BLERD AT THE MOVIES
It's a shame a movie as unabashedly goofy, campy, and pink as this one has to also double as a vehicle for empty, white feminist platitudes.
Margot Robbie is not just a Barbie girl living in a Barbie world. She is Barbie in writer-director Greta Gerwig's big-budget adaptation of the iconic Mattel doll. (Warner Bros.-Discovery/Mattel | 2023)
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The following review was written during the simultaneous Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) strikes of 2023. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently striking, the media I cover on all of my platforms wouldn't exist. I fully support both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA in their fight for fair financial compensation, better working conditions, and a sustainable, safeguarded future as laborers working in a system that continually denies them such.
As of August 9th, a full boycott has not been called for (in fact, striking union members have advised against such actions). However, this blog will begin to cease coverage of new films and TV shows released from the studios represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) out of respect for the striking industry workers. Under the current guidelines released by both SAG-AFTRA and WGA, influencers and content creators have been advised to not promote of struck content unless it is under contractual obligation, but, as far as I can tell, independent reviews and media analyses are not considered promotional content. As such, any praise given to the film I'm covering here should be purely seen as praise for the artists, writers, and actors responsible for creating it. The praise given serves as a reminder that the creatives involved in the making of this work deserve to be compensated and treated fairly because they are who make these works possible, not the CEOs and executives who continue to belittle and demean their demands as "unrealistic" and exploit their work without consequence. If you are able to, please consider donating to the Entertainment Community Fund; it supports the people making the film and TV shows that you love and it can help actors apply for grants to help keep their bills paid. Oh, and this review is spoiler-free. A general description of the plot will be provided, but no major character beats, plot points, and thematic elements will be mentioned. Thank you again for reading.
Margot Robbie as Barbie in Barbie (Warner Bros.-Discovery/Mattel | 2023)
If you were to tell me last year that Barbie would be high on my most-anticipated movies of 2023 list, I would have laughed at you, almost to the point where I'd start crying.
Despite owning a grand total of two Barbies in my life -- one, a Twilight Saga-themed doll meant to look like Bryce Dallas Howard as Victoria in Eclipse; the other, a Skipper cosplaying as lesbian icon Velma Dinkley from Scooby-Doo -- Mattel's iconic doll was not a major part of my childhood. Matter of fact, I remember not treating either Barbie kindly and losing them as I moved out of my childhood home during elementary school. I wish I could tell you exactly why I was like this, but I'm certain it was due to a mix of multiple factors: from an inevitable tomboy phase that turned me off from all things girly and pink from elementary school to the later years of high school; a curious, growing interest in what other adult women and my cis female peers around me chided as "boy stuff" -- comic books, superheroes, flag football, and action movies; to media and cultural messaging that made girls like me (or like I thought I was) feel bad about themselves and their interests (remember when it was cool to hate on Twilight?); and the burgeoning "girlboss feminism" maxim that came to define the 2010s as a decade where women, girls, and feminine-identifying people felt even worse about themselves if they didn't forgo femininity, the color pink, cheesy YA novels, and idiosyncratic Tumblr ships in the name of optimizing themselves for capitalism's benefit. (But if you wrote books about being a #girlboss or learning to #leanin with your feminism that made you useful to late-stage capitalism, then you were allowed to like pink.) In short, when it comes to the cultural machine that is Barbie, I've got no skin in the game -- and that made my sudden interest in a live-action movie about Toyland's "it girl" such a surprise to myself. Like most people, I wanted to know what exactly a Barbie movie co-written and directed by Greta Gerwig (Little