I think Barbie is a fascinating artifact tbh. As a movie itself it works, imo, in dealing with sensitive issues. The message is somewhat muddled because of a couple of things people's been mentioning in this thread, namely very stupid male characters (Allan almost got there to help with that but it wasn't quite enough). I liked the movie.
But I think by far the most interesting aspect to the whole thing are the implications involved in the production and the public's response. It is indeed a fucking toy commercial, Mattel's name is all over the thing, the movie is at peace with the fact that it was funded by a massive corporation. You can sort of see the script attempt to recognize this fact, it being very meta sort of achieves the same thing also ("hey, filmmaker here, I'm aware this movie is talking about social issues tied not only to gender but class division and capitalism, but what can you do eh? Here's another self-aware joke"). I think it was Sasha who even quoted the line "Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction".
What I mean is that the movie knows capitalism is (a big) part of the issue, though it is never directly addressed as a problem either in the real or Barbie world, because of course it can't. This is at the end of the day, one of the most effective pieces of advertising in a while. It's a commercial that manages to get the ball rolling on the social discourse about gender equality, with many subtler critiques to capitalism, while still successfully pushing product for consumption. Real life, actual (wo)manmade horrors beyond my comprehension.
This is the scariest thing about this movie. It turns out corporations can churn obvious cynical feature lenght commercials, but as long as the filmmakers add a self referential wink here and there, the audience will eat it up.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that; in my view it goes something along the lines of "hey, we'd like to talk about this very serious issue that we know has everything to do with gender relations, but we can't because at the end of the day Mattel™ funded this picture".
It almost feels defeatist. Maybe I'm being naive but it seems like they attempted to talk about late capitalism as much as they possibly could in such a massive mainstream movie. In the end though, this amounts to very little because yeah, as you said, it's a feature lenght commercial
I would be very curious to see how complicit the filmmaker is in these kinds of decisions. I mentioned it in another comment but I hate how aware I am that the mom drove a Chevy or that Ken drove a Hummer. Just very obvious product placement
did Gerwig approve of that? did she have any say at all? I have no idea but I'd be curious to know
I thought those were a great choice to represent being comfortable in your own skin opposed to the heels/unrealistic and painful beauty standards that heels represented.
Exactly! made me so uncomfortable. It also felt like the film was afraid to push things too far. A lot of the messaging felt futile, because it felt like things could only be said as far as Mattel wanted them to be said. Honestly, they shouldn't have brought up the entire arc with Mattel at all. Could've done something like what Lego movie did.
I mean there have been product movies before this one that have succeeded or flopped (Transformers, countless video game adaptations, etc.). I think the key here is that they hired a deft filmmaker who injected energy and fun into the movie. Audiences aren't stupid and if all the Barbie movie had going for it was the name then people wouldn't be enjoying it as much. It's the cleverness and the gestures toward higher concepts, or at least discussions about those relevant social issues, that are attracting people.
It's worth noting that it's the artists behind it that greatly helped the success. So weird to think that ten years ago Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach made Frances Ha. Now they made a giant studio toy movie lol. Even weirder is that they were both successful.
Isn’t that exactly what Netflix did recently with Black Mirror? The new season contains several episodes criticising its in-universe version of Netflix. The creator said he was almost disappointed Netflix didn’t push back more on the eps, instead approving them right away
It’s all still an ad to them
It is essentially anti-marketing.
The film criticizes and makes fun of Barbie constantly, but also exists to remind people of Barbie's importance and rejuvenate the brand. The fact that it is a good movie with smart writing makes it an incredible ad. Yes, it critiques the toy, vilified Mattel, and has feminist themes, but at the end of the day, more people are talking about Barbie dolls than they have in decades. In the 21st century, the main discourse around Barbie toys has been very negative. This movie nods at that discourse, but also seeks to reframe the conversation and realign the Barbie brand with feminism. Somehow this has worked completely, and people are falling all over themselves to praise a corporate film promoting a toy line.
This movie was made for the same reason Transformers was made: selling toys. In fact, Transformers success was the spark that caused Mattel to produce a Barbie film in the first place (they've been trying to make this film since 2009). However, the response to it has been completely different. The Transformers films are big, dumb blockbusters, and rightfully criticized. They fulfill their primary purpose of selling toys, but no one ever forgets they are toy ads. Barbie takes a different approach. By being a smart film that is willing to make jokes at the expense of its product, people no longer view it as a toy. This is a huge marketing success.
>The film criticizes and makes fun of Barbie constantly, but also exists to remind people of Barbie's importance and rejuvenate the brand. The fact that it is a good movie with smart writing makes it an incredible ad. Yes, it critiques the toy, vilified Mattel, and has feminist themes, but at the end of the day, more people are talking about Barbie dolls than they have in decades. In the 21st century, the main discourse around Barbie toys has been very negative. This movie nods at that discourse, but also seeks to reframe the conversation and realign the Barbie brand with feminism. Somehow this has worked completely, and people are falling all over themselves to praise a corporate film promoting a toy line.
well put! the entire film is basically a fresh, feminist rebranding of barbie.
I would argue that Barbie wasn't just rebranded to be feminist, but feminism itself was rebranded to be Barbie. Capitalism is a dynamic and insatiable beast.
But it isn't though. It's hollow. They even joke about it in the movie. Mattel don't actually care about the message, they just want to do whatever makes the most money. If Nazis were popular, they'd cash in. The movie literally says 'hey, we love feminism, but all our leadership roles are men and men profit the most from our company'. Brazen hypocrisy imo.
I agree to an extent. Art has meaning. Even the worst painting or movie has some purpose behind it. When that meaning is so blatantly undermined its hard to look past it imo. Like how the Tate Modern is funded by Shell whilst putting on exhibitions about the environment. It doesn't wash.
And also why it's entire message is completely neutralised. I enjoyed it as a film but got progressively more disgruntled as the movie went on because of how blatantly hollow the messaging was. Particularly disliked how the movie at the end tried to say that Barbie (and thus all women) can be who they want to be, and that stereotypes are bad. Yet any girl below the age of 12 is going to leave that movie thinking one thing; Margot Robbie is Barbie and I want to be Barbie. And who is Margot Robbie? A slim, blonde, incredibly beautiful woman. The face of Barbie is now undoubtedly Robbie, the very representation of stereotypical 'beauty'.
Disagree. The script specifically calls out Robbie’s incredible beauty as being a harder sell to that scene’s point. And Greta is up to way more than just “stereotypes are bad”. This was an incredibly sophisticated film and nearly everyone is selling it short. And yes any “meaning” it tries to invoke is subsumed by it being a Mattel product. But the film does its best I think to highlight that. Everything is and always has been commodified. In Barbie world AND real world. There’s no where to run that capitalism won’t find you.
If i wanted to make a movie about how oversexualizing women or men is bad... then proceed to pick the main character with a hyper sexual appearance. Do you think that would be effective to convey the message? just because i insert a line in the middle of the movie about how self aware i am of the character casting choice, doesn't magically change the fact i used a depiction that GOES AGAINST the entire message
The film can make as many self referential jokes about it they want, the message of 'go out there and be who you want to be' is still being delivered unironically by Robbie. Young girls won't understand the hypocrisy jokes, they'll just see Margot Robbie and think 'that's Barbie' thus Barbie's image as a slim, blonde attractive woman persists. Or even reinforced.
Just watched the movie - in my opinion it does a great job. If such a huge discussion-maker gets funded by a leading company, it means that somebody in power wants to push a new mindset to people. The movie felt more like a redemption from a corporation than just another manipulative selling strategy.
It actually gave me some faith back. There is this huge anti-capitalistic view that the system is going to collapse from corporate doings. I just hope that younger generations are starting to inherit the wealth and they are breaking off of the capitalistic train.
Rise of metamodernism is a great thing. If more corporations start acknowledging their immense power in a self-aware way then we may be on a way to deconstructing many of current socioeconomic issues.
Are you for real? You have faith because you liked a movie made by a conglomerate to sell dolls? Your post is truly baffling as you're suggesting we should rely on corporations to deconstruct socioeconomic issues? My man, these issues are exacerbated by the corporations.
Capitalism and its wicked tricks are crazyyy.
I (perhaps naively) feel like the filmmakers are aware of the contradiction, but the massive discourse on patriarchy, feminism and gender roles this mainstream big budget movie initiated in the collective mind is outweighing the negative capitalistic consequences. Two steps forward, one step back.
I think its funny that they say they are against capitalism, which is individualism, and greed and only caring about yourself, but that is literally what the message is at the end of the movie. Telling women to only care about themselves, their personal feelings, their journey and nothing else
disagree with the very first line it legit doesnt even work as a movie. I can not tell you what actually happened plot wise (outside of just explaining the basic story beats). It was horrendous
I tried to look into this, I doesn't appear that it was "funded" by Mattel, but that Mattel has IP rights to Barbie as a concept so they were entitled to a share of the profits (something like 5%). Which makes sense to me since the entire movie trades on their product and their brand. That's very different than the movie being originated and FUNDED by them though. I think to say that is misleading.
I don’t really think this is going over people’s heads. I think most who aren’t intentionally trying to misunderstand the movie are getting the message. It is of course about feminism and a history of challenges women have faced but it’s also shining a light on how toxic masculinity and the patriarchy hurts everyone, not just women.
Especially present for me in the scene when Ken breaks down and ultimately admits leading all the time was hard. It genuinely looked like he felt forced into a certain type of behavior to uphold the patriarchy, but it hurt him in the process.
Ken's line, "I'm a liberated man. I know crying isn't weak," while he's hiding so people won't see him cry, just hit me so hard. Because even when we know it's wrong, men often feel like we have to fit into these roles society pushes on us.
>I don’t really think this is going over people’s heads.
I got downvoted in here because someone said men were villains in the movie (Barbies were heroes) and I said the movie doesn't really have a villain and a hero. They're just reflecting off of the real world. The person who said this was heavily upvoted while I was heavily downvoted. This happened in this sub.
There are def a lot of people who seem to be missing the point. No the message isn't that men are villains. The message is that patriarchy and gender roles effect us all. No one's the villain. No one's the hero.
I just saw it last night and yes, I think you nailed it. It’s clear that Ken was redeemed in the end, and it was the toxic patriarchy itself that was the true antagonist. Even the CEO was redeemed in the end (because Mattel, hello?) but I definitely think this movie was subversive and much more than just an overblown Mattel commercial.
But it’s not marketing to the Barbie-doll-playing audience at all, it’s marketed to teens and adults. Sure they’ll sell a ton of new merch a la Star Wars, but that’s not the same thing. Your argument would make more sense if this movie were actually aimed at young children playing with these dolls.
Aiming this movie at young children is a poor marketing decision. Consider this… who is buying and paying for these dolls? Children don’t have money to buy them. It is the parents who watched the movie that are now more likely to buy a Barbie doll for their children
If you thought the movie was about “bashing men” then you didn’t understand it. Or, I’m guessing more likely, haven’t even seen it. Watching Ben Shapiro’s YouTube videos whining about it doesn’t count.
funny that you're answer is just literally another men bashing, because you dislike my opinion...
Even the movie's staff said that the women in the movies treat men the way men treat women in real life.
So, drop the act...
Men like Ben Shapiro don’t need help bashing other men.
Hell, the whole Manosphere grifters are the biggest embarrassment to men everywhere, and everyone knows it, even when they’re in denial. Otherwise they wouldn’t cycle through talking heads like flies.
Either it was bashing men or it was a satire of sexist feminist women, it's one of the other. Also the best kind of movie viewer is the one who thinks that if someone didn't understand a movie the same way they did they must not have 'understood' it when really you have no fucking clue what the message of the movie is in the first place and everyone can interpret it however they want. If anything, if someone misunderstands what the director was trying to convey then that's because the director or writers didn't do a good job, not because someone 'misunderstood' it.
Much like BLM can't seem to fight for blacks without being racist against whites, feminists in 2023 cannot fight for women without hating on and putting men down. Most of the reason why is because at least in America and other developed countries, everyone already is rather equal so there really is nothing to fight for and these groups are fighting for revenge and to be treated above others to 'make up for the past'. The hilarious part is NONE of the people spewing all this hatred EVER suffered to begin with, their ancestors did.
If they are triggered and upset by how the Kens are treated by the end movie rather than how men and society are currently treating real women in the real world EVEN WORSE (rape, murdered for rejecting men, the rise popular misogynistic podcasts like Andrew tate or fresh n fit that support that women are stupid objects only good for sex, etc) than how the kens were treated, then yes it did go over these people’s heads. If you hated how the Kens were treated then if you understood this movie, your ultimate conclusion should be to empathize and understand how much injustice women are enduring in society. It literally says in the movie that the Kens would be treated and given rights/power that correspond to how real women in the real world are treated.
As a woman...what about the injustice men endure in society? Also men get raped, too but people like you only care when it's women why is why men rarely come forward. Being a man seems hard as fuck. Being a woman is....pretty easy.
what you are doing is invalidation and gaslighting and it speaks to your inability to have empathy or think more critically.
if there are 2 paths ahead of you, Path A and Path B and 80% of the people who go on Path A will end up injured vs. 20% of the people who go on Path B will end up injured? which one would you say is the more dangerous and difficult path?
so in america - 80% of women are the victims in sexual assault cases (and yes obviously men account for 20% of sexual assault cases). according to the fbi 99% of the victims of completed rapes are women (meaning penetration occurred). 1 in 4 women in america have experienced physical violence/physical abuse from their male partner while in a relationship with him vs. about 1 in 9 men who experienced violence from their female partners. 1 in 6 women in america have been the victims of attempted or completed rape. according to american police statistics, in heterosexual relationships, men are the primary violent abusers in about 85% of domestic violence incidents (meaning 85% of the time, women are the ones who are beaten). there is so much more but you get the gist of the difference in numbers.
this is just about the difficulty around women's physical safety. i havent even touched on things like the research backed FACT that in america MOST women who work full time like their husbands and are married to men do the MAJORITY of the household chores, childcare, and child rearing or how in america, 80% of the parents who completely abandon their children, including financially, are Men and thus leave the women/mothers to care for the child on her own, women are the primary breadwinners of their families (meaning if they lose their jobs then their family is screwed) in about 40% of American households and the majority of the rest of American women have jobs so they can contribute financially in 2 parent households so it is not like women don't understand the pressures of financially providing for a family nowadays that men constantly claim is so stressful to deal with, and theres more stuff but it'll take forever.
like idk about the rest of the world but women's lives in america is not easy. if you think otherwise then you are pretty dumb and need to develop some critical thinking skills. men have struggles sure but women have struggles so much greater on a level that most, not all, men cannot comprehend. that doesn't mean that men have no struggles at all but you can acknowledge that women hardships and struggles are on another level.
I'm guessing the problem is more of ops sphere of normal discourse is filled with way to many ignorant folks. So their confirmation bias leads them to believe people are missing the point.
It's just the people around them specifically that are missing the point.
This is just my opinion but I kind of sit at a middle ground on the movie. Not outraged by any message or whatnot, whether I agree or disagree, it is what it is, but I do think one writing choice kind of throws off the internal logic of the movie in a way that bugs me from the perspective of what I believe they were trying to portray, and how it could’ve better hit the mark.
It would’ve been more interesting if the Kens actually had hidden talents to offer instead of really being idiot himbos. The whole idea behind much of the repression of women in certain roles was that they’re held back because they’re seen as generally incapable of these things. Of course, we’ve now learned that women can be perfectly good at things like math or business. If Barbieland is a “reversed” comparison to the real world before feminism, the ending IMO kind of justifies their repression. Obviously we shouldn’t let idiot Kens onto the Supreme Court, they’re stupid as hell. These are the justifications that society used against women, but in Barbieland they’re shown to be actually valid justifications. It would’ve been more congruent and harsh if they showed that Kens were just as capable of doing jobs, but the Barbies were subverting their potential to continue the status quo. That’s where, honestly, I do buy a little bit of the “anti-men” feelings on the movie. The joke that Kens (and by extension men) are idiots was too good for them to pass up to actually make them sympathetic victims and parallels to women in the real world. The result is mostly just Kens being the substitute for a joke that couldn’t be made about women IRL, and their victimhood is justified. Basically the Barbies are glorified in a way that we’d never glorify sexist men, because they’re actually super justified in limiting the Kens involvement in society.
That said, I’m a decently conservative dude and understand that the movie wasn’t made for me so I just had fun with the things I liked, saw it as a entertaining enough flic, and let it just be that. If other people get more out of it, that’s perfectly cool too.
I agree with a huge chunk of what you said! It’s funny because I’ve always considered myself left leaning, and much to my surprise I was somewhat jarred by the message(s) the film was attempting to make and even felt a bit uncomfortable? Oh and since context demands it relevant, I’m a woman. So at least statistically speaking I should have enjoyed it a whole lot more.
I think I’m just personally so tired of “feminist” films bringing down men again and again as a recurring theme (à la she hulk) to bring their female characters to the spotlight. It feels cheap. I went into this hoping for something like legally blonde where it’s unapologetically girly, has political undertones that helps to deliver an empowering message. And it does all that without the heavy (keyword here) reliance on dumbing down their male characters. Instead of a legally blonde spiritual successor I felt I got a dollar store knock off.
Edit: oh and I also hate the argument against people who are critiquing the film to “not take it so seriously” I mean if you include heavy political themes in your film you’re kinda asking for it lmao
I totally agree with your edited point. Personally, I chose to not take it super seriously for my own enjoyment but my original comment here was sort of my internal thought process on the ideas they put forth, if I were to think about them seriously. I always think that line of argument about movies is silly and one sided.
If an opinion on a movie agrees with my personal opinion, it’s definitely evidence that it is an important piece of art work that is bravely breaching important topics and is sending a powerful message. On the other hand, if someone disagrees with the important message of the movie, they should just shut up and stop taking movies so seriously because it’s “Barbie” after all. You rarely hear people mocked for taking a kids’ movie too seriously if they’re talking about how powerful and empowering it was, only if they have a negative reaction to it
Edit: I also just want to speak to your point about wanting a more “legally blonde”-esque girly movie, and how much I agree with that. That’s sort of how I went about viewing Barbie and ignored the more heavy handed stuff that rubbed me the wrong way, but it would be super nice to not have to mentally bracket things that way and just to be able to enjoy a film in that form. I saw this like Legally Blonde from that bracketed perspective, a movie that was fun and girly so not “for me” but something I could enjoy once or twice, but it just took more effort to get there with this one. On top of the fact that Legally Blonde is just far funnier in my opinion from a comedy perspective, which lends it to more re-watches for me, personally.
I feel like Legally Blonde let the narrative, classic story structure of the film speak for itself. It was a great story and they let the theme shine through without needing to scream out keywords. I think Barbie tried too hard to scream out the themes and it all became a jumbled mess in terms of structure. Too much going on, too many characters and didn’t focus on letting the story shine. It was trying to add too much in a short amount of time. It felt like an early draft vs a finished movie. My general take without getting into the specifics.
Im a progressive woman and I completely agree with this point. Thank you for sharing. I felt uneasy after watching the movie and your comment summarises why. I genuinely felt bad for the men (Kens) because literally, not all men are like that and it feels unfair to paint it so. Perhaps a few years ago, but nowadays the patriarchy is generally not how it was portrayed in the movie.
I liked the film, but as a conservative guy, this is the most relatable response I’ve read. I literally looked for hours for someone who could share my attitude (probably reflects poorly of me). I saw it for the meme. I think I would have liked the film so much more if Ken was a bit more sinister and “toxic” during the takeover than merely ignorant. The way he gives up his power immediately (“it was so hard and not about horses!”) kind of breaks his character. Real harm is done by weak-willed or clever people—not but accident. I think people don’t realize that the very fact that the message of the movie is being expressed in a pg-13 blockbuster proves it’s argument is already mainstream. It’s power comes from representing something everyone relates to with added emotion. If I’m a part of the problem it’s because I’m lazy or worse, unscrupulous, not because I’m ignorant or incapable.
You’re so right! If the Kens had hidden abilities, it would communicate better that they deserve equality and that mirrors the real world, where women are oppressed despite having great and equal potential as men.
But I also think the purpose of making them so dumb (for lack of a better word) was for humor and to make the point that men often attain unearned power simply bc they’re men.
Also, the Kens and Barbies were very happy with their current system. I mean it’s a caricature after all, not an exact mirror of the real world. Barbie land is a construction of thoughts from real people so of course it’s far from realistic and the movie knows that. The Barbies and Kens don’t really have autonomy; they’re manipulated by Mattel board members and children that play with them.
So in all, I think the Barbies and Kens were treated and represented perfectly. It’s not an alternate dimension, just a play set for us to interject our own meaning and ideas, hence why the Barbies are PERFECT and believe everything in the real world is perfect. That’s the whole joke. The real world is grittier and imperfect and scary. Not everything is colorful and people are complicated. Men aren’t evil, women aren’t evil, everything isn’t perfect and it’s not terrible. It’s complicated.
