You could argue that Aqua, the Danish band who gifted us with the 1997 earworm “Barbie Girl,” paved the way for Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s much-anticipated, star-studded film Barbie.
Shortly after “Barbie Girl” hit airwaves and became perma-stuck in pop culture’s brain, Mattel, the corporation behind the doll, sued Aqua’s label for trademark infringement and brand damage among other claims. At the time, the Barbie-maker held tight reins on the doll’s public image. The lawsuit argued that the lyrics “Kiss me here/ Touch me there/ Hanky-panky” injured the plastic blond’s reputation. A judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals eventually ruled in favor of the label and, literally, told Mattel to “chill.” Today, according to a statement given to the Washington Post, Mattel “loves” the song.
Gerwig’s latest film, which opens in theaters across the country on July 21, is evidence that Mattel has loosened its grip on the brand’s image and embraced America’s love/hate relationship with the doll. Following her introduction to toy stores in 1959, Barbie once represented the “perfect” woman: thin, White, blond, big breasted, and with feet always ready for high heels. (In the film, the arches of Barbie’s feet fall, making her suddenly flat-footed, and she declares: “I would never wear heels if my feet were shaped this way!”) In 2023, I hopefully don’t need to deconstruct all that is problematic with Barbie as the “ideal” woman. And, bless them, Mattel has tried to bring the doll and her friends of various races and hair colors into modern times. They shrunk her breasts, let out her waist, and created one Barbie in a wheelchair and another with a prosthetic leg. As the Independent noted earlier this year, “Barbie transcends the boundaries of fashion and she has had over 200 careers, many in non-traditional roles for women.”
That helps set the scene for Gerwig’s film, which opens with a prologue on the pre-Barbie days when only baby dolls were available, which left kids (mostly girls) playing mom more often than not. Barbie changed everything.
Cut to Barbieland, where every Barbie wakes up in her Dream House™, gets dressed from a closet that would make Cher in Clueless envious, showers without water, and drinks pretend milk. Like the song says, “Life in plastic/ It’s fantastic”: Every day is perfect in Barbieland, where (the underutilized) Issa Rae is President Barbie, the Supreme Court is all Barbies, Hari Nef is Doctor Barbie, and Emma Mackey (one of the three great Sex Education actors starring in this film) is Astrophysicist Barbie. In this world of pink, every night is girls’ night, and the Barbies have solved women’s inequality. Kens are just background characters vying for the Barbies’ attention.
Of course, nothing gold can stay, and Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie is suddenly plagued with thoughts of death. She wakes up with bad breath, and her feet fall flat onto the ground (which makes the other Barbies and Kens dry heave). Doctor Barbie sends her to the only one who can help, Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie—the one we all had, whose hair we cut too many times, forced into the splits, and beheaded. McKinnon, in a role that will inspire lesbian memes for years to come, offers Barbie the Barbieland version of a red pill-blue pill choice: a high heel or a Birkenstock. Barbie’s mission, she learns, is to repair the rip between Barbieland and the real world by saving whomever is playing with her in the human realm.
A rude awakening follows for our plastic protagonist as she and Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling) rollerblade into Venice Beach. She’s ogled, laughed at, and harassed, while Ken receives smiles and head nods. Robbie and Gosling, who lands every joke with hilarious ease, make a great duo—playing well off one another and lining the other up for comedic, tongue-in-cheek gold.
In the real world, Mattel is run by men, and adolescent girls hate Barbie for her unhealthy portrayal of women. It’s here that Barbie meets her human counterpart Gloria (America Ferrera), a Mattel receptionist and mom mourning her daughter’s descent into adolescent angst (Ariana Greenblatt). Ken also meets “the patriarchy,” which launches him into an unfortunate period of Men’s Rights activism and drives him to recreate Barbieland in his vision: Kendom.
Despite all the hype around the bathed-in-pink picture, I didn’t know what to expect from the 114-minute movie: an over-the-top comedic spectacle (on-brand for Mattel) or a statement-making film costumed in bubblegum pink (on-brand for Gerwig). Turns out, you could take it as either, though filmgoers who only see the first might overlook the deeply poignant scenes like when Barbie, with tears in her eyes, tells an old woman at the bus stop, “You are beautiful.” (“Don’t I know it,” she responds with a hearty laugh.)
On the other hand, those looking for a statement might be left wondering what and how much emotion to feel. Powerful emotional scenes dot the storyline, but sometimes with such large gaps in between you forget what exactly moved you. The end, though touching and thought-provoking, unexpectedly grasps on to intense poignancy, and the tone of the entire film shifts. I can’t help but think what could have been if Gloria’s character was granted a bit more depth beyond a tired, burnt-out mom.
The film is littered with commentary on womanhood, motherhood, and body ideals. In the real world, Barbie can’t help but acknowledge the underlying violence in the way men look at her; a speech from Gloria during the film’s climax is peak Feminism 101 (“we’re supposed to be sexy but not too sexy”). But Barbie is not really a call for women’s equality. Instead, the film dissects gender imbalances and the gender binary. Two characters, McKinnon’s Weird Barbie and the only Allan doll (Ken’s quickly discontinued buddy, played by Michael Cera), represent the kind of outside the box (or, outside the binary, if you will) thinking that gender nonconformity offers. Without the two of them, Barbieland would be lost and the Kens stuck on the wrong side of every history.
In Barbie, the real world is run by men, while Barbieland is run by women. But from the casting to the plot, it appears Gerwig and Co. know it’s ridiculous that any one gender should be in control. Unlike dolls, humans are more than an idea, a pronoun, or title. As Simu Liu, who plays Ken’s rival Ken, wrote on Instagram earlier this week: “You think you’re going to watch a movie about dolls, but you’re watching a movie about what it means to be human.”
Barbie opens in theaters nationwide on July 21.