Women) and starring Margot Robbie (Amsterdam) and Ryan Gosling (La La Land) as Mattel's beloved blonde bombshell and her equally blond better-half Ken would even look like. Considering that Barbie's got multiple direct-to-DVD and TV animated movies under her belt, how does one even conceptualize a live-action Barbie movie world that's both familiar to her fanbase and fresh enough to standout in a summer blockbuster season complete with multimillion-dollar spectacle flicks that are light on entertainment but (annoyingly) big on everything else? Judging by the trailers, Barbie looked like it was going to be in the same vein as other kinder-camp classics like Josie and the Pussycats, The Addams Family, and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle: a pretty, pink fantasy romp where Barbie and Ken venture out of the confines of the idyllic Barbie Land and into the real world, where humans feel all the feels and don't fit into the neat, prepackaged boxes the way Barbie and Ken do back at home. (In addition to kinder-camp, Barbie also falls into this niche subgenre of fantasy flicks where symbolic figures of girlhood suddenly come to life and clash with the real world, like Life-Size and Enchanted.) I think what excited me the most about Barbie was how unabashedly silly it looked -- and how it refused to be anything but. For example, the teaser trailer featured a 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired sequence where Barbie shakes up the world of little girls who were bored with playing with their baby dolls and pretending to be moms, complete with Robbie decked out in a near-perfect recreation of Barbie's original look when she hit toy shelves back in 1959 -- a black-and-white patterned swimsuit, a high blonde ponytail with curly bangs, white cat-eye shades, and a pair of sleek, strappy black heels -- and flashing a mega-watt smile and a knowing wink at a little girl staring up in awe at her. In that same teaser trailer, we're treated to Gosling's original Ken, a chiseled blonde surfer dude, threaten to "beach off" a rival Ken (Simu Liu, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) in a bid for Barbie's affection. The main trailer went even further, teasing a disco-night sequence at Barbie's DreamHouse featuring all the Barbies and Kens dressed to the nines, dancing to Dua Lipa's latest disco-pop hit -- which was specifically recorded for the film's (decent!) soundtrack. In a box office landscape where expensive, mainstream blockbusters seem keen on devolving into colorless CGI sludge with stories that rip off better, more memorable blockbuster classics, Barbie looked so unique -- and so unserious -- in all the best ways. While I still don’t understand the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon that continues to grip social media (well, beyond the fact that these are two very different films that showcase cinema at its most creative, of course), I was excited to watch what might be the first legit campy, girly studio comedy I’ve seen in years. So, it pains me to say that Barbie is a reminder that we need to stop preemptively declaring movies we haven't seen yet as cultural resets based off some highly effective marketing. Allow me to preface the rest of the review with this: Barbie isn't all bad. From a technical standpoint, Barbie has some of the most impeccable production design I've seen from a blockbuster since 2018's Black Panther; that's how meticulously crafted this movie is. It's an aesthetic delight that looks camp straight in the eye and never flinches, complete with dialogue, costumes, and set pieces that were brainstormed by a little kid playing make-believe with their Barbies and Kens at home. It also contains two spirited performances from Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the latter of whom continues to prove he's one of the most versatile and dedicated performers that Hollywood continues to sleep on. Unfortunately, Barbie's biggest obstacle comes in the form of a director who decides to make Barbie a Trojan horse for delivering important messages to audiences when they least expected it, resulting in a big-budget studio feature that, once again, highlights how limited her -- and, by extension, Hollywood's -- feminist perspective truly is.
Visuals & Aesthetics
Issa Rae as President Barbie in Barbie (Warner Bros.-Discovery/Mattel | 2023)
Arguably Barbie's greatest achievement is the plastic, fantastic, and pink -- and I mean pink -- world audiences are transported to for a bulk of its runtime.