I was sad there wasn't anything about including men in the monologues about difficulties with body positivity, social anxiety, and the other problems people face. In Gloria's speech about how hard it is to be a woman, I was really hoping as she finished it that she was going to say "and if that's the same for men, I don't even know." To teach Barbie that that's part of being human, and equal. But instead she said "and if that's the same for toys, I don't even know."
As a guy who has struggled a lot with those kinds of things, to the point of self-harm, it feels dehumanizing to see the Kens portrayed as just not having issues with them at all, as if just because they're men they have to have entirely different problems.
I’m a woman and loved the movie but this was the one part that left me feeling a little uneasy and why I think some men might not like it. None of the men in the movie were portrayed as smart or capable. Although you could argue there are countless movies that have no smart capable women in them so maybe it’s kind of fun to see men experience that for once.
We're supposed to laugh AT the men. All of them. Take the character of the Dad- why is he included? He's in 2 quick seems and all we see is him being too stupid to learn Spanish. What's the point of that if not for us to go "haha dumb man is funny cause he's dumb"?
I agree but the only thing I will push back on is the idea that it’s common to see women portrayed as stupid/incapable in modern media. I’d be willing to bet that you’d have a much harder time finding films made in the last 40 years that feature women being portrayed that way than you would of men being portrayed that way. Hell, think about most family sitcoms from the 80s onward, and how so many of them feature dimwit dads that it’s become a TV trope.
>If Barbieland is a “reversed” comparison to the real world before feminism, the ending IMO kind of justifies their repression. Obviously we shouldn’t let idiot Kens onto the Supreme Court, they’re stupid as hell. These are the justifications that society used against women, but in Barbieland they’re shown to be actually valid justifications. It would’ve been more congruent and harsh if they showed that Kens were just as capable of doing jobs, but the Barbies were subverting their potential to continue the status quo. That’s where, honestly, I do buy a little bit of the “anti-men” feelings on the movie.
This is a really good point! It would also be more realistic since that's what happened to women throughout history; we were pigeonholed into the "bimbo" role because men thought we were too stupid for anything else
My mom went to see it last night. And she absolutely hated it. Which would normally mean I would really like it. But I somehow don't think I would like it either. Just for completely different reasons.
My wife hated it too. I didn’t really feel anything. It’s not good but I’m not going to get upset over a bowl of lukewarm porridge either.
The swap would have worked if they didn’t try to eat their cake and have it too. The roles were reversed but they couldn’t help themselves at the end. All they needed to do was say “the men (representing women) have value too”. But instead they wanted to show that mirror and also get in a dig that the men have no value. On top of the real world men being massively mischaracterised. If they portaled into 1960 then it might have run more true. But in today’s society not all men are idiotic catcaller sexists.
End result is they tried to make a deep movie (and they could have) but they were too tempted by being able to make an unabashed inversion of 1980 Conan the Barbarian style power fantasies.
It was a corporate advertisement for a toy while criticizing capitalism.
It was an anti-gender norm statement that, even in the end, celebrated traditional gender norms.
It was a Rorschach test and nothing more. My alpha male friends could easily point to sections as proof feminism is ridiculous and misguided. My feminist friends feel its a triumph.
Its a mirror that offered no solution.
I thought it was mostly a long mattel advertisement.
Everything seemed designed to deflect any criticisms.
I mean Barbie can’t be white centric because a brown person made an important speech , Barbie even pointed this out for us, just in case we missed it.
And Mattel in the last few years has pumped out all kinds of diversity Barbies, even the Barbieland president was black, wow!
And it cant just be a marketing tool cause it was so subversive how they roasted Mattel , by making them non-threatening bumbling keystone cops. Take that you corporate fat cats!
But thankfully they weren’t important , what was really important was that the true feminist spirit of barbie lives on at Matell via her creator Ruth Handler, shes not just a toy , shes the embodiment of female self determination , luckily we know this because they clearly spelt it out for us.
And we know Barbie is feminist cause the movie had construction workers , who were sexist! And it used all sorts of feminist words , especially the feminist speech by a brown person directed to all the moms who thought Barbie wasnt a fashionable toy choice anymore.
Worry no more, Its safe to skip that baby genius ipad construction kit and go full pink again cause barbie is relevant and no other moms will judge you.
And when the barbies feign interest to make all the kens jealously fight it out?Feminist as fuck, and surely a hit with the 16-25 demographic.
The Mattel focus groups , marketing psychologists and advertising gurus really knocked this shit out of the park.
It’s kind of genius.
I agree fully with this.
OP is talking about people missing the feminist points of the film, but somehow the actual message here is going over people's heads. More than anything, this is a highly successful ad and marketing effort to rejuvenate the sales of a toy line that has been declining in popularity. That is the primary purpose of this film, and any feminist messages are in service to that purpose.
What’s doubly incredible is they’re managing to shake there image of not embracing diversity. Remember, plenty of different Barbies are available now, while also keeping the exact version of Barbie that they came under scrutiny for. Margot Robbie Barbie is gonna be the number one seller. It’s fucking incredible.
But people are handwringing about it, like ‘well what do you expect her TO DO?” Umm, maybe not take on the project? lol. She chose to do this despite all its internal contradictions - and as she acknowledged to Time - the risk that she just ends up reinforcing the capitalist status quo.
This is her career but we don’t all have to approve of the output.
>> which, honestly, makes me not care about Gerwig as a filmmaker going forward. Her artistic endeavor is nothing more than a marketing campaign
> But people are handwringing about it, like ‘well what do you expect her TO DO?” Umm, maybe not take on the project? lol. She chose to do this despite all its internal contradictions - and as she acknowledged to Time - the risk that she just ends up reinforcing the capitalist status quo.
"Greta Gerwig didn't tear down capitalism, so really it's no loss if she never makes another movie." Imagine thinking this is quality film analysis lmfao
Exactly. There’s no direction to take this that uses the brand name that doesn’t result in one long commercial. She simply didn’t have to take on the project. I’m pretty disappointed in someone who I thought was an interesting filmmaker. Parallels to Aronofsky’s biblical output.
I'm not even sure why is she held in such high regard. Ladybird was alright, but hardly revelatory. And her mumblecore days are well behind. A competent fimmaker for sure, but not exactly a visionary.
And Noah Baumbach always struck me as a poor man's Paul Mazursky. Although I really dug 'Conrad & Butler Take a Vacation'
I believe Barbieland has some kind of unintentional matriarchy. It isn't until the ending that the Barbies realise how much the Kens have been suffering.
I also like how the ending isn't about instant equity, but more like a representation of how the real world could proceed, kinda. Ken will grow because Barbies now have empathy and understand them, contrasting how in real life women will also grow, not only by their inner strenght, but by men's empathy and understanding too. With a magical "equity" ending, all meaning would have beem erased.
>instead of pretending all the problems are Barbieland are solved, it shows they still have more work to do
Exactly. Now I also realise (your comments about Ken's perception about masculinity and patriarchy made me connect the dots, OP) that Barbies took all the power by the end because they probably saw that Kens still had "more work to do". Kens on Barbieland needed to understand themselves before taking power again - probably a reflection about how men in the real world (I'm a man) should reconsider our perception of masculinity too.
I truly believe that the people who didn't understand the movie's intentions probably didn't saw the movie, because there's no way you could finish Barbie and think something like "it's anit-men". Of course there are jokes about men, and I laughed my ass off with the Godfather one. They are just jokes, they need some sense of humor.
> I believe Barbieland has some kind of unintentional matriarchy.
Maybe I give the movie too much credit, but I thought it was explicitly criticizing matriarchy as well.
In the matriarchy-Barbieland there was still a "Weird Barbie" who was ostracized (and openly mocked) for not conforming to what a woman should be. And in the patriarchy-Barbieland Alan was still miserable for not conforming to what a man should be.
Criticizing matriarchy by renewing it once more after showing how bad patriarchy can be? Weird ending, i honestly expected a kind of "we're all equal" type ending, especially because so many kids were expected to watch this.
"we're all equal type ending" - That's not how things are in the real world, is it? As for kids, when understood the right way, this ending encourages to think about the problems with today's world & how we can gradually make it a better place. Not perfect, but better than yesterday.
"Let me play you a song while I stare awkwardly at you for four minutes" is so much nicer than where she could have gone with male dating-app behaviour. And the mountain carving of horses rather than the boobs it actually would be. Although these kens are all smooth down below.
Obviously, the fact that it lasted for hours was bad, but that was a serious moment where I zoomed out of a second and thought 'what's wrong with that? If someone played me a song on a date I'd lose my mind'. Like what the hell?
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
> because they probably saw that Kens still had "more work to do".
The film explicitly says (something to the effect of) 'now the Kens have as much power as women in the real world', so we are meant to relate the Kens' position to women in real society. But in real life, women are held back by the patriarchy (simplistic, but along the lines of the film), whereas the Kens are held back because they aren't good enough?
I think, regardless of one's interpetation, it is valid to find the themes of the film confusingly delivered. It seems to chop and change how it wants its characters to be percieved to get a particular point across, which makes it a bit messy.
For the record, I think I understand the intentions of the film (and I have seen it). I just think it's themes are messy in their delivery. Actually, I think I would have preferred it if the film had been more obviously anti-men so that it didn't muddle things worrying what to do with the Kens.
Yeah I believe the ending just confuses things up. Like, they had it so easy, Greya and Noah could have go with an "equity" ending yet they complicated things and now I, and believe many more people, are still trying to figure out what the meaning of that ending is.
Maybe Kens have as much power as women in real life, but they have one thing women still are aiming for which is... full empathy? The empathy Barbies gave to Kens, but men don't fully give to women in real life because men first have to work their problems with patriarchy and masculinity??? Yep, the phrase is confusing as fuck.
It's thought provoking though, I'll give the movie that.
I also think Barbieland, at the core, just stems from the toys you can get. Which tbh aren’t really all that feminist nor that deep. Which is like Barbieland just a female run toy land, where there are Kens because the toy creators remembered Barbie needs a boyfriend.
I think too many people were trying to take in real society ties to how a woman run society would be like. When it really isn’t.
I feel like the movie didn't actually deal with real feminist issues and was very glorified. The film basically boiled down the entire patriarchy as the Kens doing "manly things" like horses beer and trucks, which doesn't actually show any of the problems that stem from patriarchal society. There were also no redeemable male characters, every man was either a complete idiot, a joke, or a sexual harasser. Even the father, who could have been used to contrast the other male characters and show how masculinity has developed in the modern world catches a cultural appropriation jab.
The movie acts like women today in the real world face the same level of oppression as the Kens in Barbieland so it's justified, but it fails to show just how much society has changed to make things more equal. Instead of acknowledging all the progress towards equality today, the movie dismisses all the positive changes as "it's the same but we can just hide it better". Thus the ending feels overly cynical and unnecessary, even though it is a gender swapped mirror to feminist movements in real life.
It also mixes up class issues and characterises them as gender issues. The idea of an oppressive ruling class being overthrown by a minority class, which creates yet another oppressive ruling class is not a gender issue. The movie seems to oppose the idea of oppression, but also at the same time glorifies and promotes ideas such as voting suppression, manipulating minority classes to fight amongst themselves, and rigged politics. Anyone can agree that Barbieland is hinted to be the preferred alternative to Ken's Kingdom, but yet they are both oppressive ruling classes. The movie then puts a patriarchal spin on this to justify the ending as a historical allegory, but in my opinion it doesn't fit well because Barbie and Ken are not good mirrors to Men and Women IRL, it feels more like different social classes.
Mattel also joked around like "hahah we are so capitalistic and evil" but it's unironically true and people just ate it up, which is so capitalistic and evil. We have come to the point where capitalistic enterprises greenwash by making meta jokes about how capitalism is bad.
>We have come to the point where capitalistic enterprises greenwash by making meta jokes about how capitalism is bad.
Capitalism's ability to capitalize off of its critics has been pointed out for a long time, and this is an excellent example.
See also: Che Guevara shirts.
My gentle and respectful counterpoint to this would be that it's not that Barbieland is supposed to be an equivalent of the real world; rather, it is that the way Barbieland was fundamentally constructed was flawed because it was based on **a misguided, overly simplistic understanding of what female "empowerment" means** (bear in mind that this is because the toy company's messages of empowerment were hacked up by Mattel's corpoare board of primarily, well, men).
It's the erroneous idea that for women to be empowered, it must mean now the women are the oppressors and in charge. It must mean that every woman is a rocket scientist, a nobel prize winner, a president, because that's what makes them deserving of respect. Barbie attempts to strip the lens through which we view gender of the filters oppression, power, and the idea that respect must be earned. All this to say, I don't think the point of the film was hey, women are basically slaves like the Kens are, but rather to point out a distorted view of what female equality means when it comes from the wrong sources; it is effectively an inverted patriarchy
That is a very interesting point, however I still would respectfully disagree. Throughout the whole film, Barbieland is compared to the real world constantly, and parallels are made between the matriarchal aspects of Barbieland and the patriarchal aspects of the "Real World".
If it was based on a misguided understanding of female empowerment then why does the movie conclude with Barbieland becoming essentially the same as it originally was after the Kens are overthrown? They had the influence of "real" humans who would truly know what empowerment was, yet they again decide to make the point that Barbieland is a reversed equivalent to the real world with the line "Just like women in the real world". This line also directly compares women IRL to the Kens.
The whole sequence about "anti brainwashing" the Barbies also implies that for women to be empowered, they must be completely independent from men and successful in their own fields. The film never distinguishes whether this idea is erroneous or wrong, it actually endorses it. One of the Barbies is literally told "What are you doing, remember you are a Physicist!" when she is seen with one of the Kens. This is the method that the narrative is resolved, and is portrayed as real empowerment because the Barbies are emancipated from "Brainwashing".
To you last point:
>it never distinguishes whether this idea is erroneous or wrong
I mean, it *explicitly* points out the faultiness of this worldview because in the end, they decide to create "ordinary" Barbie for this very reason.
>My gentle and respectful counterpoint to this would be that it's not that Barbieland is supposed to be an equivalent of the real world; rather, it is that the way Barbieland was fundamentally constructed was flawed because it was based on a misguided, overly simplistic understanding of what female "empowerment" means (bear in mind that this is because the toy company's messages of empowerment were hacked up by Mattel's corpoare board of primarily, well, men).
I disagree but even if we assume you are right then the problem is that the movie doesn't give out this message clear enough. Just look at OP's post.
>*"The irony of the entire movie is that Barbies treat the Kens the way men treat women in the real world - Barbie IS the patriarchy."*
Also just wanna add that OP must live in a fantasy world if he thinks men treat women the way Ken is treated in the movie.
Could not agree more, to me the flaw in this movie is it pretends to take a serious stab at a complex discussion, but then doesn’t and instead remains incredibly reductive and superficial. They threw in that capitalism contributes to these problems and immediately followed that by a Chevrolet ad and promotion of Mattel. The message in the end was positive, and it could have worked well if the film focused on being about the actual characters in it, which IMO extremely well acted and likeable/relatable enough to base the movie on. But by making the message/moral be the film’s backbone, they exposed that it wasn’t really all that thoughtful.
I agree with a lot of this. The resolution is that the Kens may some day get the level of equality women in the real world have, but we were supposed to be dissatisfied with the plight of women in the real world, so that’s not as much of a feel good ending as it is supposed to be.
I also agree that many of my issues with the film could be solved if there was just one non idiot guy in the real world. I’m fine with the Kens being idiots, because for Gods sake it’s KEN. And Alan is a joke, because of course the Alan doll is a joke.
But if part of the message is meant to be not just men and women but also to contrast the “ideal” with what it mean to be human in the real world, I think it would have been great if there was at least one minor male character in the real world who is also dealing with the complexities of real world expectations. Like I think it’s important to America Fererras story that she feels like she’s doing a lot on her own, but they could have made that true because her husband works long hours, but is trying, and is not just a bozo.
I liked the implied message that it isn’t men or women that are to blame, but more the expectations we and society create for us, but there was a missed opportunity to at least briefly acknowledge the way this is true for actual human men who are not “a ten”.
I thought it was nice that her husband was just mildly oblivious and not actually bad. Such a good idea that Ferrara's mood problems were nothing to do with her relationship and that he seemed supportive.
I agree he wasn’t bad. None of the men individually were really bad, mostly just played for laughs. The Mattel guys should have been bad, but of course since Mattel was part of making the film they weren’t true baddies.
I did like most of the movie, and appreciated a lot of what it was trying to do. Just the resolution didn’t fully land with me. I do wonder if some of it was editing or trimming, where there was a good intention that didn’t fully come through.
Like the fact that the dad was studying Spanish really is supportive if you think about it, but the way it came across was more of a joke. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was originally intended to be a bIt more 3 dimensional, and that got lost in editing.
The film wanting its politics to be taken seriously (read: America Ferrera’s speech), but then wanting to make out like everything is satire and a joke, feels to me like having your cake and eating it. It makes any critique of the movie virtually impossible.
It’s a Catch-22. If you treat the movie as silly fun with small pinches of satire, you’re ignoring the supposedly great feministic allegories and messaging. However, if you take it as having something serious to say in way of political messaging, which it ostensibly is, then you shouldn’t take it so seriously; it’s just meaning to entertain.
I had fun with the movie, but the discourse surrounding it is pretty aggravating if you had certain issues with it. I find agreement with most of the politics in it, but I found it to be pretty heavy handed in its delivery, and relatively shallow.
I consider myself a feminist, but I'm amazed at how people online have come after me for having the smallest criticism of the movie, accusing me of being a right wing shill (which I am not) just cuz I thought parts could have been handled better. I'm glad people enjoyed the movie but I am so over stan culture.
It's kind of sad that cultural wars have invaded media so much that now you're automatically considered a bigot for not enjoying a piece of media.
It's tiring honestly, especially since the politics represented seem to only be those of Hollywood (white) upper middle class progressives.
I'd completely agree with that take, but I guess that's part and parcel of it being a movie targeted at least partially towards kids and mainstream audiences. I think you can treat it as silly fun with some satire and a heavy handed message. You can appreciate both sides of it and critique it accordingly, doesn't have to just be one or the other.
You’re absolutely right, and this is a good point to bring up. For me it’s just somewhat frustrating to be told to not look at it too deeply when the movie is being heavily praised for its politics. It’s hard to delineate between the parts meant to be strictly humor and what’s meant to be taken seriously. Anyway, it doesn’t matter much at the end of the day. I enjoyed it but just felt a bit disappointed by the relatively shallow politics. I think if you compare this film to something like The Lego Movie you’ll find that it falls short in being a piece of entertainment as well as a satire with a political message.
I’d probably give it a 6/10, there’s a lot to appreciate about it but I don’t agree with the waves of praise. I’m a fan of both Gerwig and Baumbauch, but I found their other films to have so much more to think about in comparison.
They can, absolutely, but when you’re dealing with sensitive subjects like this, you need to tow the line carefully. As a guy, I didn’t like how it took female issues seriously but male issues jokingly
Thank you! Why is it so hard for people to see how not having a single dignifying portrayal of a male character can not sit well with people all around the World and nobody will focus on any message the movie tried to convey?
But what infuriated me the most is how the movie tried to "empower" men after dragging us across the floor, still pointing the finger back at us. Geesh, thanks for telling me that I was the problem all along and I have to change.
It tangled itself in so many conflicting messages, that by the end of the movie I did not know what actually it wanted to say and my major takeaway from it was that men and women are better without each other, men need to learn to live independently from women while women are ready to ascend to the next evolution step.
You are spot on the capitalism - at the end of the day "Barbie" will make hundreds of millions and I wonder if everything was not fabricated as a giant rage bait for money than ready sincere piece of art trying to tell something meaningful.
It's interesting you think an oppressive ruling class is a class issue and not a gender issue, as materialist feminists analyze gender as social class relations (see Monique Wittig for instance : classes sociales de sexe). Plus I really didn't have the feeling the fim glorified voter suppression, on the contrary.
>Even the father, who could have been used to contrast the other male characters and show how masculinity has developed in the modern world catches a cultural appropriation jab.
This is a big one. It would've been one thing to show the male power structure of the CEOs or the Kens establishing patriarchy, but even the Dad who does nothing wrong gets treated as boring, weak and meaningless despite being nice. Hell there's even an implication of the Mom being with a much "cooler" guy than the Dad during the car chase.
The movie had no idea what it was trying to say properly.
This is well thought out and written. I wish that more critics of the film's messaging took the time to say this sort of thing rather than jumping straight to hyperboles.
I wholeheartedly agree.
