Barbie has one of the worst messages I’ve ever seen in a mainstream film. And no, it’s not the message you think.
Genre: Fantasy/Toy
Premise: When Barbie learns that the person playing with her in the real world is having depressed thoughts, she travels there to try and sort it out, causing complete mayhem for the Mattel toy company.
About: Barbie just crossed a billion dollars at the box office and it doesn’t look to be slowing down! The phenomenon kept the film in first place against three heavy-hitting contenders this weekend. Yet in its third weekend, it still came out on top.
Writers: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach
Details: 90 minutes
I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to see Barbie.
I’m not a Barbie hater.
I’m sure if I grew up as a little girl, I would’ve been yanking these dolls off the shelves.
I was just never convinced this movie was made for me.
I walked into the theater yesterday hoping I was wrong.
Let’s see what happened.
In case you haven’t seen the film, Barbie lives in Barbie Land, a place where all the Barbies are living their best life every day and all the Kens are cast off to the side, usually at the beach.
One day, Main Barbie (Margot Robbie), has her thoughts interrupted by death. Confused, she starts searching for the meaning of this unwelcome thought-intrusion. While that’s happening, we get to know Main Ken (Ryan Gosling), who’s only ever wanted to be with Barbie and, yet, Barbie enacted atomic-level friend-zone status upon him.
Barbie eventually figures out that whoever’s playing with her in the “real world” is the one having thoughts of death. So Barbie travels to the real world (with Ken, reluctantly), to clear all this up.
Once in the real world, she’s confused by the fact that women don’t rule, but rather men do. Consequently, Ken is the happiest person ever. He didn’t know there could be a world where men dominated.
So while Barbie tries to find this girl who’s playing with her, Ken heads back to Barbie Land, and turns it into a Ken-topia, instilling the rules he learned about dude-osity in the real world, which basically amounts to making horses a primary feature. That and there’s a lot more bro-time.
When Barbie finally comes back from her travels, she sees that the Kens have taken over. So she gets all the Barbies together, concocts a plan to have them all fake-cheat on their Ken boyfriends so that they’ll fight with each other. And while they’re busy doing that, the Barbies will re-institute the matriarchy. The End.
I’m going to be honest.
This movie has one of the worst messages I’ve ever seen in a mainstream movie before. Maybe the worst ever. And the idea people have of this being some fun happy film… I mean, if you have no concept of subtext then maybe. But, otherwise, you should be recognizing how terrible this movie’s message is.
But before we get to that, I actually liked a lot about this movie.
I absolutely loved Ryan Gosling. This is his most memorable role ever. It’s not close. He was hilarious. That image of him in the big fur coat throughout the final act is iconic. His musical number was awesome. I loved everything about Gosling in this.
I also liked Margot Robbie. They say the mark of a great performance is that you can’t imagine anybody else in the role. That is Margot Robbie in Barbie. I’d say that maybe – MAYBE – the only other person I could see pulling this off is a 28 year old Reese Witherspoon. But, other than her, Margot Robbie was it.
It says a lot that despite me hating the message of this movie, I still liked the primary character who delivered that message.
I liked Villain Ken (Simu Liu). That actor is really growing on me. He was the perfect foil for Main Ken.
I liked the concept of the film and found it all rather clever – this idea that you’re being played with by someone in the real world and their feelings can seep into you. And the only way to stop it is to go into the real world. And then you have the meta stuff with Mattel freaking out that one of their Barbies has gotten into the real world. All of that was fun. I’m a big fan of fish-out-of-water stories and I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all that the two biggest movies of the year (Barbie and Super-Mario) are both fish-out-of-water scenarios.
Greta Gerwig is now an official directing force. I admit that I previously saw her as an indie mumblecore vet who lucked into a Hollywood directing career. I did not pray at the alter of Lady Bird. But the vision of this movie is so strong and so distinct that I don’t think you can argue that Gerwig is anything other than a top-tier director in Hollywood.