Production designer Sarah Greenwood and set designer Katie Spencer have gifted us with a toy paradise that looks and feels straight out of a little girl's imagination: a pink paradise where everything is vibrant, playful, and, well... toy-like. Thanks to some clever scaling and mathematics on Greenwood and Spencer's part, it truly feels like you're getting to play with a Barbie doll, letting Barbie move around in her Dream House to brush her hair with a giant hairbrush or drive her Dream Car hands free around Barbie Land. Even Ken running excitedly with his surfboard to impress Barbie seems like the kind of thing kids would do if they're just playing make-believe with their toys. I've never seen a movie effortlessly and authentically capture what it would be like for a kid to play around with their dolls at home. It's a kind of playfulness that is lost in today's blockbuster landscape, where we continue to get over-budgeted movies that overemphasize (and underwhelm) with their CGI at the expense of overworked artists or look like they were produced in the same muted, grey wasteland Zack Snyder movies call home. Moreover, Greenwood and Spencer's glorious, unabashedly pink world is not ashamed to look back to the past. To some degree, it seems that present-day Hollywood is ashamed of Old Hollywood for a variety of reasons, ranging from the understandable (e.g. racial and gender-based inequalities, queer discrimination) to the ridiculous (e.g. the rumored changes to the live-action Snow White remake Disney will soon be hawking to us). In their interpreting of over 70 years of Dream Houses, Dream Cars, and Barbie's varying designs, Greenwood and Spencer create a Barbie Land that evokes Old Hollywood in all the best ways. It wouldn't be a stretch to say Barbie Land feels a lot like the land of Oz, a confectionary pink landscape where Barbie can truly be anything she wants to be -- whether it's a doctor, a Pulitzer-winning author, a Supreme Court Justice, or the President of Barbie Land -- and doesn't believe in the concept of limits. It's a dream-like, Technicolor landscape that is doll-like and surreal -- nowhere is this more apparent than in Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon, SNL)'s weird house, which perfectly compliments this isolated Barbie who does the splits and proudly wears Sharpie marks for eye makeup -- while still being surprisingly grounded in the architecture of mid-century Palm Springs, California. As I was watching, I couldn't help but think about the Hollywood storyline of I Love Lucy (please stick with me here, I promise this will make sense), namely all those times where Lucy would gush about what it would be like to be discovered the way classic Hollywood actresses like Greta Garbo and Marilyn Munroe were. In those episodes, Hollywood was the land of opportunity, a place where dreams would come true. Where someone as zany and sometimes mundane as Lucy could find herself involved in the wackiest of adventures, like messing up John Wayne's footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre or accidentally launching a pie in William Holden's face at the Brown Derby restaurant. Barbie Land is practically the same: a place where dreams do come true. Barbie can be anything she wants to be, constantly reinventing herself while retaining her relatable essence and stunning beauty, kind of like the actresses of Classic Hollywood lore. Barbie never goes out of style, she just gets better and better, and her world reflects this. Gerwig truly achieves the "authentic artificiality" she was shooting for with Barbie Land, and she does it with minimal CGI. Barbie Land truly looks like it would be the centerpiece of a Barbie playset ad while still functioning as a rich, textured world where Barbies and Kens can truly have the best day ever, forever... unless you're Allan. Or Midge. Or Skipper. Or Weird Barbie.
Margot Robbie as Barbie
Margot Robbie as Barbie in Barbie. (Warner Bros.-Discovery/Mattel | 2023)
Personally, I wouldn't consider "Stereotypical" Barbie to be Robbie's best performance (that honor goes to her nuanced portrayal of disgraced Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding in I, Tonya), but it is certainly the actress's most committed since Harley Quinn in the DCEU.