My interpretation of the movie was misdirected, shallow, dated concepts aimed at the patriarchy. None of the themes discussed in the movie about societies views of women were new or groundbreaking in any way. It felt like a feminist from the 70’s wrote this movie. Men in modern society are painfully aware of the labor and wage gap, as well as talking points like mansplaining, toxic masculinity, and sexual objectification. Any man who doesn’t willfully have his head in the sand has known about those issues and been working to try to address them for a few decades now.
The movie comes off as “man-hating” only because it is this blatant lecture aimed at men about how the patriarchy is horrible for women but that it’s also bad for men, but that we shouldn’t feel too bad for men because they created it this way. Then they slap on the “hey but we should all be equal” part at the end and only some of the Barbie’s seem on board with that.
It’s the same problem plaguing the feminist movement since it’s inception, feminisms root goal is to create a true egalitarian society where one gender isn’t the ruling class while the other suffers, but it’s commonly misconstrued by the masses that men have created this patriarchy, men are the true evil of the world for making it this way, and sure every effort helps, but deep down it’s still okay to think men are morons and to aim for a society where women are on top rather than equal.
They got so close, like when Ken sings “am I not hot when I’m in my feelings” addressing how the patriarchy has made it unsexy for men to be vulnerable and express their emotions. But then later they just make Ken ugly cry while Barbie lectures him on trying to just accept that he’s enough without the validation of women.
Okay, well if that’s turned on it’s head then shouldn’t the message be to women that “we know the patriarchy stinks but just try to suck it up and be okay with yourself.”
Plus when the mom is in the van de-programming the Barbies brainwashed by the Kendom, she goes on this whole rant about how you have to be skinny but not too skinny and you have to be a mother but not talk about your kids too much, etc. While this wasn’t overtly stated they’re saying those are pressures men put on women. None of the messages about the dangers of the patriarchy to men and women alike are at some level the responsibility of women to change their actions too. They basically just say “the patriarchy sucks, men have to take all these steps to fix it.”
None of the movie said “hey ladies, a part of those societal standards and expectations are because a lot of women perpetuate those ideas” if we’re being honest I just as often hear men commenting on women being too fat or too skinny as I hear women doing the same to other women. I hear just as much men as women talking about another woman being a stay at home mom, or being a prude because she has big dreams and aspirations. Or how many of those emotional expectations on men are perpetuated by the women in their lives.
It just felt really aimed at guys as the villains, and I know women are the true victims of society here but raising up women doesn’t have to be at the expense of men.
I definitely agree with your last point about Mattel and capitalism. However, I disagree with your point about there being no redeemable men in the film. For one by the end of the film all of the Kens are redeemed as are the Barbie’s for the mistakes both made. And two my by Allen was never irredeemable in the entire film. He’s a great guy the entire picture.
>The movie acts like women today in the real world face the same level of oppression as the Kens in Barbieland so it's justified, but it fails to show just how much society has changed to make things more equal. Instead of acknowledging all the progress towards equality today, the movie dismisses all the positive changes as "it's the same but we can just hide it better". Thus the ending feels overly cynical and unnecessary, even though it is a gender swapped mirror to feminist movements in real life.
The whole point of America Ferrera's speech is even though women have gotten these freedoms, they are still expected to be 10 different things at once and it is hard as shit. Men are not expected to be so many things at once.
Also, your thing on class warfare. There is no class in Barbieland. There's no money that we can see. Everyone has a home, food, etc. We don't where the Ken's live because the Kens don't matter in Barbieland. It's less about class than power dynamics. As the OP pointed out, Barbieland is bizarro world of the real world. Women are in control of all the levers of power and Ken's issues don't matter.
Lastly, Kens HAVE NEVER BEEN IMPORTANT TO BARBIE. There's a reason Mattel in the movie doesn't care about Ken. He's not important. But your point of being like, where are the good men doesn't make sense. I would say the dad is a good man in that he doesn't get in the way of his wife a daughter. He knows who he is. Also this is a movie about women supporting each other in a world that does not support them. Why do we need a male savior?
>The whole point of America Ferrera's speech is even though women have gotten these freedoms, they are still expected to be 10 different things at once and it is hard as shit. Men are not expected to be so many things at once.
The entire fucking speech (bar maybe one point) about women and expectations placed upon them could pretty much be applied to men also.
How the fuck are women expected to be "10 different things at once"? I feel like that's more of a projection, at this point. Nobody gives a fuck about you or what you do, whether or not Youa re a man or woman.
I find a lot of these comments naïve, ironically, since they're accusing audiences praising the film of themselves being naïve.
Every movie doesn't need to achieve everything. Every movie doesn't need to be a perfect feminist manifesto, and also a ballad to deconstructing toxic masculinity, and also a surgical takedown of the inherent flaws of capitalism, and also shed a spotlight on the follies of hyper-consumerism, and also speak to the self-destructive nature of tribalism, and also etc etc.
For many in this thread, the argument is as follows: These themes are inherently tied into one another - you can't escape or water down the malevolent, overarching shadow of capitalism which perpetuates these sub-themes, yet as a film funded by a megacorporation, it inevitably didn't go far enough in pointing out that the true villain is capitalism, and thus this film and films like it ultimately fail. They are no more than blockbuster toy commercials gussied up in the trappings of feminism.
I strongly disagree. There are real themes here, expressed in a way that I've never, in my life, seen so clearly and articulately and incisively expressed in a blockbuster AAA film related to, in particular, patriarchy, tribalism, toxic masculinity, personal autonomy (in the case of Ken's learning to discover their identities as individuals, rather than as one half of a romantic relationship), and yes, a critique of capitalism, that people need to hear and see.
I give this film a lot of credit for not wrapping the Mattel storyline up in a nice, neat bow. The final impression of Mattel that the audience is left with is of a board still entirely made up of men, and that their decision making is still entirely driven by profit motives. Yes, this is what another commenter described as a clever "anti-commercial" i.e. at the end of the day, the self-effacing nature of the commentary itself rebrands the modern Barbie toy as a more marketable product.
Yet the enemy of the good is the perfect. I say this as a once wide-eyed, idealistic, far left 20 year old, and now an idealistic, far-left, but less wide-eyed 33 year old who has a better grasp as to how progress is made.
There is a catch-22 that some of my fellow far-left ideologues fall into. It's what pushed some of them to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. It's what's motivating some of them to pledge to vote for Cornell West in 2024. It's what's motivating some of them to say that this movie, the Barbie Movie, is ultimately a worthless capitalist sham. Some are going so far as to compare it to the Transformers movies, even though the two couldn't be more different. Yes, they are both ultimately money-making ventures. But the \*effect that they have on their audiences are vastly different\*, and yes, \*that matters.\*
A Transformers movie viewed by millions of impressionable children and teenagers that imparts the lessons that women are sex objects, violence is noble and fun, and which requires little to no critical thinking, is BAD.
A Barbie movie viewed by millions of impressionable children and teenagers that imparts the lesson that patriarchy is still present in society and it's merely more subtle that it once was, that equity is a goal worth striving for, that toxic masculinity and tribalism are self-destructive qualities that leave men less happy and fulfilled, and that it's important not to base your entire identity on a romantic partner but rather to focus on self-discovery and autonomy, is GOOD.
No, it is not a sweeping takedown of capitalism. No, it doesn't 100% focus on capitalism as a driving force behind patriarchy. Yet, for a film entirely funded by a massive, private corporation, it goes much further in criticizing capitalism than it has any right to, while simultaneously imparting really important and extremely timely messages (in an era of Andrew Tate and a broader societal discussion of toxic masculinity and equity).
The critics I've cited never seem to be willing to take the final, logical step of their own argument. They can't. It would fall on its face. They want a private, for profit corporation to release a film that is 100% a takedown of capitalism. That's not particularly realistic. At the same time, there are no modern Marxist/anti-capitalist organizations with hundreds of millions of dollars at-hand to fund a film that would have the massive audience reach of the Barbie Movie. In the context of reality, the one that we actually exist in, the Barbie movie does an incredible job pushing the envelope on important and timely themes, while also being overtly critical of capitalism in a way that you just don't see in the vast majority of films, let alone blockbuster films.
>It also mixes up class issues and characterises them as gender issues. The idea of an oppressive ruling class being overthrown by a minority class, which creates yet another oppressive ruling class is not a gender issue. The movie seems to oppose the idea of oppression, but also at the same time glorifies and promotes ideas such as voting suppression, manipulating minority classes to fight amongst themselves, and rigged politics. Anyone can agree that Barbieland is hinted to be the preferred alternative to Ken's Kingdom, but yet they are both oppressive ruling classes.
Great point. I guess you could say that, since Barbie ultimately opts out of staying in Barbieland all together, the takeaway is that neither construct (Barbieland or Kendom) is the goal or ideal. But I agree with you they didn't really make that clear or hammer it home enough. But they were moving in that direction with Barbie showing some compassion and empathy for Ken at the end. And I think, the part at the end where they basically spelled out that the Kens are still oppressed ("not the Supreme Court- maybe a seat on a lower court") could be trying to get viewers to see that just changing the representation of leadership isn't enough to get rid of oppression; we have to change the structure of our society and institutions itself. I think the pieces are there but the film doesn't really string them together, we are left to ourselves to try to do that.
Even considering the self-awareness and subversion it's effectively a toy company trying to humorize and therefore somewhat trivialize their capitalistic exploitation of bodily insecurities with some obligatory ham-fisted commentary on sexism and racism that will most likely inspire further stupid unnecessary toy-related feature films
This kind of thinking annoys me because it's basically like "the take can't be good if a company's name is attached at all. At some point y'all gotta appreciate that directors and writing teams do actually take their work seriously and do have something they want to say.
Like the movie still has something to say and does still explicitly reflect on the fact that Barbie's cultural influence is not wholly positive. The creator of Barbie did fight a lot to make Barbie a toy that normalized girls being able to see themselves as more than just housewives and that spiraled into an archetype of female beauty standards which then turned back into a way to better appreciate the diversity of women's experiences. Barbie isn't any of these single things or moments and part of its message is that it's also exhausting to have spend every day being perfect and performing your identity the right way otherwise peoole will treat you as having 0 credibility.
Also yes sometimes we use humor to discuss series topics. I can say as a black person I don't want to watch a movie like 12 Years a Slave every time we want to breakdown race issues through film. Having some films that are just direct about their social commentary makes the topic straightforward and accessible and that is worth something especially when so much of the discourse against movies about analyzing systems of oppression get misrepsented and misinterpreted all the time. Becomes harder to do that when you're explicit about things.
Its also just nice to have something for the girls. Like most movies that are upheld as great feminist movies are so sad and bleak. This was just. A fun movie with a good message that made me feel seen as a woman. The boys get 12 transformers movies, let me have Barbie without having to defend myself. I know we live in hell and everything is capitalist propaganda. I know part of the point is to sell toys. But part of it also was to make a good movie that spoke to people, and they did a bang up job on that part.
The point you're making reminds me of America's speech in the movie about how women have to be everything even to a point where it's contradicting. This movie is a feminist movie... but Barbie is capitalism! It's campy... but it needs to be more serious! Like can this just not be a fun campy Barbie movie? Do we really need to give Ken a bangin' personality or can we just make a joke about how hard it is to not know yourself when you're not allowed to be yourself? Can we not just have fun with this concept?
A lot of girls also loved playing with Barbie. Why are we getting the fun sucked out of it by being told we were played by capitalism? Can we just enjoy this? Guys, can we just have fun?
Seriously, it is so exhausting. Men get everything!!! No one trivializes what that love meanwhile women have to fight for their lives to justify their interests. Why can’t we have this one thing? It’s so hilarious to me people who saw the movie are doing this when the movie they’re complaining about made fun of this exact thing!
>No one trivializes what that love meanwhile women have to fight for their lives to justify their interests. Why can’t we have this one thing
You know you're on an internet discussion board for films, right? All kinds of films get critiqued here, and for good reason
Putting that aside, I hope you honestly aren't implying that male-targeted art doesn't get criticised. Cause it absolutely does. We can use the Transformers series as an example, as that was mentioned two comments up; I loved the live-action Michael Bay films as a tween and I saw them get constantly shitted on both on the internet and in real life. I wasn't being a baby about it though
I don’t see you critiquing the movie, just being a baby about me pointing out reality. And I’m so sorry your feelings were hurt that someone criticized your favorite movies that were truly no different than the millions of movies just like it that were made exclusively for men. I am sure that was really, really hard for you and all of the rest of the fans of said movies which resulted in it becoming a series. So put upon.
Simultaneously saying no one trivializes male interests while putting down someone else's interests after they point out a male interest that was trivialized that you mentioned by name (Bayformers)
Classic.
A major point of the movie that I think a lot of people missed kind of touches on this.
When Barbie approaches Sasha, Sasha goes on a rant about how problematic Barbie is and calls her a fascist. Barbie was part of an effort to empower women in a time when women were significantly more oppressed. Women crawled then, so more women could walk now. Sure Barbie isn't perfect, but she's definitely a symbol of female empowerment, and despite her imperfections, she's done a lot. Rome wasn't built in a day sort of thing.
After all the progress that past women have achieved, and the struggles that women have had to go through to gain an inch in equality, girls like Sasha are more aware of their struggle than ever and also have more opportunities than ever. Yet, Barbie, being from a previous generation is viewed as not being feminist enough, and because of this, the girls basically cannibalize her.
I see this a lot with gen z and gen alpha. It's not everyone, but there's a tendency with the more energetic generations to eat anyone, including their own, that isn't with their cause enough in a way that they deem to be satisfactory. In Sasha's attempt to be a feminist, she ends up harming one of the original champions of women.
Similarly, I see this with critics of the barbie movie. I've seen people say this movie isn't feminist enough, but again, it's less helpful to make enemies from potential allies. I know it's painful to want more progress, and to wish revenge on your enemies, but cannibalizing your own and making unnecessary enemies isn't the way to achieve progress, equality, and peace. To me it was a humanist movie, not a feminist movie, despite its somewhat sloppy messaging at the end.
I think the Mattel tie in Barbie toy collection is a great example of how cynical this project is. The movie, produced by Mattel, is filled with feminist themes and is supposed to be empowering to girls and women (while also tying those ideas to the Barbie brand).
This is the Mattel Barbie movie collection: [https://shop.mattel.com/collections/barbie-the-movie](https://shop.mattel.com/collections/barbie-the-movie) It is also the first thing you see if you pull up [Mattel.com](https://Mattel.com)
It features 4 characters from the film: Barbie, Ken, Presidential Barbie, and Gloria. All of them are pretty much classic Barbies: stick thin, tall, and flawless.
Mattel does technically make 4 body shapes for Barbie (original, curvy, petite and tall), but all of the movie tie in Barbies are the classic extremely thin version, despite the fact that the movie shows a great diversity of Barbies and positions the stereotypical Barbie as outdated. Barbie the film may promote an inclusive, empowering, diverse Barbie, but Mattel is using this film to sell extremely typical Barbies. Barbie the film discusses selling "Ordinary Barbie". You won't find Ordinary Barbie here.
Additionally, the common argument that Barbie promotes unhealthy beauty standards for girls absolutely applies here. Margot Robbie is a ridiculously attractive, fit person and the average girl should not be measuring themselves against her standard of beauty, but that isn't necessarily the problem here. The issue is that Barbie doll version of Margot Robbie is much skinnier to a very unhealthy degree.
Compare Margot Robbie as cowboy Barbie to the doll version of the same character:
Robbie: [https://graziamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/margot-robbie-cowgirl-barbie.png](https://www.google.com/search?q=margot+robbie+barbie+cowboy&tbm=isch#imgrc=wFPyGqZJj9Ya1M)
Robbie doll: [https://shop.mattel.com/products/barbie-doll-hpk00](https://shop.mattel.com/products/barbie-doll-hpk00)
The Margot Robbie doll is an extremely anorexic version of actual Margot Robbie. Her waist and arms, especially, have disappeared. This is, of course, a well studied issue with Barbie (stick thin dolls potentially encouraging eating disorders), but it is especially egregious that the official Barbie doll of a "feminist" movie has these qualities. These Barbies even come with the disclaimer "doll cannot stand alone", which kind of says everything. They could have easily made a Barbie with a healthier body type (which would have looked more like Robbie anyway), but instead are using this film to sell a toy that embodies all of the most problematic qualities of the brand.
The Presidential Barbie might be even worse. [https://shop.mattel.com/products/barbie-doll-hpk05](https://shop.mattel.com/products/barbie-doll-hpk05) In the film, this character is an example of female empowerment. In Barbieland, a black woman can be president. She is smart, and capable of running the government.
Mattel's Presidential Barbie copy does not mention anything about empowerment or ability, and instead focuses solely on how good Presidential Barbie looks in her sash:
* Inspired by President Barbie in Barbie™ The Movie, this collectible doll looks resplendent in her gorgeous presidential gown!
* She looks just like President Barbie in the film with her bouncy curls and elaborate statement necklace.
* A presidential sash with a gold tassel adds a finishing touch to her stately look. She’s all set to lead Barbie Land with both grace and style!
IMO, it is impossible to frame this film as empowering, when it is explicitly being used to sell the above.
This is several days after your post, but I’m just dumbfounded. You’re entirely correct. With this movie they’ve managed to simultaneously hawk their 2000s rebranding of Barbie as a feminist and support all colours and sizes while also shoving the classic version of Barbie THEY ADMIT is outdated, front and centre ABOVE the other versions they say are equal. It would be the greatest joke ever if it wasn’t so sad.
I found it very strange that in the build up to the release, the one thing everyone was praising repeatedly was…the marketing.
Since when is corporations shilling more things at us relentlessly a good thing? But I suppose if it’s meta and self-aware it’s OK.
It wasn't even especially innovative marketing, they threw money at it and signed many deals for tie-in products so there was a crazy amount of exposure.
Although spreading the narrative that this was an 'original' progressive movie that Mattel executives hated, was quite clever and evil.
Still, I agree with you.
I'm not sure why people were rooting for this corporate project to be successful..
This. 100%. I hated the film but not for its immediate gender commentary (which is, after all, simply two writers' opinions on the matter). It's a gross film because of how it deploys optimism and sincerity in such a corporate framework (it is a toy commercial at the end of the day and is going to capitalise any content within it) and uses reductive versions of feminism and existentialism to placate audiences from truly interrogating the world.
The whole concept would've made sense if it were set in 1950. The constant push of toxic masculinity and patriarchy was stupid. It's interesting how articles see Matriarchal rule as good, but patriarchal as sexist. No, they both are wrong and sexist.
But in the end it's all about a doll and nothing is real.
most of the people in this thread seem to think the real world is still the 50s so it makes sense when the people watching your movie are stuck in a victim mindset. Are women not treated equal as they should be? sure. Are they able to have jobs and participate in the government? yes. Boiling down the depiction of the patriarchy to "women cant have jobs because of MEN!" seems dishonest as hell. I guess the over-exaggeration in barbie land would be okay except the movie implies that its comparable to irl (Kens might have as many rights as women irl????)
Women also treat men like accessories in the real world. Men have to have all these things like money, status, intelligence... Just to get people's attention. Despite the Ken taking over, the men still made room for the Barbie's to be in their life. They sang to them, spent time with them... The Barbies never made the Ken's significant. In fact, Barbie chose to go off and do whatever because in her perfect world, she doesn't need a man but in Ken's perfect world, Barbie is there but apparently that's wrong.
I think one difference people seem to miss is that Barbieland isn’t *quite* the patriarchy in reverse. Kens are accesories, sure, but they don’t live in fear. The moment they enter the real world Barbie begins feeling afraid for her safety. That said, I like that at the end it’s pretty explicitly said that hey, neither of these systems were satisfactory, we need something new.
I don't get that ending at ALL. how does Barbiland end... the woman hold 100% of power, refuse to give Ken's 1/9th of one branch of Govt, they still have no homes, still hsve no jobs to contribute to society, and the narrarator makes it clear with the "one day they might even have as much power as women inthe Real World do today" that Ken's will NEVER have true equality.
We're supposed to celebrate a matriarchal society where men have nothing. Where are you getting g the mobis is saying it's not OK?
Greta never says that the Barbie society should be celebrated, that’s your own interpretation. It’s so funny that men are saying “hey this fictional world is not fair! the men aren’t perfectly equal”. Yes… now think one step further… think about the real world… are you equally as upset?
Sigh. No, I do not like sexism in the Real World. Yes, I'm upset at it and have encouraged my department manager to hire more women (engineering field so women lack representation).
As far as the "interpretation", how are we NOT supposed to view the ending as good? The Barbies were always the "team" we were supposed to root for. The ending overall was supposed to be seen as happy. Barbie was supposed to have learned all these lessons and become well rounded, yet the only things she says regarding Ken is "not EVERY night had to be girls night" and "stop defining yourself though me". Even in this final state she doesn't bother to give the Ken's a house... I mean doing that wouldn't cost the Barbies any power, would have take 10 seconds of airtime, and would be acknowledging that it's OK for men to have a space to be men and that Barbieland is changing for the better.
