Mattel devoted the best part of a decade to distancing itself from the playful parodic pop of “Barbie Girl,” the 1997 über-hit by Scandi dance group Aqua. A lawsuit, in fact. Why so? Simply because the song’s plastic fantastic lyrics named Barbie a bimbo. How times have changed. Unto a world in which self-awareness is now corporate currency arrives the Greta Gerwig directed Barbie. A film in which Mattel’s blonde bombshell is not merely labelled a bimbo but accused of setting back feminism a half century. Don’t be fooled. As business is business, the film serves to reframe the narrative. That was yesterday, today’s Barbie is a paragon of inclusivity. And yet, there’s still the odd dig here that rings contemporaneous truth. It’s a peculiar beast, this; hybrid in intent and far from the film you might be expecting.
As per Warner Bros’ exorbitant marketing campaign, which appears to have painted virtually the whole planet pink in recent months, Barbie is at its best when bathing in its own sauna of hot steamin’ camp. There are all-out dance routines, never-ending wardrobes, musical interludes, mermaids, fireworks, acrobatics and so much more. It’s all served on the most fabulous platter of production design – seriously, it’s glorious – and with a frankly delicious side helping of the sardonic. Muppet-esque asides wink openly at the absurdity of Barbie’s world, all the while never undermining the imaginative power of childhood play. On waking of a morning, Barbie washes in a waterless shower, brushes her hair before an empty mirror frame and prepares waffles that she will never eat. There are no stairs in Barbieland. Barbie simply floats – or slides – from floor to floor. That’s the stuff you expected, right?
How about extensive reference to Barbie and Ken’s lack of genitalia, not to mention a fervent attack on patriarchal constructs and whole narrative that hinges predominantly on existential crises? Perhaps not.
Margot Robbie is Stereotypical Barbie. She’s the doll you think of when someone says “Barbie,” a replica of Ruth Handler’s original 1959 design. While her Barbieland kin enjoy employment as varied as lawyer, diplomat and president, Stereotypical Barbie wants no more from life than pink perfection on cyclical repeat. Life delivers. Or, rather, things are peachy right up until the point that Barbie starts to contemplate death and develop cellulite. On the behest of Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), Barbie heads to the real world for answers. Naturally, Ken (“just” Ryan Gosling) comes too. There’s no Ken without Barbie. She’ll learn some home truths, he’ll discover what it is to sit atop the patriarchy.
The film is narrated by Helen Mirren, whose occasional interjections only add to the fun. Early on she proclaims Barbieland as the place ‘where all problems of feminism and equality can be solved.’ Imagine Barbie’s shock, then, when she is greeted in the real world not by hugs and thank yous but an ogling male gaze and disparaging female shrug. It’s a somewhat crude device that parallels the skewed gender dynamics of the real world with the matriarchy of Barbie’s: ‘Basically, everything that men do in your world, women do in ours.’
The film imagines how a man – here embodied by several dozen Ken bros. – might respond to decades of the subjection enforced upon women throughout history. It’s a rather more binary construction than exists in the here and now and veers a little uncomfortably into gendered stereotype. Misogyny cannot be resolved by misandry and, while such is far from the film’s meaning or morality – gender is both a trap and emancipator here and both Robbie’s Barbie and Gosling’s Ken benefit from genuinely beautiful journeys of empowerment in the film – exaggerated mirroring can’t help but open this avenue for interpretation.
Structurally, too, Barbie is, at times, unsettled by a crisis of critical identity. Here is a film that chastises Mattel for branding body dysmorphia while being completely complicit in the merchandising sales spike that will certainly follow its release. A brief glimpse of Wheelchair Barbie is quickly forgotten, while race is considered paintwork rather than a divergence of lived experience. When one character proposes Ordinary Barbie should be Mattel’s next invention, a suit is quick to note that such a doll would ‘make loads of money’. It’s a depressing indictment of a truth we know and accept. So potent is the inherent tonal confusion here that previews prior to the film in my screening promoted the new Luca Guadagnino offering in between the latest Illumination toon and Trolls 3. Talk about a threesome.
In spite of Barbie’s more rooted faults, its outward strengths warrant acclaim. Robbie and Gosling are impeccable. There’s no denying this. Each excels in the delivery of a highly quotable script – ‘when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest’ – and mines every ounce of the comic potential it has to offer. It’s all sublimely directed by Gerwig, whose eye for detail is extraordinary and engagement in the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship continues to pay dividends. Barbie may not be the total froth fest certain promos teased but exists nonetheless in a hot pink zeitgeist of its very own and is going nowhere. Well played Greta…or maybe Mattel?