As the Barbie that started it all, Robbie practically is the living embodiment of the doll Ruth Handler created back in 1959, complete with the dazzling smile and joyful eyes that would become the doll's signature look over the decades. There really is no one else who could have played Barbie. Barbie is yet another film that showcases Robbie's impeccable range, whether it be flashing a mega-watt smile to her fellow Barbies and Kens or gradually breaking down into tears as she is berated by a mean teenage girl who attempts to indict her on behalf of all girls who had their self-esteem jacked up by Barbies. (Note to the filmmakers: being an adult means realizing that Barbie herself wasn't the problem; it was the various social, cultural, and capitalist factors that fucked up teenage girls and femmes for the foreseeable future.) Although the film knocks her Barbie as "stereotypical," for reasons that remain unclear to me, Robbie attempts to imbue her Barbie with a sense of compassion and kindness long before she embarks on her journey to the Real World. Clearly, this Barbie cares about her fellow Barbies, even going as far as to showing up at events where they're doing what they do best and supporting them every step of the way. Although the film depicts Barbie learning that she must extend her empathy and grace towards the Kens instead of disregarding them, I can't help but feel Gerwig and her co-writer/husband Noah Baumbach leave Robbie at a disadvantage. Despite a dull "white savior" joke and a flat analysis of the perfectionist ideals attached to her "stereotypical" doll type, Robbie's Barbie doesn't have much of an arc, which begs the question: why was this particular Barbie chosen to lead the movie? After all, this movie insists on being an "important" movie, complete with feminist acknowledgments of the doll's -- and, by extension, Mattel's -- cultural shortcomings, but it chooses to do so by making a thin, white, blonde woman the voice of those messages. Of course, white cis-straight women struggle with perfectionist ideals that harm them as they navigate society (and pop culture is finally realizing it's complicit in creating this unequal playing field), but why do "feminist" filmmakers like Gerwig insist on centering white, thin, and blond normativity in their "feminist" films? Not only is such a move hollow and empty, it also does a disservice to her lead actress. Robbie may give a spirited performance that convinces even the most skeptical Barbie fanatic that casting her was a stroke of genius, but she deserved a better screenplay. I give her props for trying to make it work, though.
Ryan Gosling as Ken
Ryan Gosling as Ken in Barbie. (Warner Bros.-Discovery/Mattel | 2023)
Truth be told, an argument can be made that Ken was the true protagonist of Barbie, and the film's "important" messages about patriarchy are really aimed at men -- and I would believe you.
Mostly because it's hard to walk away from this movie and not think that this movie wasn't about Ken learning a thing or two about becoming his own person. Ken's surprisingly deep, compassionate, and rich character arc would have floundered if Ryan Gosling (who people doubted for ageist reasons) was not cast as Barbie's equally blond and blue-eyed other half. Gosling gives a rousing, career-best performance that proves he was meant to play Ken all along. Of course, in Barbie Land, gender roles are flipped: Barbies are in charge, making all the rules, inhabiting all integral job occupations, and making some time for disco nights and sleepovers, while Kens are... well, just Kens. Not only is their job literally just "beach" -- not lifeguards, which would be far more helpful -- but their lives pretty much revolve around impressing the Barbies. They exist under the female gaze, and their lives are dependent on whether they achieve it -- even going as far as to fight each other to impress Barbie. (Another to the filmmakers: I get it... but, seriously, think bigger.) But Gosling's Ken grows tired of this life, traveling with Barbie to the Real World -- only to wind up discovering patriarchy and deciding to bring it back to Barbie Land so he can educate the Kens. It's a tall order for any actor to accomplish, but Gosling displays an impressive range in his representation of how the patriarchy winds up harming men in ways we've yet to come to discuss in our current cultural moment. (For all the incessant grousing right-wing grifters do about how men are suffering in society and how masculinity is currently experiencing a crisis, you'd think this movie would be of some importance to them... but that would mean giving up the ghost and actually giving a damn, and giving a damn means losing their impressionable audience and their dollars, so...) There are moments where I felt bad for Ken, who's attachment to Barbie is borderline Urkel-ish but represents so much more. Like Barbie, Ken doesn't know how to grapple with the all-too human feelings of inadequacy and the flawed perfectionist system of Barbie Land. And like Barbie, Ken decides to do something about it -- even though he goes about it in the worst way possible. (Alas, patriarchy isn't as innocent as horses, Godfather movie nights with your bros, and Mojo Dojo Casa Houses, Ken.) Gosling really, truly, could have phoned it in as Ken, and it's a testament to his dramatic and comedic chops that he doesn't. To an extent, Gosling's Ken feels like a sly satirical commentary on how the actor himself has been placed in the metaphorical doll boxes of patriarchy via the male characters he's played in his career thus far, from the deceptively disarming Driver in Drive to the over-achieving but self-involved jazz musician Sebastian in La La Land. Casting a male lead whose roles have often represented patriarchal ideals in its various and, sometimes, harmful (i.e. Noah in The Notebook), forms to play the toy world's ideal boyfriend is undoubtedly clever -- and Gosling clearly loved leaning into that aspect to inform his Ken. Unlike Robbie's Barbie, Gosling's Ken is given a lot of layers, leaving audiences -- particularly the men that actually took the risk, bought something pink to wear, and saw this movie -- with a couple things to chew on. Ken may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but watching him come to the realization that he truly is "Kenough," I couldn't help but be happy for him. Men are often robbed of their innocence, compassion, and vulnerability in society during boyhood, often leading them down the path of forced masculinity that's as toxic as it is performative. Ken's journey is filled with rich symbolism, and it is a testament to Gosling's talent that he effectively embodies these ideals in a way that is refreshingly grounded and sympathetic, giving Ken's quest to self-actualization unexpected pathos and grace. In a cast filled with A-list names, Gosling is undoubtedly the breakout star of Barbie.