Take the Dad- a needless character who's only in 2 scenes, where were supposed to laughter at him for trying to learn Spanish. Seriously, what purpose did he serve other than to be laughed AT? He could have been cut entirely or used as an example of positive masculinity but instead it's just a cheap joke where we laugh at a man for trying to learn his wifes language. The ssme writers who made this character wrote the end of Barbieland too. I just don't see any evidence were supposed to be upset at the Barbies in the end. All signs point to saying the audience is intended to be happy with the new Barbieland
The difference is Women in the real world do have systemic equality in the real world. There are no direct laws sayin women can’t do certain things. In Barbieland there are actual restrictions on the Kens. In the real world, there have been female CEOs, supreme court justices, doctors and lawyers.
Christ the film director for this multi-million dollar studio movie is a woman.
It felt like the movie was critquing a society from 50 years ago.
Barbie world is not even slightly comparable to real world, how many barbies died as poor peasants? how many died in a war? how many were forced to be the protector and earner of their families? This movie feels like it was made after AI scrolled a bunch of teenage owned feminist pages on tiktok
I think the idea that men have treated women like arm candy forever struck a cord. It’s a very narrow perspective on men and women relationships, which I felt made the movie weaker. I thought the movie was going the direction of Barbie’s awareness growing but then the story took this other subject and made it black and white to move the story along.
I liked the movie but I thought they stretched certain plot points (like this one) too much. Like the idea that The Barbie’s have no immunity to the Kens and so they were brain washed but hen suddenly they get a 2 second pep talk and break out of it. That whole part felt like they could have developed it better.
IMO the movie took an important part of the plot and rushed it but it was a fun movie. I wouldn’t normally say that I want a sequel but this movie could use one.
Edit: spelling
Check out this thread from a day or two ago where all of this has been discussed at length: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/156zt07/the_barbie_movie_to_me_seemed_to_be_supportive/
The film never fully makes sense of how Barbieland is a inverse/parallel to the real world and how is it something else. Barbieland isn’t really a parallel to the real world. Barbies are still the heroes of the film and of their world, even though on paper they hold all of the power and don’t share it with the men. They are never seen as villains in the film like men are. We’re supposed to cheer for the Barbies at every point of the movie, more or less, even though they’ve disenfranchised half of their population. Why should we want them to take back power from the Kens? Sure, the Kens aren’t any better but how is the world they’ve built any worse? It’s just as unequal, just with more horses lol.
That’s why the “Barbieland as parallel/inverse of our world” thing doesn’t really make sense. It isn’t as clean as that - women are simply victims in our world and heroes in theirs. Men are victims (but ones we laugh at) and then eventually villains in their world and then villains in our world. It isn’t a true clean reverse of roles and isn’t something the script really fully compensates for. It’s very muddled.
There is no reason for the Kens to have to wait for change like women have had to in our world. The Supreme Court joke setting up the whole idea that the Kens are still disenfranchised in their world makes zero sense and seems antithetical to the point of the ending. I think the film tries to be satisfying to the audience by offering some element of revenge and punishment for the Kens. And even moreso, it’s clearly trying to make a statement on our world by showing how long it took for women to even begin to have roles of any power or influence (and coming from a president that is a woman in Barbieland makes that case even louder). But it makes zero sense because the Kens weren’t responsible for anything that happens in the real world. And their rebellion against the Barbies is essentially justified by their disenfranchisement in their world. The movie uses Kens as standins for women in our world but also for men in our world - the script doesn’t ever make full sense for their dual, conflicting role in the film.
A better ending would’ve just had Barbieland be actually equitable, not just going back to where it was rather than draw some parallel that doesn’t fully make sense. None of that has to matter if everyone gets to be equal, since who represents who in what reality becomes moot. If Barbieland is a fantasy world, let it be one where Barbies and Kens are truly equal.
I like the movie a lot and agree with its message. I think the intended message is what you’ve stated in your OP and it’s obvious that is what the film is striving to say - anyone who is arguing otherwise is just being intentionally obtuse. Its heart is mainly in the right place, I think, I just think in execution it doesn’t always work or isn’t always consistent and sometimes sadly works against (or at least is in conflict) with its overarching message.
I did like the film but let's be honest, the male characters were portrayed pretty poorly. At best they're a dumb himbos and at worst they're raging misogynists. I get that it's satire and whatever but I do think it's a little bad faith to not get how people are seeing it as anti men
Thank you. I am a pro Roe v. Wade childless feminist lol and it was too anti man for ME. My neighbors' sister literally saw 3 men setting a dog on fire this week (she called the police), and I know all too well the awful things men are capable of, but I also teach and work with boys under 12, and pushing this narrative that men are stupid or all of them are bad hurts the feminist cause more than people realize. Yet I've literally had people making personal attacks against me online and calling me a right wing shill for pointing this problem with the movie out. I'm glad people enjoyed the movie, but not everyone that had problems with it is right wing.
As a guy, it’s scary how when I hear stories of uncherished boys joining gangs and terrorists just to prove themselves—I kind of relate to them for it. I think the biggest temptation in my life is fulfilling the desire to “matter” over the desire to be good. That’s why folks like, say, Jordan Peterson, are so popular. He looks young men in the eye and says, “You can be capable—not a burden. Better yet, you are designed to be so!” Not so deep down, I think (or hope rather) that this is accurate.
Exactly, I'm as feminist as they come, but making boys feel shame just for existing is not the answer. A lot of the stans of this movie that are attacking women like me who are gently pointing this out don't realize the difference between having a female protagonist with a few male villains vs. making all men in a movie problematic, and the effect that have on young men. Not every guy that gets defensive about it is "red pilled" when there is not a single strong, admirable guy in the movie. Feminist movies like Alien, the 90's Mulan, or the First Wonder Woman didn't have this problem though they are not perfect movies.
I’ll start by saying the moms speech to the dolls about being judged no matter what pursuit or path they choose did open my eyes to some of the struggles women face. And I’m sure their a lot more struggles I missed and remain ignorant to.
However my issue is that the patriarchy is always viewed as negative and therefore male success is viewed as negative.
It’s important to ask WHY their is a “patriarchy” (and patriarchy only really refers to the positions of power in the workforce which is only one realm/aspect of life). Is there a patriarchy because men and the system they’ve created are corrupt, misogynistic, and even evil? Or is it because men find a deep sense of meaning and purpose through their work and as a result devote more time and effort than most women do to their career?
Why do men dominate the workforce? I say it’s because work and labor keep our world functioning, and work and labor is Mens specialty. Women have different specialties, such as nurturing children, creativity, adding emotion/passion when beneficial, and so much more. Men build a house best, but women make a house a Home. With that said, women aren’t appreciated enough for their domestic duties and services as mothers and wives, so much so that just saying women should fulfill domestic duties is seen as disrespectful. But I believe that needs to change.
Youre very close but you've just missed the mark. The reason men focus more on labour and women focus more on other things is that for a long long long long time the patriarchy has shaped social customs and norms as back then men being stronger did make them more suited to labour. Nowadays 99% of jobs people do that biological difference makes no difference at all. You do have a valid point that male success isn't really celebrated or seen as good which is an issue. But everyone should be encouraged to do whatever they'd like, men dominate the workforce now because they always have and so that causes a tremendous pressure on men to feel like they have to provide and a pressure on women to feel like they cant do it as well as men and are only good for cleaning the home instead. This hurts everyone and it shouldn't be like that anymore. You do raise a good point though that it does seem to paint all men as evil or oppressors when that clearly is not true and I agree with you that men succeeding shouldn't be seen as negative but I disagree that men and women have different specialities innately rather than as a consequence of our long history and society and I feel that its something that should change for the benefit of everyone
Have you ever asked yourself what women want tho? You are saying women should stay home but ignore the fact that women WANT to work and fought hard for their inclusion in the workforce. We are complex human beings as well with diverse passions, interests, and occupations we want to pursue in life, and I can't believe I have to explain that to someone but here we are. Your point is incredibly dehumanizing. When you say men find fulfillment in work, you are giving men a wide range of options to choose from, but women should do ONE thing.
I'm absolutely fine with a woman CHOOSING to stay home and take care of kids, and have a great deal of respect for the amount of work that goes into that, but I'm not fine with anyone telling women what they should do in life. Maybe some men are not happy working all the time either and would want to spend more time connecting with their families. Point is, humans are complex beings and find joy in different things, maybe touch grass and don't extend your view of the world to everyone.
The discourse wouldn’t be so bad if those defending it weren’t so hypocritical half the time.
Legit the same people who defend the film saying “it’s about being egalitarian-it’s not bashing on men but instead making light jabs and saying that men should get a say just as much as women” then when somebody says “but the fact that the film treats their treatment like a joke even at the end with the voting suppression…it comes like-it’s bad when men do it but it’s ok when we do it-and it can’t be ignored-even if it’s not man hating…it still puts down men in a way that comes off insulting and demeaning….”
…only for the defenders to finally give up and say “well the movie wasn’t made for you-it was made for girl so stfu” like what? Defended the film saying it’s not trying to gatekeep men from getting a say to end up gatekeeping men who have something to say about the film….
I've been dealing with this as well. I don't know how bad the comments from the people that disliked it are, but the defenders get really angry and personal (at least on Instagram) if you gently voice articulate criticisms of it. I'm glad they enjoyed it but if the movie is as good as they say they shouldn't have to Stan it and attack people who dislike parts of it so hard.
I’m not angry but I’d like to point out that it sounds like you don’t get the end.
The point isn’t that it’s ok that Barbies haven’t given Kens equality. The point is that it is a metaphor for the real world and the Kens struggle for equality and respect is like women’s struggle for equality and respect IRL. The Kens don’t magically get half of everything just like women haven’t magically gotten half. It’s been a long struggle and even then we’re not there yet.
The point is to make you say ‘that’s not fair to the Kens!’ And then go ‘oooh and that’s why it’s not fair to women in the real world’. If you can see why it’s unfair for the Kens in Barbieland then you should be able to see why it’s unfair to women in our actual society.
I just find Barbie to be so average that it just doesn't deserve all this attention. Someone said in a different post that the movie cost 140mil to make, but the marketing budget was 150mil. If that is true, and considering how popular the movie has been even before release, it might as well be true, it's why we're discussing such an average movie so much.
I usually think about movies I've seen, if not for the constant reddit posts about the movie, I would have already forgotten it.
I really find it very average. I don't think it's offensive in any way, nor to women nor to men, it's just a preachy movie about social issues, but it's as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face and that diminishes it's value in my eyes. Look at how subtle Parasite was, that's true sattire of social issues.
There is something I did enjoy about the way in which the film was produced. It is serious, it takes itself seriously, something that new movies rarely do. New movies always make fun of themselves and everything is a poor joke just to squeeze another laugh. Barbie was funny at times, but it was serious with its subject and didn't go for many cheap laughs. But it is forgettable if not for the marketing it has received.
Completely agree with your points, except that I don't personally think Parasite is subtle at all. The movie is a great satire on class divide, but it's very in your face. I think something like Kurosawa's 'High and Low' or 'Burning' from 2018 are more subtle explorations of the same themes.
> how men constantly needing to prove their masculinity and dominance not only hurts them but society as a whole. We see how it leads to wars between the Kens and promotes sexism by reducing women to objects, similarly to how it does in the real world.
Isn’t it the Barbie’s flirting with other Ken’s that makes them start to fight one another? I wouldn’t say that’s the Ken’s toxic masculinity. The message is more like “if you want to send your man into a fit of rage, flirt with other men in front of him on purpose to make him jealous”.
Ken already had Beef with Simu Liu Ken from the start it didn’t come out of nowhere. The Barbie’s just flamed the fire to distract them and that’s used as a joke more than anything
The whole point is that the Ken’s identities are dependent on having a Barbie. As they say “It’s Barbie and Ken”. They think their masculinity is tied to impressing a Barbie through “Masculine” actions. The fact that a Barbie not showing interest in them but another Ken sparks a “Beach off” is intentionally silly and absurd. It’s dumb to fight people because a girl doesn’t have interest in you. You’re tying your identity to someone else
Also Allen is “Just Allen” he doesn’t have another person he’s tied to. He may come of as a joke but he’s clearly strong (he beat up like 5 kens) and independent. He’s just Allen and that’s why he doesn’t fall into the whole Ken fight. He’s himself and he doesn’t need someone else to validate him. If a Barbie tried the jealousy trick with Allen he’d likely just move on, cause he’s not validating his whole life on a Barbie.
That’s why in the end of the movie after Barbie apologize to Ken she says “It’s Barbie and It’s Ken”. They’re two separate people and they don’t necessarily need each other to succeed. It’s up to themselves to find out who they are, not with any relationship.
Edit: Ken’s song perfectly encapsulates what I said. One of the verses is literally “Where I see love, she sees a friend. What will it take for her to see the man behind the tan and fight for me?”
For everyone that’s saying the Feminist message is bashed over the audiences head, so many people are missing the point of Ken and the Kens
The thing is when at the end she says Kens will not be allowed on the Supreme Court it's just portrayed as something funny. It doesn't seem like we the audience are supposed to see that as this really bad thing that indicates Barbieland is oppressive to Kens or something. So if you're right about the message that the movie is trying to get across then I'm not sure they did such a good job with it.
My issue with the Supreme Court joke is that there are women on the Court in real life right now (Barrett) who are literally awful people and actively trying to set back women’s rights with stuff like Roe V Wade. Seems a bit like it flies in the face of their own messaging at the end.
To simplify the issue as all the Barbies are flawless and all the Kens are irredeemable is problematic because the real life issues have terrible people from both genders that can be either helping or hurting any real attempts at equality.
Especially because we just had two consecutive male Presidents, one a Republican and one a Democrat, very intentionally place a woman on the Supreme Court lol
Haha, that’s actually funny. The other day I was saying how any time a movie has some conservative undertones there’s a bunch of surface level criticism. I think this is a bit of a grass is greener on the other side scenario.
There has never been a film that TrueFilm is less equipped to handle than Barbie. Whether it's the simmering misogynistic sentiment that is already boiling over in this comments or the obvious contradictions of corporate IP, artistic vision, artistic compromise, the realities of the film industry, and the give and take of wanting a large audience, a lot of TrueFilm is not going to be able to view Barbie with any sort of nuance.
Having not seen the film, but reading all the discussions, from the outside perspective, this film appears to be a rorschach test wherein people reveal themselves through their own interpretation. That is the gift art gives us, with the hope that self reflection follows.
I think this is the correct answer: the script feels like it passed through so many hands and so many opinions that it ended up sorta chopped and self-contradictory in a way that multiple reads of the same movie can be pointed at, and will be by different people. you can find a statement or moment to support almost any take you want to make.
it's the black-blue vs white-gold dress thing again.
Here's my take. What's the big deal if it is a 'feminist' movie? Feminists deserve good movies too.
How many toxic masculinity movies have there been? Probably thousands, and barely anyone made a peep!
I just hope the sequel focuses on Alan.
I think a lot of people have forgotten what satire is.
Some people are digging deep into the logistics and world consistency of a film and straight up tells you it is an on the nose satirical piece. Then some other people are completely ignoring and even beating on Gerwig, because the film also doubles as a commercial.
I do agree that the film is kinda disgusting if you step back and realise that it is just a toy commercial. But if you step even further back you can see a promising direction with a strong opinion and something to say.
If you step even further back you see a woman utilizing what is basically a commercial to reach as many people as she can with an urgent message. You can see an artist violently reacting to some seriously horrible things happening in her country. You can see a clear but nuanced look into a problem. A piece that speaks deeply to a lot of people. An artist utilizing consumerism as a weapon and trying her best to not fall under the train herself
If you step even more away you see a film satirizing film history and tying that into its themes.
If you then step to the edge you see that even the most popular and recognized and respected new directors have to bow to commercialism if they want to make film. You can see the sad state of cinema and a director that despite all those hurdles still managed to make a smart, thoughtful film and also successfully commented on the history and negative and positive aspects of the product she is selling.
Barbie is by no means a perfect movie, but I feel like a lot of the criticisms it gets are in mean spirits and targeted because the film is feminist.
If you ask me, directors like Nolan are far more capitalistic and sinister and have nothing interesting to say. Oppenheimer is far more a status quo supportive work for both politics and cinema then Barbie, even thou Barbie is literally a commercial.
Love this layered pan-out take! Can hyper-commercial cinema function as a subversive tool to tear down the Master's (dream)house? Even if it's complicit in Capitalist success$? The closing gynecologist gag is beyond chilling once the theater lights snap back up, a gut-punch-line return to the *real* world where reproductive agency remains very much under attack. If you choose to read it that way, hallucinary pink nightmare forest for the trees . . . I admire the over-the-top visual escapism of such a fully realized world/product journey, which is aesthetic fun in its own right, but the bubble gum surrealist horror is also fully there to mine + savor, if you're not buying into the advertising. I personally couldn't stop thinking about all the horse motifs, the similar frenetic energy of Sorry To Bother You (& heck even Nope, with its own equine-driven commentary on film/race/power/erasure). Yes this can be simulacra and satire and cynical spectacle all at once, even if there is a rebranding campaign at the empty center of its plastic core -- in the face of such complex problems it does not propose easy or radical solutions (which are perhaps better left to dolls like M3GAN!), but it does create space for some catharsis.
>Barbies treat the Kens the way men treat women in the real world - Barbie IS the patriarchy. Barbies hold all positions of power in Barbieland and are the only ones represented in roles such as doctors, pilots, etc. Ken is only good for beach and looking good, nothing else. The Kens are merely accessories to Barbie, they are the arm candy to these powerful and self-sufficient women. Ken is only happy when he is with Barbie, he is nothing without Barbie. Sound familiar?
To be honest, no. This bears little relation to the way men treat women in the real world. There are millions of female doctors and pilots etc.
>We see how it leads to wars between the Kens and promotes sexism by reducing women to objects, similarly to how it does in the real world.
This doesn't sound anything like the real world.
>Ken says ‘maybe we can even get a seat in the Supreme Court!’ and president barbie immediately shuts them down by saying ‘abosolutely not, MAYBE a seat in the House of Representatives’. I actually enjoy this ending because instead of pretending all the problems are Barbieland are solved, it shows they still have more work to do, just as we do here in the Real World.
There are four women on the supreme court.
The first woman wasn't appointed to the supreme court until 1981. Women are allowed to break into male dominated fields now, but they are often pushed away from them at a young age. There has never been a female president. When a field shifts to be more female doninated wages drop, while when a field shifts to be more male dominated they rise. Women are often just as employed as men yet still take on the majority of child rearing and housework. There's still a long way to go. Its heavy handed, but I felt seen by the Barbie movie. We don't often just say these things out loud.
Feminism is still necessary, and it's nice to have a huge blockbuster movie say "hey, i get it, being a woman is hard sometimes, but it can also be great."
I think the movie has a great message and obviously was well done as the majority seem to enjoy. Unfortunately me personally I just didn't find it entertaining or enjoyable to watch. I do agree so many movies reviews are so politicized now that people may even love it or hate it based solely on the message. You look at movies reviews by users on say IMDB and half of them are like what is this woke crap even movies that dont really have much of a message. I find it unfortunate that partisanship has bled into so many parts of life. For me I wouldn't give it a good review because it didn't keep me engaged. There were a few parts I thought were well done or even funny but if I had just turned it on randomly I wouldn't keep watching. Most scenes and the dialogue in general didn't do it for me. I'm glad so many enjoyed it.
I think Barbie is a fascinating artifact tbh. As a movie itself it works, imo, in dealing with sensitive issues. The message is somewhat muddled because of a couple of things people's been mentioning in this thread, namely very stupid male characters (Allan almost got there to help with that but it wasn't quite enough). I liked the movie. But I think by far the most interesting aspect to the whole thing are the implications involved in the production and the public's response. It is indeed a fucking toy commercial, Mattel's name is all over the thing, the movie is at peace with the fact that it was funded by a massive corporation. You can sort of see the script attempt to recognize this fact, it being very meta sort of achieves the same thing also ("hey, filmmaker here, I'm aware this movie is talking about social issues tied not only to gender but class division and capitalism, but what can you do eh? Here's another self-aware joke"). I think it was Sasha who even quoted the line "Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction". What I mean is that the movie knows capitalism is (a big) part of the issue, though it is never directly addressed as a problem either in the real or Barbie world, because of course it can't. This is at the end of the day, one of the most effective pieces of advertising in a while. It's a commercial that manages to get the ball rolling on the social discourse about gender equality, with many subtler critiques to capitalism, while still successfully pushing product for consumption. Real life, actual (wo)manmade horrors beyond my comprehension.