Wow, Carson, you liked a bunch of stuff here. So you must have loved the movie!
No. I definitely did not.
The reason for this is that this movie hates people.
Something that I’ve despised over the the last five years is the way the media has worked so hard to divide us with these stories that pit one side against another.
In particular, ever since #metoo, there’s been this not-so-subtle campaign within the media to divide men and women. And, to a certain extent, I understand why this happens. Online media thrives on bold controversial takes. The most toxic divisive take is going to get the most clicks. And clicks equal money. I don’t like that the media stokes this division. But at least I understand it from a financial perspective.
The Barbie movie, however, doesn’t have to live by these rules. And yet it still chooses to. The message of this movie is, literally, men and women shouldn’t be together. We must always hold each other down.
That is literally what Barbie says at the end. Because men are in charge and keep women down in the real world, us ladies are going to be in charge and keep men down in the Barbie World.
Are we serious here????
This is what you’re teaching people!!!!!????
Some people are saying this movie is anti-men. I don’t think it’s anti-men. I think it’s anti-harmony. It does not want men and women to live in harmony with one another.
And the saddest thing about that is that Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach believe, from their privileged upper-crust educational ivory tower, that this is reality. That men and women hate each other and therefore should stay away from each other. When reality is the exact opposite. Go outside for an hour and talk to 20 men and 20 women and you’ll hear nothing but praise and love from each side about the other guaranteed.
If these two had their way, they would destroy that. They would get rid of that love. Because that love threatens their world view. If it turned out that men and women really do love each other, then there’s no cause left to fight for.
How out of touch are these two? Well, there’s this moment in the movie when Barbie first gets to the real world and construction workers start saying all these lurid things to her and I’m thinking, “Is it 1978? Who talks like this anymore? Better yet, when is the last year that a construction worker yelled out something sleazy to a woman? 1990 maybe???”
What reality are these two living in?
It’s such a sad point of view of the world.
One of the worst examples of this is the third act “Plan” to take back Barbie Land. On the men’s side, Gerwig and Baumbach have all the Kens serenade all the Barbies with Matchbox 20’s “Push,” a song whose lyrics are, “I want to push you around. Well I will. Well I will. I want to push you down. Well I will. Well I will. I want to take you for granted.”
Concurrently, the Barbies all agree to “cheat” on their Kens by going off and being with other Kens in front of them, so the Kens will get mad and start fighting each other.
These are the two behaviors Gerwig and Baumbach are choosing to highlight about men and women in the climax of their movie. What does that tell you about what they think about unity and relationships and togetherness and love? They hate it. Which is what makes this film so disgusting.
This was one of the most confusing moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had because, like I said, I loved so many things about the movie. And then this overbearing theme just destroys all that good will.
To a certain extent, I give these two credit because they did get a very dark message across in a giant Hollywood film. That’s hard to do. The studio system is built to be as inoffensive as possible. How they got WB and Mattel to buy into this message, I’m not sure. Maybe they were too dumb to realize it.
But that’s every indie writers’ dream, is to bring their dark indie-ness into the Hollywood machine because it’s so hard and Hollywood doesn’t ever let you.
And it’s paid off for them. The average moviegoer isn’t looking as deep as I am. They go to see the fun pretty colors, the beautiful Margot Robbie, and the funny Ryan Gosling, and they leave with a smile on their face. Which is probably the scariest thing of all. Is that they don’t realize that this dark toxic idea has now been injected into their brain. And that maybe, at some point in life, it starts manifesting itself.
Margot Robbie said it herself and I can’t agree with her more. “How did they let us make this movie?”
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t be afraid to inject darkness into your mainstream screenplay. Darkness is what gives stories depth. Even though I didn’t like this message here, the inclusion of death as well as the complexity of male-female dynamics makes a movie like this stick with you for a lot longer than other big Hollywood movies, for better or for worse. :)