Greta Gerwig's White Feminism Strikes Again
Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie in Barbie. (Warner Bros.-Discovery/Mattel | 2023)
To be honest, I did not walk into Barbie expecting a feminist movie wrapped up in summer blockbuster packaging.
Nothing about the marketing of the movie suggested that feminism would be a major element of the film; if anything, I'd argue the only thing remotely feminist the marketing campaign suggested was Barbie Land's all-female Supreme Court and Issa Rae playing the gorgeous, glamorous, and intelligent President of Barbie Land. It wasn't until I read Wall Street Journal's interview with Will Ferrell, who plays a satirical version of the president of Mattel (a distracting role that squanders his golden comic chops, frankly), where he said the movie would "comment on male patriarchy and women in society." Hearing that immediately made me worried. Largely because I've previously sat through two of Gerwig's critically acclaimed, "feminist" films -- Lady Bird and Little Women --, and all I saw was whiteness. Despite the sense of female solidarity permeating in both films, the latter of which is an adaptation of a beloved piece of 20th century white feminist literature, Gerwig's filmography has repeatedly shown that cinematic feminism is, and remains, a white woman's game. I didn't need to -- nor did I want to -- sit through yet another cinematic white feminist odyssey, one that would be extolled as a relatable masterpiece that "captures" the so-called "universal" female experience. I just wanted to watch a goofy doll movie where, upon seeing her flat feet, Barbie's besties start freaking the heck out. And, yet, here I am experiencing deja vu. Once again, I have sat through yet another Greta Gerwig movie that's undeniably quirky, sometimes charming, and often hilarious, but, overall, is just okay -- despite the Internet trying to convince me of something different. I didn't mind following a thin, white, and blonde femme protagonist going on an adventure of self-actualization; that's what I signed up for. What I didn't sign up for is a white feminist comedy that irritatingly peacocks like it's a radical entertainment product when it is anything but. This isn't to say that I don't appreciate Barbie for trying to be an entertaining blockbuster that leaves its audience with food for thought. It's certainly unexpected, and I like it when a filmmaker takes me by surprise and decides to use some funky (and, sometimes, radical) creativity to imagine the world in different ways. So, in that regard, I don't mind Barbie sprinkling in some Intro to Feminist Theory-style concepts here in there; the fact that those concepts are reaching a larger audience is kind of wild. Much like Lisa Simpson with books, I believe movies have an amazing power to bring people together and generate conversations about the real world in ways that we may not be able to, whether it's because of inaccessibility or lack of cultural communal spaces that encourage such discussions. The fact that Gerwig and Baumbach were able to do this, despite the ridiculous, scam-level backlash from angry white dudes who need to go touch grass or normalize not sharing their rotted "hot" takes, and cross a billion dollars at the box office is indeed a success. Having said that, I remain disenchanted with Greta Gerwig's limited white feminism. Believe me, I see what Gerwig's going for. It's there in the Barbies engaging in their version of community organizing and shared leadership. It's there in the film's screenplay acknowledging the absurdity of having a board room full of white men running a company geared towards little girls, centered around feminism, and only being able to imagine Barbie as a fashionista who loves Ken even though the adventure we've seen her go on is bigger than Barbie Land and Ken. And, of course, it's on full display in America Ferrara's Gloria giving an acclaimed monologue meant to illustrate all the hoops women have to go through just to get crumbs of acceptance. (I, for one, thought it was Feminist 101, and that's fine... but making the film's sole Latina adult character with more than five speaking lines serving as the foil to Barbie? Ferrara, the under-appreciated icon she is, deserves so much better than motivating a white woman to pick herself up off the ground, dust off her shoulders, and get to work on changing the world.) But... it's