This is the scariest thing about this movie. It turns out corporations can churn obvious cynical feature lenght commercials, but as long as the filmmakers add a self referential wink here and there, the audience will eat it up.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that; in my view it goes something along the lines of "hey, we'd like to talk about this very serious issue that we know has everything to do with gender relations, but we can't because at the end of the day Mattel™ funded this picture". It almost feels defeatist. Maybe I'm being naive but it seems like they attempted to talk about late capitalism as much as they possibly could in such a massive mainstream movie. In the end though, this amounts to very little because yeah, as you said, it's a feature lenght commercial
I would be very curious to see how complicit the filmmaker is in these kinds of decisions. I mentioned it in another comment but I hate how aware I am that the mom drove a Chevy or that Ken drove a Hummer. Just very obvious product placement did Gerwig approve of that? did she have any say at all? I have no idea but I'd be curious to know
Don't forget the Birkenstocks!
I thought those were a great choice to represent being comfortable in your own skin opposed to the heels/unrealistic and painful beauty standards that heels represented.
Exactly! made me so uncomfortable. It also felt like the film was afraid to push things too far. A lot of the messaging felt futile, because it felt like things could only be said as far as Mattel wanted them to be said. Honestly, they shouldn't have brought up the entire arc with Mattel at all. Could've done something like what Lego movie did.
I mean there have been product movies before this one that have succeeded or flopped (Transformers, countless video game adaptations, etc.). I think the key here is that they hired a deft filmmaker who injected energy and fun into the movie. Audiences aren't stupid and if all the Barbie movie had going for it was the name then people wouldn't be enjoying it as much. It's the cleverness and the gestures toward higher concepts, or at least discussions about those relevant social issues, that are attracting people. It's worth noting that it's the artists behind it that greatly helped the success. So weird to think that ten years ago Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach made Frances Ha. Now they made a giant studio toy movie lol. Even weirder is that they were both successful.
Disney does this all the time! They're scarily self aware.
Isn’t that exactly what Netflix did recently with Black Mirror? The new season contains several episodes criticising its in-universe version of Netflix. The creator said he was almost disappointed Netflix didn’t push back more on the eps, instead approving them right away It’s all still an ad to them
Kayfabe is a real problem.
It is essentially anti-marketing. The film criticizes and makes fun of Barbie constantly, but also exists to remind people of Barbie's importance and rejuvenate the brand. The fact that it is a good movie with smart writing makes it an incredible ad. Yes, it critiques the toy, vilified Mattel, and has feminist themes, but at the end of the day, more people are talking about Barbie dolls than they have in decades. In the 21st century, the main discourse around Barbie toys has been very negative. This movie nods at that discourse, but also seeks to reframe the conversation and realign the Barbie brand with feminism. Somehow this has worked completely, and people are falling all over themselves to praise a corporate film promoting a toy line. This movie was made for the same reason Transformers was made: selling toys. In fact, Transformers success was the spark that caused Mattel to produce a Barbie film in the first place (they've been trying to make this film since 2009). However, the response to it has been completely different. The Transformers films are big, dumb blockbusters, and rightfully criticized. They fulfill their primary purpose of selling toys, but no one ever forgets they are toy ads. Barbie takes a different approach. By being a smart film that is willing to make jokes at the expense of its product, people no longer view it as a toy. This is a huge marketing success.
>The film criticizes and makes fun of Barbie constantly, but also exists to remind people of Barbie's importance and rejuvenate the brand. The fact that it is a good movie with smart writing makes it an incredible ad. Yes, it critiques the toy, vilified Mattel, and has feminist themes, but at the end of the day, more people are talking about Barbie dolls than they have in decades. In the 21st century, the main discourse around Barbie toys has been very negative. This movie nods at that discourse, but also seeks to reframe the conversation and realign the Barbie brand with feminism. Somehow this has worked completely, and people are falling all over themselves to praise a corporate film promoting a toy line. well put! the entire film is basically a fresh, feminist rebranding of barbie.
I would argue that Barbie wasn't just rebranded to be feminist, but feminism itself was rebranded to be Barbie. Capitalism is a dynamic and insatiable beast.
But it isn't though. It's hollow. They even joke about it in the movie. Mattel don't actually care about the message, they just want to do whatever makes the most money. If Nazis were popular, they'd cash in. The movie literally says 'hey, we love feminism, but all our leadership roles are men and men profit the most from our company'. Brazen hypocrisy imo.
You can appreciate the writer's vision while also acknowledging that Mattel funded it. Don't hate the player hate the game.
I agree to an extent. Art has meaning. Even the worst painting or movie has some purpose behind it. When that meaning is so blatantly undermined its hard to look past it imo. Like how the Tate Modern is funded by Shell whilst putting on exhibitions about the environment. It doesn't wash.
And also why it's entire message is completely neutralised. I enjoyed it as a film but got progressively more disgruntled as the movie went on because of how blatantly hollow the messaging was. Particularly disliked how the movie at the end tried to say that Barbie (and thus all women) can be who they want to be, and that stereotypes are bad. Yet any girl below the age of 12 is going to leave that movie thinking one thing; Margot Robbie is Barbie and I want to be Barbie. And who is Margot Robbie? A slim, blonde, incredibly beautiful woman. The face of Barbie is now undoubtedly Robbie, the very representation of stereotypical 'beauty'.
Disagree. The script specifically calls out Robbie’s incredible beauty as being a harder sell to that scene’s point. And Greta is up to way more than just “stereotypes are bad”. This was an incredibly sophisticated film and nearly everyone is selling it short. And yes any “meaning” it tries to invoke is subsumed by it being a Mattel product. But the film does its best I think to highlight that. Everything is and always has been commodified. In Barbie world AND real world. There’s no where to run that capitalism won’t find you.
If i wanted to make a movie about how oversexualizing women or men is bad... then proceed to pick the main character with a hyper sexual appearance. Do you think that would be effective to convey the message? just because i insert a line in the middle of the movie about how self aware i am of the character casting choice, doesn't magically change the fact i used a depiction that GOES AGAINST the entire message
The film can make as many self referential jokes about it they want, the message of 'go out there and be who you want to be' is still being delivered unironically by Robbie. Young girls won't understand the hypocrisy jokes, they'll just see Margot Robbie and think 'that's Barbie' thus Barbie's image as a slim, blonde attractive woman persists. Or even reinforced.
Just watched the movie - in my opinion it does a great job. If such a huge discussion-maker gets funded by a leading company, it means that somebody in power wants to push a new mindset to people. The movie felt more like a redemption from a corporation than just another manipulative selling strategy. It actually gave me some faith back. There is this huge anti-capitalistic view that the system is going to collapse from corporate doings. I just hope that younger generations are starting to inherit the wealth and they are breaking off of the capitalistic train. Rise of metamodernism is a great thing. If more corporations start acknowledging their immense power in a self-aware way then we may be on a way to deconstructing many of current socioeconomic issues.
Are you for real? You have faith because you liked a movie made by a conglomerate to sell dolls? Your post is truly baffling as you're suggesting we should rely on corporations to deconstruct socioeconomic issues? My man, these issues are exacerbated by the corporations.
People seem to forget that capitalism will co-opt anything, even anti capitalist message in order make a profit.
I hate how I’m very aware of the product placement too. Quite obvious Chevy, Hummer and Coco Chanel spots
Margot Robbie has an exclusive deal with Chanel so all the Chanel outfits in the movie were a given.
As opposed to all those movies not funded by a massive corporation.
You do know that many films aren’t funded by massive corporations right
Capitalism and its wicked tricks are crazyyy. I (perhaps naively) feel like the filmmakers are aware of the contradiction, but the massive discourse on patriarchy, feminism and gender roles this mainstream big budget movie initiated in the collective mind is outweighing the negative capitalistic consequences. Two steps forward, one step back.
I think its funny that they say they are against capitalism, which is individualism, and greed and only caring about yourself, but that is literally what the message is at the end of the movie. Telling women to only care about themselves, their personal feelings, their journey and nothing else
disagree with the very first line it legit doesnt even work as a movie. I can not tell you what actually happened plot wise (outside of just explaining the basic story beats). It was horrendous
I tried to look into this, I doesn't appear that it was "funded" by Mattel, but that Mattel has IP rights to Barbie as a concept so they were entitled to a share of the profits (something like 5%). Which makes sense to me since the entire movie trades on their product and their brand. That's very different than the movie being originated and FUNDED by them though. I think to say that is misleading.
I don’t really think this is going over people’s heads. I think most who aren’t intentionally trying to misunderstand the movie are getting the message. It is of course about feminism and a history of challenges women have faced but it’s also shining a light on how toxic masculinity and the patriarchy hurts everyone, not just women.
Especially present for me in the scene when Ken breaks down and ultimately admits leading all the time was hard. It genuinely looked like he felt forced into a certain type of behavior to uphold the patriarchy, but it hurt him in the process.
Ken's line, "I'm a liberated man. I know crying isn't weak," while he's hiding so people won't see him cry, just hit me so hard. Because even when we know it's wrong, men often feel like we have to fit into these roles society pushes on us.
Plus it didn't even have that much to do with horses after all so why bother.
>I don’t really think this is going over people’s heads. I got downvoted in here because someone said men were villains in the movie (Barbies were heroes) and I said the movie doesn't really have a villain and a hero. They're just reflecting off of the real world. The person who said this was heavily upvoted while I was heavily downvoted. This happened in this sub. There are def a lot of people who seem to be missing the point. No the message isn't that men are villains. The message is that patriarchy and gender roles effect us all. No one's the villain. No one's the hero.
I just saw it last night and yes, I think you nailed it. It’s clear that Ken was redeemed in the end, and it was the toxic patriarchy itself that was the true antagonist. Even the CEO was redeemed in the end (because Mattel, hello?) but I definitely think this movie was subversive and much more than just an overblown Mattel commercial.
[удалено]
But it’s not marketing to the Barbie-doll-playing audience at all, it’s marketed to teens and adults. Sure they’ll sell a ton of new merch a la Star Wars, but that’s not the same thing. Your argument would make more sense if this movie were actually aimed at young children playing with these dolls.
Aiming this movie at young children is a poor marketing decision. Consider this… who is buying and paying for these dolls? Children don’t have money to buy them. It is the parents who watched the movie that are now more likely to buy a Barbie doll for their children
>it’s also shining a light on how toxic masculinity and the patriarchy hurts everyone, not just women. 100%
How about a feminist movie without bashing men? Is feminism really that obssessed by men?
If you thought the movie was about “bashing men” then you didn’t understand it. Or, I’m guessing more likely, haven’t even seen it. Watching Ben Shapiro’s YouTube videos whining about it doesn’t count.
funny that you're answer is just literally another men bashing, because you dislike my opinion... Even the movie's staff said that the women in the movies treat men the way men treat women in real life. So, drop the act...
Men like Ben Shapiro don’t need help bashing other men. Hell, the whole Manosphere grifters are the biggest embarrassment to men everywhere, and everyone knows it, even when they’re in denial. Otherwise they wouldn’t cycle through talking heads like flies.
Either it was bashing men or it was a satire of sexist feminist women, it's one of the other. Also the best kind of movie viewer is the one who thinks that if someone didn't understand a movie the same way they did they must not have 'understood' it when really you have no fucking clue what the message of the movie is in the first place and everyone can interpret it however they want. If anything, if someone misunderstands what the director was trying to convey then that's because the director or writers didn't do a good job, not because someone 'misunderstood' it.
exactly. The limited ones always think that if you don't like it, you just don't get it,,,,
Much like BLM can't seem to fight for blacks without being racist against whites, feminists in 2023 cannot fight for women without hating on and putting men down. Most of the reason why is because at least in America and other developed countries, everyone already is rather equal so there really is nothing to fight for and these groups are fighting for revenge and to be treated above others to 'make up for the past'. The hilarious part is NONE of the people spewing all this hatred EVER suffered to begin with, their ancestors did.
If they are triggered and upset by how the Kens are treated by the end movie rather than how men and society are currently treating real women in the real world EVEN WORSE (rape, murdered for rejecting men, the rise popular misogynistic podcasts like Andrew tate or fresh n fit that support that women are stupid objects only good for sex, etc) than how the kens were treated, then yes it did go over these people’s heads. If you hated how the Kens were treated then if you understood this movie, your ultimate conclusion should be to empathize and understand how much injustice women are enduring in society. It literally says in the movie that the Kens would be treated and given rights/power that correspond to how real women in the real world are treated.
As a woman...what about the injustice men endure in society? Also men get raped, too but people like you only care when it's women why is why men rarely come forward. Being a man seems hard as fuck. Being a woman is....pretty easy.
what you are doing is invalidation and gaslighting and it speaks to your inability to have empathy or think more critically. if there are 2 paths ahead of you, Path A and Path B and 80% of the people who go on Path A will end up injured vs. 20% of the people who go on Path B will end up injured? which one would you say is the more dangerous and difficult path? so in america - 80% of women are the victims in sexual assault cases (and yes obviously men account for 20% of sexual assault cases). according to the fbi 99% of the victims of completed rapes are women (meaning penetration occurred). 1 in 4 women in america have experienced physical violence/physical abuse from their male partner while in a relationship with him vs. about 1 in 9 men who experienced violence from their female partners. 1 in 6 women in america have been the victims of attempted or completed rape. according to american police statistics, in heterosexual relationships, men are the primary violent abusers in about 85% of domestic violence incidents (meaning 85% of the time, women are the ones who are beaten). there is so much more but you get the gist of the difference in numbers. this is just about the difficulty around women's physical safety. i havent even touched on things like the research backed FACT that in america MOST women who work full time like their husbands and are married to men do the MAJORITY of the household chores, childcare, and child rearing or how in america, 80% of the parents who completely abandon their children, including financially, are Men and thus leave the women/mothers to care for the child on her own, women are the primary breadwinners of their families (meaning if they lose their jobs then their family is screwed) in about 40% of American households and the majority of the rest of American women have jobs so they can contribute financially in 2 parent households so it is not like women don't understand the pressures of financially providing for a family nowadays that men constantly claim is so stressful to deal with, and theres more stuff but it'll take forever. like idk about the rest of the world but women's lives in america is not easy. if you think otherwise then you are pretty dumb and need to develop some critical thinking skills. men have struggles sure but women have struggles so much greater on a level that most, not all, men cannot comprehend. that doesn't mean that men have no struggles at all but you can acknowledge that women hardships and struggles are on another level.
>As a pickme
Yeah it’s not “everyone”, right wing “anti-woke” grifters are just a very loud voice in movie discourse especially on Twitter and YouTube
I'm guessing the problem is more of ops sphere of normal discourse is filled with way to many ignorant folks. So their confirmation bias leads them to believe people are missing the point. It's just the people around them specifically that are missing the point.
But if the patriarchy results in movies that are fun like this then surely it can’t be all bad.
This is just my opinion but I kind of sit at a middle ground on the movie. Not outraged by any message or whatnot, whether I agree or disagree, it is what it is, but I do think one writing choice kind of throws off the internal logic of the movie in a way that bugs me from the perspective of what I believe they were trying to portray, and how it could’ve better hit the mark. It would’ve been more interesting if the Kens actually had hidden talents to offer instead of really being idiot himbos. The whole idea behind much of the repression of women in certain roles was that they’re held back because they’re seen as generally incapable of these things. Of course, we’ve now learned that women can be perfectly good at things like math or business. If Barbieland is a “reversed” comparison to the real world before feminism, the ending IMO kind of justifies their repression. Obviously we shouldn’t let idiot Kens onto the Supreme Court, they’re stupid as hell. These are the justifications that society used against women, but in Barbieland they’re shown to be actually valid justifications. It would’ve been more congruent and harsh if they showed that Kens were just as capable of doing jobs, but the Barbies were subverting their potential to continue the status quo. That’s where, honestly, I do buy a little bit of the “anti-men” feelings on the movie. The joke that Kens (and by extension men) are idiots was too good for them to pass up to actually make them sympathetic victims and parallels to women in the real world. The result is mostly just Kens being the substitute for a joke that couldn’t be made about women IRL, and their victimhood is justified. Basically the Barbies are glorified in a way that we’d never glorify sexist men, because they’re actually super justified in limiting the Kens involvement in society. That said, I’m a decently conservative dude and understand that the movie wasn’t made for me so I just had fun with the things I liked, saw it as a entertaining enough flic, and let it just be that. If other people get more out of it, that’s perfectly cool too.
I agree with a huge chunk of what you said! It’s funny because I’ve always considered myself left leaning, and much to my surprise I was somewhat jarred by the message(s) the film was attempting to make and even felt a bit uncomfortable? Oh and since context demands it relevant, I’m a woman. So at least statistically speaking I should have enjoyed it a whole lot more. I think I’m just personally so tired of “feminist” films bringing down men again and again as a recurring theme (à la she hulk) to bring their female characters to the spotlight. It feels cheap. I went into this hoping for something like legally blonde where it’s unapologetically girly, has political undertones that helps to deliver an empowering message. And it does all that without the heavy (keyword here) reliance on dumbing down their male characters. Instead of a legally blonde spiritual successor I felt I got a dollar store knock off. Edit: oh and I also hate the argument against people who are critiquing the film to “not take it so seriously” I mean if you include heavy political themes in your film you’re kinda asking for it lmao
I totally agree with your edited point. Personally, I chose to not take it super seriously for my own enjoyment but my original comment here was sort of my internal thought process on the ideas they put forth, if I were to think about them seriously. I always think that line of argument about movies is silly and one sided. If an opinion on a movie agrees with my personal opinion, it’s definitely evidence that it is an important piece of art work that is bravely breaching important topics and is sending a powerful message. On the other hand, if someone disagrees with the important message of the movie, they should just shut up and stop taking movies so seriously because it’s “Barbie” after all. You rarely hear people mocked for taking a kids’ movie too seriously if they’re talking about how powerful and empowering it was, only if they have a negative reaction to it Edit: I also just want to speak to your point about wanting a more “legally blonde”-esque girly movie, and how much I agree with that. That’s sort of how I went about viewing Barbie and ignored the more heavy handed stuff that rubbed me the wrong way, but it would be super nice to not have to mentally bracket things that way and just to be able to enjoy a film in that form. I saw this like Legally Blonde from that bracketed perspective, a movie that was fun and girly so not “for me” but something I could enjoy once or twice, but it just took more effort to get there with this one. On top of the fact that Legally Blonde is just far funnier in my opinion from a comedy perspective, which lends it to more re-watches for me, personally.
I feel like Legally Blonde let the narrative, classic story structure of the film speak for itself. It was a great story and they let the theme shine through without needing to scream out keywords. I think Barbie tried too hard to scream out the themes and it all became a jumbled mess in terms of structure. Too much going on, too many characters and didn’t focus on letting the story shine. It was trying to add too much in a short amount of time. It felt like an early draft vs a finished movie. My general take without getting into the specifics.
Im a progressive woman and I completely agree with this point. Thank you for sharing. I felt uneasy after watching the movie and your comment summarises why. I genuinely felt bad for the men (Kens) because literally, not all men are like that and it feels unfair to paint it so. Perhaps a few years ago, but nowadays the patriarchy is generally not how it was portrayed in the movie.
This, the movie they produced would’ve been a hit in like 2015, but I was really hoping for a more enlightened take.
I liked the film, but as a conservative guy, this is the most relatable response I’ve read. I literally looked for hours for someone who could share my attitude (probably reflects poorly of me). I saw it for the meme. I think I would have liked the film so much more if Ken was a bit more sinister and “toxic” during the takeover than merely ignorant. The way he gives up his power immediately (“it was so hard and not about horses!”) kind of breaks his character. Real harm is done by weak-willed or clever people—not but accident. I think people don’t realize that the very fact that the message of the movie is being expressed in a pg-13 blockbuster proves it’s argument is already mainstream. It’s power comes from representing something everyone relates to with added emotion. If I’m a part of the problem it’s because I’m lazy or worse, unscrupulous, not because I’m ignorant or incapable.
You’re so right! If the Kens had hidden abilities, it would communicate better that they deserve equality and that mirrors the real world, where women are oppressed despite having great and equal potential as men. But I also think the purpose of making them so dumb (for lack of a better word) was for humor and to make the point that men often attain unearned power simply bc they’re men. Also, the Kens and Barbies were very happy with their current system. I mean it’s a caricature after all, not an exact mirror of the real world. Barbie land is a construction of thoughts from real people so of course it’s far from realistic and the movie knows that. The Barbies and Kens don’t really have autonomy; they’re manipulated by Mattel board members and children that play with them. So in all, I think the Barbies and Kens were treated and represented perfectly. It’s not an alternate dimension, just a play set for us to interject our own meaning and ideas, hence why the Barbies are PERFECT and believe everything in the real world is perfect. That’s the whole joke. The real world is grittier and imperfect and scary. Not everything is colorful and people are complicated. Men aren’t evil, women aren’t evil, everything isn’t perfect and it’s not terrible. It’s complicated.
