge subversion but is ultimately designed to soothe the masses into a state of blameless consumerism.
To be clear, Barbie is hardly unique in this regard. This is the same basic affliction that arises in movies like Pokemon: Detective Pikachu and The Lego Movie. Yet the dissonance in Barbie is somehow larger because the movie isn't just selling "Barbie" as a valid Christmas gift, but as the battlefield on which feminism itself is being fought.
The conceit of this movie is the amusing hypothetical of what Barbie would think if she stepped out of her dreamhouse to live within the market to which she is sold, to see what the people who play with Barbie dolls (or used to) actually think of Barbie. Add to that some take-home notes for dismantling the patriarchy, and you have Barbie (2023). These are not unworthy ambitions, but the movie never escapes the capitalist overtones of this game, even as it calls them out in the text itself, nor does it seem to want to.
Take, for example, the movie's calculus level lamp-shading. One moment of crisis has Barbie lamenting how she no longer feels pretty, opening the door for America Ferrera's character to assure her worth is not defined by whether she is "pretty." It is here that Helen Mirren, narrator, interjects a note to the filmmakers that Margot Robbie is the wrong actress to make this point. And with that wry observation, the walls of Jericho tumble, and I'm certain that we can now look forward to female performers of all varieties suddenly stepping into roles previously reserved for only the likes of Margot Robbie. Thank you, Helen Mirren ...
Barbie thinks itself edgy or insightful into the state of 21st century Americana because it calls out the contradictions in how women are expected to exist in the modern ecosystem. I would list them all here, but if you're interested in this conversation (or if you've seen at least two episodes of Brooklyn 99 or New Girl), I guarantee you already know them by heart. If this film is the first time a viewer is confronted with the idea that a board room full of men designing products for girls is a little skewed, good on them for catching on. But despite the narrative framing of such insights as revelatory, these talking points have been integrated into the dialogue for a while now.
This isn't to say that there was no thought or originality put into the filmmaking itself. Barbieland catches an aesthetic that feels diametrically different from modern Hollywood CGI blockbusters. You'd have to go all the way back to the soundstage musicals of MGM to catch anything approximate. Meanwhile, Margot Robbie is effervescence personified. Still, the film's very real strengths consistently run into its own insular mechanics: Barbie wants to assure consumers Barbie is more than a token of capitalism, but that runs against the design of the mode of popular film. The film can't help but default to the takeaway that there's room for you--yes, you!--in the toy aisle.
I won't say that there is no place for this film's entry-level feminism. I also won't take away from all the barbie fans who are thrilled that this movie helps them reclaim their favorite doll as a valid mode of expression--and there is indeed something special to behold as our plastic heroine gets to experience all sorts of complex contradictions of the human experience--but I also will not give this movie more credit than it deserves, or indeed more than it aspires for.
--The Professor
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