possible to get something and not like it. I can only speak for myself when I say I don't have the time and energy for movies like Barbie passing themselves off as "important" and "timely," especially when they continue to rely on the same tired, marketplace-approved, social justice concepts and talking points and advertise them as radical. Hollywood has no problem co-opting feminist thought and watering it down to something mass market-friendly and hollow, and Gerwig is just complicit in that grift. There's nothing feminist about calling attention about how "stereotypical" and "white savior"-like Robbie's Barbie is, and failing to give the rest of the Barbies -- all of whom are played by actresses of different skin tones, gender identities (i.e. trans actress Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie), sexualities (i.e. McKinnon, an out comic actress, as Weird Barbie), and body types -- extended screen time, substantial lines, and opportunities to make an impact on the plot. Ultimately, Robbie's Barbie truly embodies the white savior label lobbed at her, and, at no point, do Gerwig and Baumbach's script examine why this is. There's nothing feminist in the constructed world of Barbie Land itself, a place where certain dolls are treated as second-class citizens, often shoved down at the bottom of the metaphorical toy box and only surfacing for an easy, cringeworthy joke about their existence. For instance, there's a couple of jokes about Emerald Fennell's Midge, a pregnant doll who was discontinued because she was too "weird" and "controversial," so she lives in a house somewhat isolated from the other Barbies -- only to appear a couple of times for people to be shocked and appalled by her. Another example is Michael Cera's Allan, a one-of-a-kind male doll who is basically queer-coded throughout the entire film, right down to his ability to fit into Ken's clothes and his willingness to follow along with Ken's patriarchy plan lest he get mistreated by the Ken crowd. Prior to him factoring into the plot in the third act, Allan is often an afterthought, overlooked by the people he wants to connect to and seen as too odd from start to finish. And, Weird Barbie, herself, is mistreated by the other Barbies because she "got played with too hard," so they call her weird behind her back and to her face and she lives in her own "weird house" isolated from the other Barbies, who are suggested to get their beauty from her as she withers away and becomes ugly -- a.k.a. bullying... but make it Barbie. Yet, Barbie Land champions itself as empowering, even after the film exposed the cracks in the foundation via the Kens' treatment and, to some extent, Allan's queer-coded character journey, but continue to poorly treat a doll modeled after a pregnant woman and two dolls who can be interpreted as queer. What continues to be the most irritating aspect of the limited white feminism of Gerwig's films her continued acknowledgements for a need for intersectionality, but she fails to actually center such ideas in her films. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Gloria's monologue, which insists that every woman is walking around experiencing life the same way she does -- and, by "she," I mean Gerwig. (Gloria may be Latina, but the words coming out of her mouth is rooted in Gerwig's lived experiences as a thin, white, blond, cis-straight woman.) Not all women walk on this planet the same way Gerwig does; a thin, cis-straight white woman's experiences and needs are going to be different from a fat, cis-queer Black woman or a thin, trans, queer Latina woman. More importantly, folks who are assigned female at birth may not even identify as female; they might be gender nonconforming and live in a feminine-coded body, choosing whether or not to seek gender-affirming care so their body can align with their gender. A movie that uses a thin, white, blonde female protagonist to insist gender is the sole axis of oppression for all women is no different from a number of various blockbusters that have tried to do the same with thin, white (-passing), cis-straight female characters (e.g. Captain Marvel, Cruella, Wonder Woman 1984, and The Hunger Games), but it is beyond irritating to watch this particular filmmaker -- and the white women who will flock to the Internet to defend her -- espouse white feminist ideas and present it as revolutionary. For this reason, watching Barbie