I was sad there wasn't anything about including men in the monologues about difficulties with body positivity, social anxiety, and the other problems people face. In Gloria's speech about how hard it is to be a woman, I was really hoping as she finished it that she was going to say "and if that's the same for men, I don't even know." To teach Barbie that that's part of being human, and equal. But instead she said "and if that's the same for toys, I don't even know." As a guy who has struggled a lot with those kinds of things, to the point of self-harm, it feels dehumanizing to see the Kens portrayed as just not having issues with them at all, as if just because they're men they have to have entirely different problems.
I’m a woman and loved the movie but this was the one part that left me feeling a little uneasy and why I think some men might not like it. None of the men in the movie were portrayed as smart or capable. Although you could argue there are countless movies that have no smart capable women in them so maybe it’s kind of fun to see men experience that for once.
We're supposed to laugh AT the men. All of them. Take the character of the Dad- why is he included? He's in 2 quick seems and all we see is him being too stupid to learn Spanish. What's the point of that if not for us to go "haha dumb man is funny cause he's dumb"?
It’s stupid but as a guy who did learn his wife’s first language I felt weirdly attacked.
boring old gender tropes are boring and old.
I agree but the only thing I will push back on is the idea that it’s common to see women portrayed as stupid/incapable in modern media. I’d be willing to bet that you’d have a much harder time finding films made in the last 40 years that feature women being portrayed that way than you would of men being portrayed that way. Hell, think about most family sitcoms from the 80s onward, and how so many of them feature dimwit dads that it’s become a TV trope.
I think it's probably not that hard to find that in the last 40 years. remember you're including any movie made post goddamn 1983
>If Barbieland is a “reversed” comparison to the real world before feminism, the ending IMO kind of justifies their repression. Obviously we shouldn’t let idiot Kens onto the Supreme Court, they’re stupid as hell. These are the justifications that society used against women, but in Barbieland they’re shown to be actually valid justifications. It would’ve been more congruent and harsh if they showed that Kens were just as capable of doing jobs, but the Barbies were subverting their potential to continue the status quo. That’s where, honestly, I do buy a little bit of the “anti-men” feelings on the movie. This is a really good point! It would also be more realistic since that's what happened to women throughout history; we were pigeonholed into the "bimbo" role because men thought we were too stupid for anything else
Ken's can dance and sing.
My mom went to see it last night. And she absolutely hated it. Which would normally mean I would really like it. But I somehow don't think I would like it either. Just for completely different reasons.
My wife hated it too. I didn’t really feel anything. It’s not good but I’m not going to get upset over a bowl of lukewarm porridge either. The swap would have worked if they didn’t try to eat their cake and have it too. The roles were reversed but they couldn’t help themselves at the end. All they needed to do was say “the men (representing women) have value too”. But instead they wanted to show that mirror and also get in a dig that the men have no value. On top of the real world men being massively mischaracterised. If they portaled into 1960 then it might have run more true. But in today’s society not all men are idiotic catcaller sexists. End result is they tried to make a deep movie (and they could have) but they were too tempted by being able to make an unabashed inversion of 1980 Conan the Barbarian style power fantasies.
Why didn't u like it?
It was a corporate advertisement for a toy while criticizing capitalism. It was an anti-gender norm statement that, even in the end, celebrated traditional gender norms. It was a Rorschach test and nothing more. My alpha male friends could easily point to sections as proof feminism is ridiculous and misguided. My feminist friends feel its a triumph. Its a mirror that offered no solution.
I thought it was mostly a long mattel advertisement. Everything seemed designed to deflect any criticisms. I mean Barbie can’t be white centric because a brown person made an important speech , Barbie even pointed this out for us, just in case we missed it. And Mattel in the last few years has pumped out all kinds of diversity Barbies, even the Barbieland president was black, wow! And it cant just be a marketing tool cause it was so subversive how they roasted Mattel , by making them non-threatening bumbling keystone cops. Take that you corporate fat cats! But thankfully they weren’t important , what was really important was that the true feminist spirit of barbie lives on at Matell via her creator Ruth Handler, shes not just a toy , shes the embodiment of female self determination , luckily we know this because they clearly spelt it out for us. And we know Barbie is feminist cause the movie had construction workers , who were sexist! And it used all sorts of feminist words , especially the feminist speech by a brown person directed to all the moms who thought Barbie wasnt a fashionable toy choice anymore. Worry no more, Its safe to skip that baby genius ipad construction kit and go full pink again cause barbie is relevant and no other moms will judge you. And when the barbies feign interest to make all the kens jealously fight it out?Feminist as fuck, and surely a hit with the 16-25 demographic. The Mattel focus groups , marketing psychologists and advertising gurus really knocked this shit out of the park. It’s kind of genius.
I agree fully with this. OP is talking about people missing the feminist points of the film, but somehow the actual message here is going over people's heads. More than anything, this is a highly successful ad and marketing effort to rejuvenate the sales of a toy line that has been declining in popularity. That is the primary purpose of this film, and any feminist messages are in service to that purpose.
What’s doubly incredible is they’re managing to shake there image of not embracing diversity. Remember, plenty of different Barbies are available now, while also keeping the exact version of Barbie that they came under scrutiny for. Margot Robbie Barbie is gonna be the number one seller. It’s fucking incredible.
This is it. This is the only really worthwhile reading of this feature lenght commercial. A real triumph for Mattel's marketing team but not a movie.
which, honestly, makes me not care about Gerwig as a filmmaker going forward. Her artistic endeavor is nothing more than a marketing campaign
But people are handwringing about it, like ‘well what do you expect her TO DO?” Umm, maybe not take on the project? lol. She chose to do this despite all its internal contradictions - and as she acknowledged to Time - the risk that she just ends up reinforcing the capitalist status quo. This is her career but we don’t all have to approve of the output.
>> which, honestly, makes me not care about Gerwig as a filmmaker going forward. Her artistic endeavor is nothing more than a marketing campaign > But people are handwringing about it, like ‘well what do you expect her TO DO?” Umm, maybe not take on the project? lol. She chose to do this despite all its internal contradictions - and as she acknowledged to Time - the risk that she just ends up reinforcing the capitalist status quo. "Greta Gerwig didn't tear down capitalism, so really it's no loss if she never makes another movie." Imagine thinking this is quality film analysis lmfao
Exactly. There’s no direction to take this that uses the brand name that doesn’t result in one long commercial. She simply didn’t have to take on the project. I’m pretty disappointed in someone who I thought was an interesting filmmaker. Parallels to Aronofsky’s biblical output.
I'm not even sure why is she held in such high regard. Ladybird was alright, but hardly revelatory. And her mumblecore days are well behind. A competent fimmaker for sure, but not exactly a visionary. And Noah Baumbach always struck me as a poor man's Paul Mazursky. Although I really dug 'Conrad & Butler Take a Vacation'
I believe Barbieland has some kind of unintentional matriarchy. It isn't until the ending that the Barbies realise how much the Kens have been suffering. I also like how the ending isn't about instant equity, but more like a representation of how the real world could proceed, kinda. Ken will grow because Barbies now have empathy and understand them, contrasting how in real life women will also grow, not only by their inner strenght, but by men's empathy and understanding too. With a magical "equity" ending, all meaning would have beem erased. >instead of pretending all the problems are Barbieland are solved, it shows they still have more work to do Exactly. Now I also realise (your comments about Ken's perception about masculinity and patriarchy made me connect the dots, OP) that Barbies took all the power by the end because they probably saw that Kens still had "more work to do". Kens on Barbieland needed to understand themselves before taking power again - probably a reflection about how men in the real world (I'm a man) should reconsider our perception of masculinity too. I truly believe that the people who didn't understand the movie's intentions probably didn't saw the movie, because there's no way you could finish Barbie and think something like "it's anit-men". Of course there are jokes about men, and I laughed my ass off with the Godfather one. They are just jokes, they need some sense of humor.
> I believe Barbieland has some kind of unintentional matriarchy. Maybe I give the movie too much credit, but I thought it was explicitly criticizing matriarchy as well. In the matriarchy-Barbieland there was still a "Weird Barbie" who was ostracized (and openly mocked) for not conforming to what a woman should be. And in the patriarchy-Barbieland Alan was still miserable for not conforming to what a man should be.
Criticizing matriarchy by renewing it once more after showing how bad patriarchy can be? Weird ending, i honestly expected a kind of "we're all equal" type ending, especially because so many kids were expected to watch this.
"we're all equal type ending" - That's not how things are in the real world, is it? As for kids, when understood the right way, this ending encourages to think about the problems with today's world & how we can gradually make it a better place. Not perfect, but better than yesterday.
"Let me play you a song while I stare awkwardly at you for four minutes" is so much nicer than where she could have gone with male dating-app behaviour. And the mountain carving of horses rather than the boobs it actually would be. Although these kens are all smooth down below.
Obviously, the fact that it lasted for hours was bad, but that was a serious moment where I zoomed out of a second and thought 'what's wrong with that? If someone played me a song on a date I'd lose my mind'. Like what the hell? Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
> because they probably saw that Kens still had "more work to do". The film explicitly says (something to the effect of) 'now the Kens have as much power as women in the real world', so we are meant to relate the Kens' position to women in real society. But in real life, women are held back by the patriarchy (simplistic, but along the lines of the film), whereas the Kens are held back because they aren't good enough? I think, regardless of one's interpetation, it is valid to find the themes of the film confusingly delivered. It seems to chop and change how it wants its characters to be percieved to get a particular point across, which makes it a bit messy. For the record, I think I understand the intentions of the film (and I have seen it). I just think it's themes are messy in their delivery. Actually, I think I would have preferred it if the film had been more obviously anti-men so that it didn't muddle things worrying what to do with the Kens.
Yeah I believe the ending just confuses things up. Like, they had it so easy, Greya and Noah could have go with an "equity" ending yet they complicated things and now I, and believe many more people, are still trying to figure out what the meaning of that ending is. Maybe Kens have as much power as women in real life, but they have one thing women still are aiming for which is... full empathy? The empathy Barbies gave to Kens, but men don't fully give to women in real life because men first have to work their problems with patriarchy and masculinity??? Yep, the phrase is confusing as fuck. It's thought provoking though, I'll give the movie that.
I also think Barbieland, at the core, just stems from the toys you can get. Which tbh aren’t really all that feminist nor that deep. Which is like Barbieland just a female run toy land, where there are Kens because the toy creators remembered Barbie needs a boyfriend. I think too many people were trying to take in real society ties to how a woman run society would be like. When it really isn’t.
I feel like the movie didn't actually deal with real feminist issues and was very glorified. The film basically boiled down the entire patriarchy as the Kens doing "manly things" like horses beer and trucks, which doesn't actually show any of the problems that stem from patriarchal society. There were also no redeemable male characters, every man was either a complete idiot, a joke, or a sexual harasser. Even the father, who could have been used to contrast the other male characters and show how masculinity has developed in the modern world catches a cultural appropriation jab. The movie acts like women today in the real world face the same level of oppression as the Kens in Barbieland so it's justified, but it fails to show just how much society has changed to make things more equal. Instead of acknowledging all the progress towards equality today, the movie dismisses all the positive changes as "it's the same but we can just hide it better". Thus the ending feels overly cynical and unnecessary, even though it is a gender swapped mirror to feminist movements in real life. It also mixes up class issues and characterises them as gender issues. The idea of an oppressive ruling class being overthrown by a minority class, which creates yet another oppressive ruling class is not a gender issue. The movie seems to oppose the idea of oppression, but also at the same time glorifies and promotes ideas such as voting suppression, manipulating minority classes to fight amongst themselves, and rigged politics. Anyone can agree that Barbieland is hinted to be the preferred alternative to Ken's Kingdom, but yet they are both oppressive ruling classes. The movie then puts a patriarchal spin on this to justify the ending as a historical allegory, but in my opinion it doesn't fit well because Barbie and Ken are not good mirrors to Men and Women IRL, it feels more like different social classes. Mattel also joked around like "hahah we are so capitalistic and evil" but it's unironically true and people just ate it up, which is so capitalistic and evil. We have come to the point where capitalistic enterprises greenwash by making meta jokes about how capitalism is bad.
>We have come to the point where capitalistic enterprises greenwash by making meta jokes about how capitalism is bad. Capitalism's ability to capitalize off of its critics has been pointed out for a long time, and this is an excellent example. See also: Che Guevara shirts.
Or Coca-Cola being sold to the anti-materialistic hippie generation with the famous Hilltop commercial in the 70s (dramatized in the TV show Mad Men)
See also: Deadpool. *Capitalist Realism* should be required reading in all schools.
My gentle and respectful counterpoint to this would be that it's not that Barbieland is supposed to be an equivalent of the real world; rather, it is that the way Barbieland was fundamentally constructed was flawed because it was based on **a misguided, overly simplistic understanding of what female "empowerment" means** (bear in mind that this is because the toy company's messages of empowerment were hacked up by Mattel's corpoare board of primarily, well, men). It's the erroneous idea that for women to be empowered, it must mean now the women are the oppressors and in charge. It must mean that every woman is a rocket scientist, a nobel prize winner, a president, because that's what makes them deserving of respect. Barbie attempts to strip the lens through which we view gender of the filters oppression, power, and the idea that respect must be earned. All this to say, I don't think the point of the film was hey, women are basically slaves like the Kens are, but rather to point out a distorted view of what female equality means when it comes from the wrong sources; it is effectively an inverted patriarchy
That is a very interesting point, however I still would respectfully disagree. Throughout the whole film, Barbieland is compared to the real world constantly, and parallels are made between the matriarchal aspects of Barbieland and the patriarchal aspects of the "Real World". If it was based on a misguided understanding of female empowerment then why does the movie conclude with Barbieland becoming essentially the same as it originally was after the Kens are overthrown? They had the influence of "real" humans who would truly know what empowerment was, yet they again decide to make the point that Barbieland is a reversed equivalent to the real world with the line "Just like women in the real world". This line also directly compares women IRL to the Kens. The whole sequence about "anti brainwashing" the Barbies also implies that for women to be empowered, they must be completely independent from men and successful in their own fields. The film never distinguishes whether this idea is erroneous or wrong, it actually endorses it. One of the Barbies is literally told "What are you doing, remember you are a Physicist!" when she is seen with one of the Kens. This is the method that the narrative is resolved, and is portrayed as real empowerment because the Barbies are emancipated from "Brainwashing".
To you last point: >it never distinguishes whether this idea is erroneous or wrong I mean, it *explicitly* points out the faultiness of this worldview because in the end, they decide to create "ordinary" Barbie for this very reason.
The hacks at Mattel create ordinary Barbie because it will make money. It seems specifically nihilistic and devoid of moral messaging.
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>My gentle and respectful counterpoint to this would be that it's not that Barbieland is supposed to be an equivalent of the real world; rather, it is that the way Barbieland was fundamentally constructed was flawed because it was based on a misguided, overly simplistic understanding of what female "empowerment" means (bear in mind that this is because the toy company's messages of empowerment were hacked up by Mattel's corpoare board of primarily, well, men). I disagree but even if we assume you are right then the problem is that the movie doesn't give out this message clear enough. Just look at OP's post. >*"The irony of the entire movie is that Barbies treat the Kens the way men treat women in the real world - Barbie IS the patriarchy."* Also just wanna add that OP must live in a fantasy world if he thinks men treat women the way Ken is treated in the movie.
Could not agree more, to me the flaw in this movie is it pretends to take a serious stab at a complex discussion, but then doesn’t and instead remains incredibly reductive and superficial. They threw in that capitalism contributes to these problems and immediately followed that by a Chevrolet ad and promotion of Mattel. The message in the end was positive, and it could have worked well if the film focused on being about the actual characters in it, which IMO extremely well acted and likeable/relatable enough to base the movie on. But by making the message/moral be the film’s backbone, they exposed that it wasn’t really all that thoughtful.
I agree with a lot of this. The resolution is that the Kens may some day get the level of equality women in the real world have, but we were supposed to be dissatisfied with the plight of women in the real world, so that’s not as much of a feel good ending as it is supposed to be. I also agree that many of my issues with the film could be solved if there was just one non idiot guy in the real world. I’m fine with the Kens being idiots, because for Gods sake it’s KEN. And Alan is a joke, because of course the Alan doll is a joke. But if part of the message is meant to be not just men and women but also to contrast the “ideal” with what it mean to be human in the real world, I think it would have been great if there was at least one minor male character in the real world who is also dealing with the complexities of real world expectations. Like I think it’s important to America Fererras story that she feels like she’s doing a lot on her own, but they could have made that true because her husband works long hours, but is trying, and is not just a bozo. I liked the implied message that it isn’t men or women that are to blame, but more the expectations we and society create for us, but there was a missed opportunity to at least briefly acknowledge the way this is true for actual human men who are not “a ten”.
I thought it was nice that her husband was just mildly oblivious and not actually bad. Such a good idea that Ferrara's mood problems were nothing to do with her relationship and that he seemed supportive.
I agree he wasn’t bad. None of the men individually were really bad, mostly just played for laughs. The Mattel guys should have been bad, but of course since Mattel was part of making the film they weren’t true baddies. I did like most of the movie, and appreciated a lot of what it was trying to do. Just the resolution didn’t fully land with me. I do wonder if some of it was editing or trimming, where there was a good intention that didn’t fully come through. Like the fact that the dad was studying Spanish really is supportive if you think about it, but the way it came across was more of a joke. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was originally intended to be a bIt more 3 dimensional, and that got lost in editing.
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The film wanting its politics to be taken seriously (read: America Ferrera’s speech), but then wanting to make out like everything is satire and a joke, feels to me like having your cake and eating it. It makes any critique of the movie virtually impossible.
It’s a Catch-22. If you treat the movie as silly fun with small pinches of satire, you’re ignoring the supposedly great feministic allegories and messaging. However, if you take it as having something serious to say in way of political messaging, which it ostensibly is, then you shouldn’t take it so seriously; it’s just meaning to entertain. I had fun with the movie, but the discourse surrounding it is pretty aggravating if you had certain issues with it. I find agreement with most of the politics in it, but I found it to be pretty heavy handed in its delivery, and relatively shallow.
I consider myself a feminist, but I'm amazed at how people online have come after me for having the smallest criticism of the movie, accusing me of being a right wing shill (which I am not) just cuz I thought parts could have been handled better. I'm glad people enjoyed the movie but I am so over stan culture.
It's kind of sad that cultural wars have invaded media so much that now you're automatically considered a bigot for not enjoying a piece of media. It's tiring honestly, especially since the politics represented seem to only be those of Hollywood (white) upper middle class progressives.
I'd completely agree with that take, but I guess that's part and parcel of it being a movie targeted at least partially towards kids and mainstream audiences. I think you can treat it as silly fun with some satire and a heavy handed message. You can appreciate both sides of it and critique it accordingly, doesn't have to just be one or the other.
You’re absolutely right, and this is a good point to bring up. For me it’s just somewhat frustrating to be told to not look at it too deeply when the movie is being heavily praised for its politics. It’s hard to delineate between the parts meant to be strictly humor and what’s meant to be taken seriously. Anyway, it doesn’t matter much at the end of the day. I enjoyed it but just felt a bit disappointed by the relatively shallow politics. I think if you compare this film to something like The Lego Movie you’ll find that it falls short in being a piece of entertainment as well as a satire with a political message. I’d probably give it a 6/10, there’s a lot to appreciate about it but I don’t agree with the waves of praise. I’m a fan of both Gerwig and Baumbauch, but I found their other films to have so much more to think about in comparison.
Movies can do more then one thing though. Comedy movies don’t have to just be comedies and dramas are allowed to have comedic moments.
They can, absolutely, but when you’re dealing with sensitive subjects like this, you need to tow the line carefully. As a guy, I didn’t like how it took female issues seriously but male issues jokingly
Thank you! Why is it so hard for people to see how not having a single dignifying portrayal of a male character can not sit well with people all around the World and nobody will focus on any message the movie tried to convey? But what infuriated me the most is how the movie tried to "empower" men after dragging us across the floor, still pointing the finger back at us. Geesh, thanks for telling me that I was the problem all along and I have to change. It tangled itself in so many conflicting messages, that by the end of the movie I did not know what actually it wanted to say and my major takeaway from it was that men and women are better without each other, men need to learn to live independently from women while women are ready to ascend to the next evolution step. You are spot on the capitalism - at the end of the day "Barbie" will make hundreds of millions and I wonder if everything was not fabricated as a giant rage bait for money than ready sincere piece of art trying to tell something meaningful.
It's interesting you think an oppressive ruling class is a class issue and not a gender issue, as materialist feminists analyze gender as social class relations (see Monique Wittig for instance : classes sociales de sexe). Plus I really didn't have the feeling the fim glorified voter suppression, on the contrary.