and observing online "discourse" (when I'm not getting dog piled for disagreeing with it, of course) has been an isolating one. White feminism has never -- and will never -- include intersectional identities and lived experiences, but will continue to flaunt that it's progressive, despite its desire to succeed in a system it will never ever change and, sometimes, even replicate. Not to mention, its willingness to cosplay as progressive when it continues to harm 2SLGBTQIA+ people, Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latine and multi-racial people, and poor people. (No, that gross smallpox joke wasn't funny. Stop making Indigenous and First Nations people the butt of your racist-ass jokes. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach were wrong for that shit.) Asking for a movie to be a deep treatise about feminist politics is pointless, I know, but I would rather this movie never broached the subject to begin with, especially since the people behind the screenplay lack the range to discuss it substantially. There's nothing wrong with a silly, fun, and warm-hearted Barbie movie being exactly that, and the film is at its best when it is just that. Not every blockbuster needs to double as "an important movie." Especially when the "important" subject is so poorly parsed out that you can't help but wonder why we continue to give white feminine filmmakers the label of "feminist filmmaker" when their work indicates they lack an inclusive perspective. Barbie is fun, funny, and weird when it's not hitting the audience over the head with empty, white feminist platitudes. No movie this summer is going to give you Ryan Gosling in Danny Zuko cosplay singing about how Ken is just Ken but anywhere else he'd be a ten. Nor are you going to find a movie that's fully committed to a joke about the anatomical construction of a Barbie and a Ken doll. Truthfully, I just wish Gerwig and Baumbach just never breached the subject of feminism in the first place. (And I wish they struck that smallpox joke from the final edit; that was the most blatantly racist shit I've seen from a movie this year so far.)
A Final Thought
(from L to R) Ana Cruz Kayne, Sharon Rooney, Alexandra Shipp, Margot Robbie, Hari Nef, and Emma Mackey as Barbie in Barbie. (Warner Bros.-Discovery/Mattel | 2023)
I long for a future where Hollywood will let feminine filmmakers make all the silly, madcap, and campy studio comedies they want without the expectation of doubling as an "important" movie.
I long for a future where the American film industry will stop force-feeding us white feminism and marketing it to audiences as groundbreaking when, really, it's just white supremacy walking backwards in high heels. I long for a future where a feminist movie can truly think outside of the metaphorical doll box, offering a cinematic vision of the inclusive feminist thought and bold changes needed to envision a potential reality where undeserved power is redistributed to those living on the margins and liberation is not a bright pink pipe dream. I long for a future where cis-straight white women filmmakers actually challenge themselves to dismantle their limited perspectives and expand their horizons, to consider the impact of centering voices, bodies, and identities that don't follow the thin, white, and blond perfectionist blueprint the film industry insists historically excluded communities -- mainly communities of color, queer and trans communities, and disabled communities, and working class and poor communities -- subsist on based on the false logic that white women stepping into the spotlight will eventually mean they'll get a chance to have the light shine on them. Not to mention, be the centerpiece of a major cinematic event that would become the cultural event-turned-smashing box office success the Internet would hype up before, during, and after its theatrical run. More than anything, though, I long for a feminist movie that won't, as writer Tabitha St. Bernard-Cross wrote in her review of Barbie, "[leave] us right where we started." One day, I hope we get there. At least we all have our bright pink "Barbenheimer" (*barf*) merch to help us mark this particular point in pop culture history, a time where yet another studio tried to sell us on yet another white feminist blockbuster that should have stuck to being a goofy, campy, girls' comedy.
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