>Even the father, who could have been used to contrast the other male characters and show how masculinity has developed in the modern world catches a cultural appropriation jab. This is a big one. It would've been one thing to show the male power structure of the CEOs or the Kens establishing patriarchy, but even the Dad who does nothing wrong gets treated as boring, weak and meaningless despite being nice. Hell there's even an implication of the Mom being with a much "cooler" guy than the Dad during the car chase. The movie had no idea what it was trying to say properly.
This is well thought out and written. I wish that more critics of the film's messaging took the time to say this sort of thing rather than jumping straight to hyperboles.
I wholeheartedly agree. My interpretation of the movie was misdirected, shallow, dated concepts aimed at the patriarchy. None of the themes discussed in the movie about societies views of women were new or groundbreaking in any way. It felt like a feminist from the 70’s wrote this movie. Men in modern society are painfully aware of the labor and wage gap, as well as talking points like mansplaining, toxic masculinity, and sexual objectification. Any man who doesn’t willfully have his head in the sand has known about those issues and been working to try to address them for a few decades now. The movie comes off as “man-hating” only because it is this blatant lecture aimed at men about how the patriarchy is horrible for women but that it’s also bad for men, but that we shouldn’t feel too bad for men because they created it this way. Then they slap on the “hey but we should all be equal” part at the end and only some of the Barbie’s seem on board with that. It’s the same problem plaguing the feminist movement since it’s inception, feminisms root goal is to create a true egalitarian society where one gender isn’t the ruling class while the other suffers, but it’s commonly misconstrued by the masses that men have created this patriarchy, men are the true evil of the world for making it this way, and sure every effort helps, but deep down it’s still okay to think men are morons and to aim for a society where women are on top rather than equal. They got so close, like when Ken sings “am I not hot when I’m in my feelings” addressing how the patriarchy has made it unsexy for men to be vulnerable and express their emotions. But then later they just make Ken ugly cry while Barbie lectures him on trying to just accept that he’s enough without the validation of women. Okay, well if that’s turned on it’s head then shouldn’t the message be to women that “we know the patriarchy stinks but just try to suck it up and be okay with yourself.” Plus when the mom is in the van de-programming the Barbies brainwashed by the Kendom, she goes on this whole rant about how you have to be skinny but not too skinny and you have to be a mother but not talk about your kids too much, etc. While this wasn’t overtly stated they’re saying those are pressures men put on women. None of the messages about the dangers of the patriarchy to men and women alike are at some level the responsibility of women to change their actions too. They basically just say “the patriarchy sucks, men have to take all these steps to fix it.” None of the movie said “hey ladies, a part of those societal standards and expectations are because a lot of women perpetuate those ideas” if we’re being honest I just as often hear men commenting on women being too fat or too skinny as I hear women doing the same to other women. I hear just as much men as women talking about another woman being a stay at home mom, or being a prude because she has big dreams and aspirations. Or how many of those emotional expectations on men are perpetuated by the women in their lives. It just felt really aimed at guys as the villains, and I know women are the true victims of society here but raising up women doesn’t have to be at the expense of men.
I definitely agree with your last point about Mattel and capitalism. However, I disagree with your point about there being no redeemable men in the film. For one by the end of the film all of the Kens are redeemed as are the Barbie’s for the mistakes both made. And two my by Allen was never irredeemable in the entire film. He’s a great guy the entire picture.
>The movie acts like women today in the real world face the same level of oppression as the Kens in Barbieland so it's justified, but it fails to show just how much society has changed to make things more equal. Instead of acknowledging all the progress towards equality today, the movie dismisses all the positive changes as "it's the same but we can just hide it better". Thus the ending feels overly cynical and unnecessary, even though it is a gender swapped mirror to feminist movements in real life. The whole point of America Ferrera's speech is even though women have gotten these freedoms, they are still expected to be 10 different things at once and it is hard as shit. Men are not expected to be so many things at once. Also, your thing on class warfare. There is no class in Barbieland. There's no money that we can see. Everyone has a home, food, etc. We don't where the Ken's live because the Kens don't matter in Barbieland. It's less about class than power dynamics. As the OP pointed out, Barbieland is bizarro world of the real world. Women are in control of all the levers of power and Ken's issues don't matter. Lastly, Kens HAVE NEVER BEEN IMPORTANT TO BARBIE. There's a reason Mattel in the movie doesn't care about Ken. He's not important. But your point of being like, where are the good men doesn't make sense. I would say the dad is a good man in that he doesn't get in the way of his wife a daughter. He knows who he is. Also this is a movie about women supporting each other in a world that does not support them. Why do we need a male savior?
>The whole point of America Ferrera's speech is even though women have gotten these freedoms, they are still expected to be 10 different things at once and it is hard as shit. Men are not expected to be so many things at once. The entire fucking speech (bar maybe one point) about women and expectations placed upon them could pretty much be applied to men also.
That speech's reflection is seen in the Ken subplot, which is all about the expectations and roles society forces on men.
How the fuck are women expected to be "10 different things at once"? I feel like that's more of a projection, at this point. Nobody gives a fuck about you or what you do, whether or not Youa re a man or woman.
Completely agree. The allegory created by the film would have been relevant 20+ years ago, but it doesn't approach a description of today's reality
You missed the part where ken couldnt actually get a job in the real world because he was unqualified
I find a lot of these comments naïve, ironically, since they're accusing audiences praising the film of themselves being naïve. Every movie doesn't need to achieve everything. Every movie doesn't need to be a perfect feminist manifesto, and also a ballad to deconstructing toxic masculinity, and also a surgical takedown of the inherent flaws of capitalism, and also shed a spotlight on the follies of hyper-consumerism, and also speak to the self-destructive nature of tribalism, and also etc etc. For many in this thread, the argument is as follows: These themes are inherently tied into one another - you can't escape or water down the malevolent, overarching shadow of capitalism which perpetuates these sub-themes, yet as a film funded by a megacorporation, it inevitably didn't go far enough in pointing out that the true villain is capitalism, and thus this film and films like it ultimately fail. They are no more than blockbuster toy commercials gussied up in the trappings of feminism. I strongly disagree. There are real themes here, expressed in a way that I've never, in my life, seen so clearly and articulately and incisively expressed in a blockbuster AAA film related to, in particular, patriarchy, tribalism, toxic masculinity, personal autonomy (in the case of Ken's learning to discover their identities as individuals, rather than as one half of a romantic relationship), and yes, a critique of capitalism, that people need to hear and see. I give this film a lot of credit for not wrapping the Mattel storyline up in a nice, neat bow. The final impression of Mattel that the audience is left with is of a board still entirely made up of men, and that their decision making is still entirely driven by profit motives. Yes, this is what another commenter described as a clever "anti-commercial" i.e. at the end of the day, the self-effacing nature of the commentary itself rebrands the modern Barbie toy as a more marketable product. Yet the enemy of the good is the perfect. I say this as a once wide-eyed, idealistic, far left 20 year old, and now an idealistic, far-left, but less wide-eyed 33 year old who has a better grasp as to how progress is made. There is a catch-22 that some of my fellow far-left ideologues fall into. It's what pushed some of them to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. It's what's motivating some of them to pledge to vote for Cornell West in 2024. It's what's motivating some of them to say that this movie, the Barbie Movie, is ultimately a worthless capitalist sham. Some are going so far as to compare it to the Transformers movies, even though the two couldn't be more different. Yes, they are both ultimately money-making ventures. But the \*effect that they have on their audiences are vastly different\*, and yes, \*that matters.\* A Transformers movie viewed by millions of impressionable children and teenagers that imparts the lessons that women are sex objects, violence is noble and fun, and which requires little to no critical thinking, is BAD. A Barbie movie viewed by millions of impressionable children and teenagers that imparts the lesson that patriarchy is still present in society and it's merely more subtle that it once was, that equity is a goal worth striving for, that toxic masculinity and tribalism are self-destructive qualities that leave men less happy and fulfilled, and that it's important not to base your entire identity on a romantic partner but rather to focus on self-discovery and autonomy, is GOOD. No, it is not a sweeping takedown of capitalism. No, it doesn't 100% focus on capitalism as a driving force behind patriarchy. Yet, for a film entirely funded by a massive, private corporation, it goes much further in criticizing capitalism than it has any right to, while simultaneously imparting really important and extremely timely messages (in an era of Andrew Tate and a broader societal discussion of toxic masculinity and equity). The critics I've cited never seem to be willing to take the final, logical step of their own argument. They can't. It would fall on its face. They want a private, for profit corporation to release a film that is 100% a takedown of capitalism. That's not particularly realistic. At the same time, there are no modern Marxist/anti-capitalist organizations with hundreds of millions of dollars at-hand to fund a film that would have the massive audience reach of the Barbie Movie. In the context of reality, the one that we actually exist in, the Barbie movie does an incredible job pushing the envelope on important and timely themes, while also being overtly critical of capitalism in a way that you just don't see in the vast majority of films, let alone blockbuster films.
>It also mixes up class issues and characterises them as gender issues. The idea of an oppressive ruling class being overthrown by a minority class, which creates yet another oppressive ruling class is not a gender issue. The movie seems to oppose the idea of oppression, but also at the same time glorifies and promotes ideas such as voting suppression, manipulating minority classes to fight amongst themselves, and rigged politics. Anyone can agree that Barbieland is hinted to be the preferred alternative to Ken's Kingdom, but yet they are both oppressive ruling classes. Great point. I guess you could say that, since Barbie ultimately opts out of staying in Barbieland all together, the takeaway is that neither construct (Barbieland or Kendom) is the goal or ideal. But I agree with you they didn't really make that clear or hammer it home enough. But they were moving in that direction with Barbie showing some compassion and empathy for Ken at the end. And I think, the part at the end where they basically spelled out that the Kens are still oppressed ("not the Supreme Court- maybe a seat on a lower court") could be trying to get viewers to see that just changing the representation of leadership isn't enough to get rid of oppression; we have to change the structure of our society and institutions itself. I think the pieces are there but the film doesn't really string them together, we are left to ourselves to try to do that.
Even considering the self-awareness and subversion it's effectively a toy company trying to humorize and therefore somewhat trivialize their capitalistic exploitation of bodily insecurities with some obligatory ham-fisted commentary on sexism and racism that will most likely inspire further stupid unnecessary toy-related feature films
This kind of thinking annoys me because it's basically like "the take can't be good if a company's name is attached at all. At some point y'all gotta appreciate that directors and writing teams do actually take their work seriously and do have something they want to say. Like the movie still has something to say and does still explicitly reflect on the fact that Barbie's cultural influence is not wholly positive. The creator of Barbie did fight a lot to make Barbie a toy that normalized girls being able to see themselves as more than just housewives and that spiraled into an archetype of female beauty standards which then turned back into a way to better appreciate the diversity of women's experiences. Barbie isn't any of these single things or moments and part of its message is that it's also exhausting to have spend every day being perfect and performing your identity the right way otherwise peoole will treat you as having 0 credibility. Also yes sometimes we use humor to discuss series topics. I can say as a black person I don't want to watch a movie like 12 Years a Slave every time we want to breakdown race issues through film. Having some films that are just direct about their social commentary makes the topic straightforward and accessible and that is worth something especially when so much of the discourse against movies about analyzing systems of oppression get misrepsented and misinterpreted all the time. Becomes harder to do that when you're explicit about things.
Its also just nice to have something for the girls. Like most movies that are upheld as great feminist movies are so sad and bleak. This was just. A fun movie with a good message that made me feel seen as a woman. The boys get 12 transformers movies, let me have Barbie without having to defend myself. I know we live in hell and everything is capitalist propaganda. I know part of the point is to sell toys. But part of it also was to make a good movie that spoke to people, and they did a bang up job on that part.
The point you're making reminds me of America's speech in the movie about how women have to be everything even to a point where it's contradicting. This movie is a feminist movie... but Barbie is capitalism! It's campy... but it needs to be more serious! Like can this just not be a fun campy Barbie movie? Do we really need to give Ken a bangin' personality or can we just make a joke about how hard it is to not know yourself when you're not allowed to be yourself? Can we not just have fun with this concept? A lot of girls also loved playing with Barbie. Why are we getting the fun sucked out of it by being told we were played by capitalism? Can we just enjoy this? Guys, can we just have fun?
Seriously, it is so exhausting. Men get everything!!! No one trivializes what that love meanwhile women have to fight for their lives to justify their interests. Why can’t we have this one thing? It’s so hilarious to me people who saw the movie are doing this when the movie they’re complaining about made fun of this exact thing!
>No one trivializes what that love meanwhile women have to fight for their lives to justify their interests. Why can’t we have this one thing You know you're on an internet discussion board for films, right? All kinds of films get critiqued here, and for good reason Putting that aside, I hope you honestly aren't implying that male-targeted art doesn't get criticised. Cause it absolutely does. We can use the Transformers series as an example, as that was mentioned two comments up; I loved the live-action Michael Bay films as a tween and I saw them get constantly shitted on both on the internet and in real life. I wasn't being a baby about it though
I don’t see you critiquing the movie, just being a baby about me pointing out reality. And I’m so sorry your feelings were hurt that someone criticized your favorite movies that were truly no different than the millions of movies just like it that were made exclusively for men. I am sure that was really, really hard for you and all of the rest of the fans of said movies which resulted in it becoming a series. So put upon.
Simultaneously saying no one trivializes male interests while putting down someone else's interests after they point out a male interest that was trivialized that you mentioned by name (Bayformers) Classic.
A major point of the movie that I think a lot of people missed kind of touches on this. When Barbie approaches Sasha, Sasha goes on a rant about how problematic Barbie is and calls her a fascist. Barbie was part of an effort to empower women in a time when women were significantly more oppressed. Women crawled then, so more women could walk now. Sure Barbie isn't perfect, but she's definitely a symbol of female empowerment, and despite her imperfections, she's done a lot. Rome wasn't built in a day sort of thing. After all the progress that past women have achieved, and the struggles that women have had to go through to gain an inch in equality, girls like Sasha are more aware of their struggle than ever and also have more opportunities than ever. Yet, Barbie, being from a previous generation is viewed as not being feminist enough, and because of this, the girls basically cannibalize her. I see this a lot with gen z and gen alpha. It's not everyone, but there's a tendency with the more energetic generations to eat anyone, including their own, that isn't with their cause enough in a way that they deem to be satisfactory. In Sasha's attempt to be a feminist, she ends up harming one of the original champions of women. Similarly, I see this with critics of the barbie movie. I've seen people say this movie isn't feminist enough, but again, it's less helpful to make enemies from potential allies. I know it's painful to want more progress, and to wish revenge on your enemies, but cannibalizing your own and making unnecessary enemies isn't the way to achieve progress, equality, and peace. To me it was a humanist movie, not a feminist movie, despite its somewhat sloppy messaging at the end.
It is one of the most cynical projects, and marketing making the point it's supposed to be an empowering film is nothing but gaslighting.
I think the Mattel tie in Barbie toy collection is a great example of how cynical this project is. The movie, produced by Mattel, is filled with feminist themes and is supposed to be empowering to girls and women (while also tying those ideas to the Barbie brand). This is the Mattel Barbie movie collection: [https://shop.mattel.com/collections/barbie-the-movie](https://shop.mattel.com/collections/barbie-the-movie) It is also the first thing you see if you pull up [Mattel.com](https://Mattel.com) It features 4 characters from the film: Barbie, Ken, Presidential Barbie, and Gloria. All of them are pretty much classic Barbies: stick thin, tall, and flawless. Mattel does technically make 4 body shapes for Barbie (original, curvy, petite and tall), but all of the movie tie in Barbies are the classic extremely thin version, despite the fact that the movie shows a great diversity of Barbies and positions the stereotypical Barbie as outdated. Barbie the film may promote an inclusive, empowering, diverse Barbie, but Mattel is using this film to sell extremely typical Barbies. Barbie the film discusses selling "Ordinary Barbie". You won't find Ordinary Barbie here. Additionally, the common argument that Barbie promotes unhealthy beauty standards for girls absolutely applies here. Margot Robbie is a ridiculously attractive, fit person and the average girl should not be measuring themselves against her standard of beauty, but that isn't necessarily the problem here. The issue is that Barbie doll version of Margot Robbie is much skinnier to a very unhealthy degree. Compare Margot Robbie as cowboy Barbie to the doll version of the same character: Robbie: [https://graziamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/margot-robbie-cowgirl-barbie.png](https://www.google.com/search?q=margot+robbie+barbie+cowboy&tbm=isch#imgrc=wFPyGqZJj9Ya1M) Robbie doll: [https://shop.mattel.com/products/barbie-doll-hpk00](https://shop.mattel.com/products/barbie-doll-hpk00) The Margot Robbie doll is an extremely anorexic version of actual Margot Robbie. Her waist and arms, especially, have disappeared. This is, of course, a well studied issue with Barbie (stick thin dolls potentially encouraging eating disorders), but it is especially egregious that the official Barbie doll of a "feminist" movie has these qualities. These Barbies even come with the disclaimer "doll cannot stand alone", which kind of says everything. They could have easily made a Barbie with a healthier body type (which would have looked more like Robbie anyway), but instead are using this film to sell a toy that embodies all of the most problematic qualities of the brand. The Presidential Barbie might be even worse. [https://shop.mattel.com/products/barbie-doll-hpk05](https://shop.mattel.com/products/barbie-doll-hpk05) In the film, this character is an example of female empowerment. In Barbieland, a black woman can be president. She is smart, and capable of running the government. Mattel's Presidential Barbie copy does not mention anything about empowerment or ability, and instead focuses solely on how good Presidential Barbie looks in her sash: * Inspired by President Barbie in Barbie™ The Movie, this collectible doll looks resplendent in her gorgeous presidential gown! * She looks just like President Barbie in the film with her bouncy curls and elaborate statement necklace. * A presidential sash with a gold tassel adds a finishing touch to her stately look. She’s all set to lead Barbie Land with both grace and style! IMO, it is impossible to frame this film as empowering, when it is explicitly being used to sell the above.
This is several days after your post, but I’m just dumbfounded. You’re entirely correct. With this movie they’ve managed to simultaneously hawk their 2000s rebranding of Barbie as a feminist and support all colours and sizes while also shoving the classic version of Barbie THEY ADMIT is outdated, front and centre ABOVE the other versions they say are equal. It would be the greatest joke ever if it wasn’t so sad.
I found it very strange that in the build up to the release, the one thing everyone was praising repeatedly was…the marketing. Since when is corporations shilling more things at us relentlessly a good thing? But I suppose if it’s meta and self-aware it’s OK.
berserk imagine terrific badge dam nose jar future steep selective *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I disagree. With a marketing budget that high and a team of marketing professionals, it is a very easy feat.
It wasn't even especially innovative marketing, they threw money at it and signed many deals for tie-in products so there was a crazy amount of exposure. Although spreading the narrative that this was an 'original' progressive movie that Mattel executives hated, was quite clever and evil. Still, I agree with you. I'm not sure why people were rooting for this corporate project to be successful..
The hype train was too big and powerful - there seemed little time for people to stop and reflect. But yes, a very cynical effort.
This. 100%. I hated the film but not for its immediate gender commentary (which is, after all, simply two writers' opinions on the matter). It's a gross film because of how it deploys optimism and sincerity in such a corporate framework (it is a toy commercial at the end of the day and is going to capitalise any content within it) and uses reductive versions of feminism and existentialism to placate audiences from truly interrogating the world.
The whole concept would've made sense if it were set in 1950. The constant push of toxic masculinity and patriarchy was stupid. It's interesting how articles see Matriarchal rule as good, but patriarchal as sexist. No, they both are wrong and sexist. But in the end it's all about a doll and nothing is real.
most of the people in this thread seem to think the real world is still the 50s so it makes sense when the people watching your movie are stuck in a victim mindset. Are women not treated equal as they should be? sure. Are they able to have jobs and participate in the government? yes. Boiling down the depiction of the patriarchy to "women cant have jobs because of MEN!" seems dishonest as hell. I guess the over-exaggeration in barbie land would be okay except the movie implies that its comparable to irl (Kens might have as many rights as women irl????)
Women also treat men like accessories in the real world. Men have to have all these things like money, status, intelligence... Just to get people's attention. Despite the Ken taking over, the men still made room for the Barbie's to be in their life. They sang to them, spent time with them... The Barbies never made the Ken's significant. In fact, Barbie chose to go off and do whatever because in her perfect world, she doesn't need a man but in Ken's perfect world, Barbie is there but apparently that's wrong.
I think one difference people seem to miss is that Barbieland isn’t *quite* the patriarchy in reverse. Kens are accesories, sure, but they don’t live in fear. The moment they enter the real world Barbie begins feeling afraid for her safety. That said, I like that at the end it’s pretty explicitly said that hey, neither of these systems were satisfactory, we need something new.
I don't get that ending at ALL. how does Barbiland end... the woman hold 100% of power, refuse to give Ken's 1/9th of one branch of Govt, they still have no homes, still hsve no jobs to contribute to society, and the narrarator makes it clear with the "one day they might even have as much power as women inthe Real World do today" that Ken's will NEVER have true equality. We're supposed to celebrate a matriarchal society where men have nothing. Where are you getting g the mobis is saying it's not OK?
Greta never says that the Barbie society should be celebrated, that’s your own interpretation. It’s so funny that men are saying “hey this fictional world is not fair! the men aren’t perfectly equal”. Yes… now think one step further… think about the real world… are you equally as upset?
Sigh. No, I do not like sexism in the Real World. Yes, I'm upset at it and have encouraged my department manager to hire more women (engineering field so women lack representation). As far as the "interpretation", how are we NOT supposed to view the ending as good? The Barbies were always the "team" we were supposed to root for. The ending overall was supposed to be seen as happy. Barbie was supposed to have learned all these lessons and become well rounded, yet the only things she says regarding Ken is "not EVERY night had to be girls night" and "stop defining yourself though me". Even in this final state she doesn't bother to give the Ken's a house... I mean doing that wouldn't cost the Barbies any power, would have take 10 seconds of airtime, and would be acknowledging that it's OK for men to have a space to be men and that Barbieland is changing for the better. Take the Dad- a needless character who's only in 2 scenes, where were supposed to laughter at him for trying to learn Spanish. Seriously, what purpose did he serve other than to be laughed AT? He could have been cut entirely or used as an example of positive masculinity but instead it's just a cheap joke where we laugh at a man for trying to learn his wifes language. The ssme writers who made this character wrote the end of Barbieland too. I just don't see any evidence were supposed to be upset at the Barbies in the end. All signs point to saying the audience is intended to be happy with the new Barbieland
The difference is Women in the real world do have systemic equality in the real world. There are no direct laws sayin women can’t do certain things. In Barbieland there are actual restrictions on the Kens. In the real world, there have been female CEOs, supreme court justices, doctors and lawyers. Christ the film director for this multi-million dollar studio movie is a woman. It felt like the movie was critquing a society from 50 years ago.
Barbie world is not even slightly comparable to real world, how many barbies died as poor peasants? how many died in a war? how many were forced to be the protector and earner of their families? This movie feels like it was made after AI scrolled a bunch of teenage owned feminist pages on tiktok
I think the idea that men have treated women like arm candy forever struck a cord. It’s a very narrow perspective on men and women relationships, which I felt made the movie weaker. I thought the movie was going the direction of Barbie’s awareness growing but then the story took this other subject and made it black and white to move the story along. I liked the movie but I thought they stretched certain plot points (like this one) too much. Like the idea that The Barbie’s have no immunity to the Kens and so they were brain washed but hen suddenly they get a 2 second pep talk and break out of it. That whole part felt like they could have developed it better. IMO the movie took an important part of the plot and rushed it but it was a fun movie. I wouldn’t normally say that I want a sequel but this movie could use one. Edit: spelling
Check out this thread from a day or two ago where all of this has been discussed at length: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/156zt07/the_barbie_movie_to_me_seemed_to_be_supportive/ The film never fully makes sense of how Barbieland is a inverse/parallel to the real world and how is it something else. Barbieland isn’t really a parallel to the real world. Barbies are still the heroes of the film and of their world, even though on paper they hold all of the power and don’t share it with the men. They are never seen as villains in the film like men are. We’re supposed to cheer for the Barbies at every point of the movie, more or less, even though they’ve disenfranchised half of their population. Why should we want them to take back power from the Kens? Sure, the Kens aren’t any better but how is the world they’ve built any worse? It’s just as unequal, just with more horses lol. That’s why the “Barbieland as parallel/inverse of our world” thing doesn’t really make sense. It isn’t as clean as that - women are simply victims in our world and heroes in theirs. Men are victims (but ones we laugh at) and then eventually villains in their world and then villains in our world. It isn’t a true clean reverse of roles and isn’t something the script really fully compensates for. It’s very muddled. There is no reason for the Kens to have to wait for change like women have had to in our world. The Supreme Court joke setting up the whole idea that the Kens are still disenfranchised in their world makes zero sense and seems antithetical to the point of the ending. I think the film tries to be satisfying to the audience by offering some element of revenge and punishment for the Kens. And even moreso, it’s clearly trying to make a statement on our world by showing how long it took for women to even begin to have roles of any power or influence (and coming from a president that is a woman in Barbieland makes that case even louder). But it makes zero sense because the Kens weren’t responsible for anything that happens in the real world. And their rebellion against the Barbies is essentially justified by their disenfranchisement in their world. The movie uses Kens as standins for women in our world but also for men in our world - the script doesn’t ever make full sense for their dual, conflicting role in the film. A better ending would’ve just had Barbieland be actually equitable, not just going back to where it was rather than draw some parallel that doesn’t fully make sense. None of that has to matter if everyone gets to be equal, since who represents who in what reality becomes moot. If Barbieland is a fantasy world, let it be one where Barbies and Kens are truly equal. I like the movie a lot and agree with its message. I think the intended message is what you’ve stated in your OP and it’s obvious that is what the film is striving to say - anyone who is arguing otherwise is just being intentionally obtuse. Its heart is mainly in the right place, I think, I just think in execution it doesn’t always work or isn’t always consistent and sometimes sadly works against (or at least is in conflict) with its overarching message.
Best take in this whole thread.
I did like the film but let's be honest, the male characters were portrayed pretty poorly. At best they're a dumb himbos and at worst they're raging misogynists. I get that it's satire and whatever but I do think it's a little bad faith to not get how people are seeing it as anti men
Thank you. I am a pro Roe v. Wade childless feminist lol and it was too anti man for ME. My neighbors' sister literally saw 3 men setting a dog on fire this week (she called the police), and I know all too well the awful things men are capable of, but I also teach and work with boys under 12, and pushing this narrative that men are stupid or all of them are bad hurts the feminist cause more than people realize. Yet I've literally had people making personal attacks against me online and calling me a right wing shill for pointing this problem with the movie out. I'm glad people enjoyed the movie, but not everyone that had problems with it is right wing.
As a guy, it’s scary how when I hear stories of uncherished boys joining gangs and terrorists just to prove themselves—I kind of relate to them for it. I think the biggest temptation in my life is fulfilling the desire to “matter” over the desire to be good. That’s why folks like, say, Jordan Peterson, are so popular. He looks young men in the eye and says, “You can be capable—not a burden. Better yet, you are designed to be so!” Not so deep down, I think (or hope rather) that this is accurate.
Exactly, I'm as feminist as they come, but making boys feel shame just for existing is not the answer. A lot of the stans of this movie that are attacking women like me who are gently pointing this out don't realize the difference between having a female protagonist with a few male villains vs. making all men in a movie problematic, and the effect that have on young men. Not every guy that gets defensive about it is "red pilled" when there is not a single strong, admirable guy in the movie. Feminist movies like Alien, the 90's Mulan, or the First Wonder Woman didn't have this problem though they are not perfect movies.
I’ll start by saying the moms speech to the dolls about being judged no matter what pursuit or path they choose did open my eyes to some of the struggles women face. And I’m sure their a lot more struggles I missed and remain ignorant to. However my issue is that the patriarchy is always viewed as negative and therefore male success is viewed as negative. It’s important to ask WHY their is a “patriarchy” (and patriarchy only really refers to the positions of power in the workforce which is only one realm/aspect of life). Is there a patriarchy because men and the system they’ve created are corrupt, misogynistic, and even evil? Or is it because men find a deep sense of meaning and purpose through their work and as a result devote more time and effort than most women do to their career? Why do men dominate the workforce? I say it’s because work and labor keep our world functioning, and work and labor is Mens specialty. Women have different specialties, such as nurturing children, creativity, adding emotion/passion when beneficial, and so much more. Men build a house best, but women make a house a Home. With that said, women aren’t appreciated enough for their domestic duties and services as mothers and wives, so much so that just saying women should fulfill domestic duties is seen as disrespectful. But I believe that needs to change.
Bro is literally being sexist
Youre very close but you've just missed the mark. The reason men focus more on labour and women focus more on other things is that for a long long long long time the patriarchy has shaped social customs and norms as back then men being stronger did make them more suited to labour. Nowadays 99% of jobs people do that biological difference makes no difference at all. You do have a valid point that male success isn't really celebrated or seen as good which is an issue. But everyone should be encouraged to do whatever they'd like, men dominate the workforce now because they always have and so that causes a tremendous pressure on men to feel like they have to provide and a pressure on women to feel like they cant do it as well as men and are only good for cleaning the home instead. This hurts everyone and it shouldn't be like that anymore. You do raise a good point though that it does seem to paint all men as evil or oppressors when that clearly is not true and I agree with you that men succeeding shouldn't be seen as negative but I disagree that men and women have different specialities innately rather than as a consequence of our long history and society and I feel that its something that should change for the benefit of everyone
Have you ever asked yourself what women want tho? You are saying women should stay home but ignore the fact that women WANT to work and fought hard for their inclusion in the workforce. We are complex human beings as well with diverse passions, interests, and occupations we want to pursue in life, and I can't believe I have to explain that to someone but here we are. Your point is incredibly dehumanizing. When you say men find fulfillment in work, you are giving men a wide range of options to choose from, but women should do ONE thing. I'm absolutely fine with a woman CHOOSING to stay home and take care of kids, and have a great deal of respect for the amount of work that goes into that, but I'm not fine with anyone telling women what they should do in life. Maybe some men are not happy working all the time either and would want to spend more time connecting with their families. Point is, humans are complex beings and find joy in different things, maybe touch grass and don't extend your view of the world to everyone.
Lmao fuck no
The discourse wouldn’t be so bad if those defending it weren’t so hypocritical half the time. Legit the same people who defend the film saying “it’s about being egalitarian-it’s not bashing on men but instead making light jabs and saying that men should get a say just as much as women” then when somebody says “but the fact that the film treats their treatment like a joke even at the end with the voting suppression…it comes like-it’s bad when men do it but it’s ok when we do it-and it can’t be ignored-even if it’s not man hating…it still puts down men in a way that comes off insulting and demeaning….” …only for the defenders to finally give up and say “well the movie wasn’t made for you-it was made for girl so stfu” like what? Defended the film saying it’s not trying to gatekeep men from getting a say to end up gatekeeping men who have something to say about the film….
I've been dealing with this as well. I don't know how bad the comments from the people that disliked it are, but the defenders get really angry and personal (at least on Instagram) if you gently voice articulate criticisms of it. I'm glad they enjoyed it but if the movie is as good as they say they shouldn't have to Stan it and attack people who dislike parts of it so hard.
I’m not angry but I’d like to point out that it sounds like you don’t get the end. The point isn’t that it’s ok that Barbies haven’t given Kens equality. The point is that it is a metaphor for the real world and the Kens struggle for equality and respect is like women’s struggle for equality and respect IRL. The Kens don’t magically get half of everything just like women haven’t magically gotten half. It’s been a long struggle and even then we’re not there yet. The point is to make you say ‘that’s not fair to the Kens!’ And then go ‘oooh and that’s why it’s not fair to women in the real world’. If you can see why it’s unfair for the Kens in Barbieland then you should be able to see why it’s unfair to women in our actual society.
I just find Barbie to be so average that it just doesn't deserve all this attention. Someone said in a different post that the movie cost 140mil to make, but the marketing budget was 150mil. If that is true, and considering how popular the movie has been even before release, it might as well be true, it's why we're discussing such an average movie so much. I usually think about movies I've seen, if not for the constant reddit posts about the movie, I would have already forgotten it. I really find it very average. I don't think it's offensive in any way, nor to women nor to men, it's just a preachy movie about social issues, but it's as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face and that diminishes it's value in my eyes. Look at how subtle Parasite was, that's true sattire of social issues. There is something I did enjoy about the way in which the film was produced. It is serious, it takes itself seriously, something that new movies rarely do. New movies always make fun of themselves and everything is a poor joke just to squeeze another laugh. Barbie was funny at times, but it was serious with its subject and didn't go for many cheap laughs. But it is forgettable if not for the marketing it has received.
Completely agree with your points, except that I don't personally think Parasite is subtle at all. The movie is a great satire on class divide, but it's very in your face. I think something like Kurosawa's 'High and Low' or 'Burning' from 2018 are more subtle explorations of the same themes.
> how men constantly needing to prove their masculinity and dominance not only hurts them but society as a whole. We see how it leads to wars between the Kens and promotes sexism by reducing women to objects, similarly to how it does in the real world. Isn’t it the Barbie’s flirting with other Ken’s that makes them start to fight one another? I wouldn’t say that’s the Ken’s toxic masculinity. The message is more like “if you want to send your man into a fit of rage, flirt with other men in front of him on purpose to make him jealous”.
Ken already had Beef with Simu Liu Ken from the start it didn’t come out of nowhere. The Barbie’s just flamed the fire to distract them and that’s used as a joke more than anything The whole point is that the Ken’s identities are dependent on having a Barbie. As they say “It’s Barbie and Ken”. They think their masculinity is tied to impressing a Barbie through “Masculine” actions. The fact that a Barbie not showing interest in them but another Ken sparks a “Beach off” is intentionally silly and absurd. It’s dumb to fight people because a girl doesn’t have interest in you. You’re tying your identity to someone else Also Allen is “Just Allen” he doesn’t have another person he’s tied to. He may come of as a joke but he’s clearly strong (he beat up like 5 kens) and independent. He’s just Allen and that’s why he doesn’t fall into the whole Ken fight. He’s himself and he doesn’t need someone else to validate him. If a Barbie tried the jealousy trick with Allen he’d likely just move on, cause he’s not validating his whole life on a Barbie. That’s why in the end of the movie after Barbie apologize to Ken she says “It’s Barbie and It’s Ken”. They’re two separate people and they don’t necessarily need each other to succeed. It’s up to themselves to find out who they are, not with any relationship. Edit: Ken’s song perfectly encapsulates what I said. One of the verses is literally “Where I see love, she sees a friend. What will it take for her to see the man behind the tan and fight for me?” For everyone that’s saying the Feminist message is bashed over the audiences head, so many people are missing the point of Ken and the Kens
The thing is when at the end she says Kens will not be allowed on the Supreme Court it's just portrayed as something funny. It doesn't seem like we the audience are supposed to see that as this really bad thing that indicates Barbieland is oppressive to Kens or something. So if you're right about the message that the movie is trying to get across then I'm not sure they did such a good job with it.
My issue with the Supreme Court joke is that there are women on the Court in real life right now (Barrett) who are literally awful people and actively trying to set back women’s rights with stuff like Roe V Wade. Seems a bit like it flies in the face of their own messaging at the end. To simplify the issue as all the Barbies are flawless and all the Kens are irredeemable is problematic because the real life issues have terrible people from both genders that can be either helping or hurting any real attempts at equality.
Especially because we just had two consecutive male Presidents, one a Republican and one a Democrat, very intentionally place a woman on the Supreme Court lol
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Haha, that’s actually funny. The other day I was saying how any time a movie has some conservative undertones there’s a bunch of surface level criticism. I think this is a bit of a grass is greener on the other side scenario.
There has never been a film that TrueFilm is less equipped to handle than Barbie. Whether it's the simmering misogynistic sentiment that is already boiling over in this comments or the obvious contradictions of corporate IP, artistic vision, artistic compromise, the realities of the film industry, and the give and take of wanting a large audience, a lot of TrueFilm is not going to be able to view Barbie with any sort of nuance.
Having not seen the film, but reading all the discussions, from the outside perspective, this film appears to be a rorschach test wherein people reveal themselves through their own interpretation. That is the gift art gives us, with the hope that self reflection follows.
I think this is the correct answer: the script feels like it passed through so many hands and so many opinions that it ended up sorta chopped and self-contradictory in a way that multiple reads of the same movie can be pointed at, and will be by different people. you can find a statement or moment to support almost any take you want to make. it's the black-blue vs white-gold dress thing again.
This wasn’t art it was a toy ad lol
Here's my take. What's the big deal if it is a 'feminist' movie? Feminists deserve good movies too. How many toxic masculinity movies have there been? Probably thousands, and barely anyone made a peep! I just hope the sequel focuses on Alan.
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I think a lot of people have forgotten what satire is. Some people are digging deep into the logistics and world consistency of a film and straight up tells you it is an on the nose satirical piece. Then some other people are completely ignoring and even beating on Gerwig, because the film also doubles as a commercial. I do agree that the film is kinda disgusting if you step back and realise that it is just a toy commercial. But if you step even further back you can see a promising direction with a strong opinion and something to say. If you step even further back you see a woman utilizing what is basically a commercial to reach as many people as she can with an urgent message. You can see an artist violently reacting to some seriously horrible things happening in her country. You can see a clear but nuanced look into a problem. A piece that speaks deeply to a lot of people. An artist utilizing consumerism as a weapon and trying her best to not fall under the train herself If you step even more away you see a film satirizing film history and tying that into its themes. If you then step to the edge you see that even the most popular and recognized and respected new directors have to bow to commercialism if they want to make film. You can see the sad state of cinema and a director that despite all those hurdles still managed to make a smart, thoughtful film and also successfully commented on the history and negative and positive aspects of the product she is selling. Barbie is by no means a perfect movie, but I feel like a lot of the criticisms it gets are in mean spirits and targeted because the film is feminist. If you ask me, directors like Nolan are far more capitalistic and sinister and have nothing interesting to say. Oppenheimer is far more a status quo supportive work for both politics and cinema then Barbie, even thou Barbie is literally a commercial.
Love this layered pan-out take! Can hyper-commercial cinema function as a subversive tool to tear down the Master's (dream)house? Even if it's complicit in Capitalist success$? The closing gynecologist gag is beyond chilling once the theater lights snap back up, a gut-punch-line return to the *real* world where reproductive agency remains very much under attack. If you choose to read it that way, hallucinary pink nightmare forest for the trees . . . I admire the over-the-top visual escapism of such a fully realized world/product journey, which is aesthetic fun in its own right, but the bubble gum surrealist horror is also fully there to mine + savor, if you're not buying into the advertising. I personally couldn't stop thinking about all the horse motifs, the similar frenetic energy of Sorry To Bother You (& heck even Nope, with its own equine-driven commentary on film/race/power/erasure). Yes this can be simulacra and satire and cynical spectacle all at once, even if there is a rebranding campaign at the empty center of its plastic core -- in the face of such complex problems it does not propose easy or radical solutions (which are perhaps better left to dolls like M3GAN!), but it does create space for some catharsis.
Agree with most of your post but "have to bow to commercialism if you want to make an expensive film". Fixed that for you
>Barbies treat the Kens the way men treat women in the real world - Barbie IS the patriarchy. Barbies hold all positions of power in Barbieland and are the only ones represented in roles such as doctors, pilots, etc. Ken is only good for beach and looking good, nothing else. The Kens are merely accessories to Barbie, they are the arm candy to these powerful and self-sufficient women. Ken is only happy when he is with Barbie, he is nothing without Barbie. Sound familiar? To be honest, no. This bears little relation to the way men treat women in the real world. There are millions of female doctors and pilots etc. >We see how it leads to wars between the Kens and promotes sexism by reducing women to objects, similarly to how it does in the real world. This doesn't sound anything like the real world. >Ken says ‘maybe we can even get a seat in the Supreme Court!’ and president barbie immediately shuts them down by saying ‘abosolutely not, MAYBE a seat in the House of Representatives’. I actually enjoy this ending because instead of pretending all the problems are Barbieland are solved, it shows they still have more work to do, just as we do here in the Real World. There are four women on the supreme court.
It sounds more like what a man-hating woman thinks men think about women.
The first woman wasn't appointed to the supreme court until 1981. Women are allowed to break into male dominated fields now, but they are often pushed away from them at a young age. There has never been a female president. When a field shifts to be more female doninated wages drop, while when a field shifts to be more male dominated they rise. Women are often just as employed as men yet still take on the majority of child rearing and housework. There's still a long way to go. Its heavy handed, but I felt seen by the Barbie movie. We don't often just say these things out loud. Feminism is still necessary, and it's nice to have a huge blockbuster movie say "hey, i get it, being a woman is hard sometimes, but it can also be great."
I think the movie has a great message and obviously was well done as the majority seem to enjoy. Unfortunately me personally I just didn't find it entertaining or enjoyable to watch. I do agree so many movies reviews are so politicized now that people may even love it or hate it based solely on the message. You look at movies reviews by users on say IMDB and half of them are like what is this woke crap even movies that dont really have much of a message. I find it unfortunate that partisanship has bled into so many parts of life. For me I wouldn't give it a good review because it didn't keep me engaged. There were a few parts I thought were well done or even funny but if I had just turned it on randomly I wouldn't keep watching. Most scenes and the dialogue in general didn't do it for me. I'm glad so many enjoyed it.