Barbie: let’s not settle for the appearance of happiness
In this scene from the Barbie movie, Barbie is seen singing as she drives away from Barbieland
I don’t like knowing too much about a film before seeing it. I crave new stories, new takes, and I dread having to sit through a movie I’ve already seen before, with a different title. When a new movie comes out that looks interesting, I’ll try to find out just enough to see if I want to see it in the theater or not. For Everything Everywhere All at Once, this happened when I saw an interview where the directors said that it was something of an anti-multiverse move. For Barbie, it was the proposal that this was a movie both for those who love Barbie, and for those who hate Barbie. I took my younger (adult) daughter to see Barbie, who was intrigued because a couple of her friends told her that they cried during the movie, and she was wondering how a film about a doll could be that profound.
With the popularity of Barbie, many people have weighed in on its significance. The film has sparked conversation, sometimes heated, among women and between spouses. I’m glad to see people thinking about the issues in the movie: issues like gender equity and the role of idealized images. For people seeking an opinion about Barbie, there are plenty of pundits spouting talking points for them to repeat to their friends. I enjoyed laughing and being moved with my daughter during the movie. My daughter said that it was a touching coming of age story with great fashion and music (see especially Billie Eilish - What Was I Made For? Official Music Video).
Barbie and Logan’s Run
After watching Barbie, the move which first sprang to my mind was Logan’s Run, the original 1976 film. In that story, Logan 5 is a Sandman, an officer who shoots people (runners) who try to evade their responsibility to die at the age of 30. Logan receives a secret mission from the computer which runs the city to find Sanctuary, the place where runners escape to. As a result, he is marked as age 30 and has to become a runner. While looking for Sanctuary, he meets Jessica 6, and they escape the city. Outside the sealed city, they find a ruined society and they meet an old man. Logan returns to the city, which opens up when the computer fails because it can’t comprehend that the missing runners had all died and that the world is safe outside.
In Barbie, Stereotypical Barbie lives in a world where (almost) everyone is young and beautiful. When things start to go wrong for her (thoughts of death and cellulite), she consults Weird Barbie, who imposes on her a mission to leave Barbieland for the real world and to help the girl who is troubled by thoughts of death. As Logan is accompanied by Jessica 6, so too is Stereotypical Barbie accompanied by Ken. Like Logan, Barbie finds that the real world is different than what she was told. For instance, the one having thoughts of death and cellulite is not a young girl, but a grown woman who is a mother. And when Barbie sees an old women, she looks at her and tells her that she is beautiful. Barbie, however, has a bit more agency than Logan. Logan must embrace the outside world because the perfect sealed city has broken open. We don’t know if Logan would have accepted having his age reset and returning to being a Sandman. Barbie, in contrast, chooses to live outside, because as she says “I want to be a part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that is made.” The other Barbies, Kens, Midge, Alan, etc., are content to accept that their lives have meaning because as toys, they make life better in the real world. They are content with perfect days, constant smiles, and having all their consumer needs met by brand-name goods.
While I’m at it, I should say that being “a part of the people that make meaning” is a very human desire. Even the act of critical analysis is an attempt to understand and make meaningful something which one could let wash over oneself as a moment of entertainment. While some might wring their hands about a creation becoming free of its creator, it’s important to ask which creator. Barbie is certainly free of her creator*, Ruth Handler— in life as in the movie, Handler is no longer the one who determines what a Barbie doll is. But how free are we from the brands and consumer goods which define our lifestyles? That this is a question asked by a movie which promotes a brand of consumer goods should indicate how difficult this question can be.
Barbie and 2001
The movie Barbie opens with a version of the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. Many people also watched this sequence in the form of a teaser trailer for the movie. In 2001, a black monolith appears on earth, causing hominids to evolve and use tools to kill each other. In Barbie’s opening, the evolution is that at a certain point in American history and in the life of many girls, Barbie dolls supplant baby dolls. The second monolith in 2001 is on the moon and sets HAL 9000 and Dave Bowman on a mission (with secret parameters) to investigate Jupiter. Barbie too goes on a mission to investigate the real world as source of her distress. It’s the third monolith, orbiting Jupiter, which has particular significance for the Barbie movie. When Bowman reaches the third monolith, he lives to old age and is finally transformed into something new— a fetus enclosed in a sphere of light, headed back to earth. This ending engendered much confusion and debate because Kubrick doesn’t explain anything— he just brings us to the brink of something new.
Similarly, at the end of her journey, Barbie also becomes something new. She arrives with anticipation for her first appointment with a gynecologist. At a certain point in our development, we put away the toys of childhood with their perfect (or perhaps stereotypical) ideals and embrace the messiness of adulthood. Although our lives are defined by brands and consumer goods (indeed all the facticity of human existence), there is space for human freedom, a freedom expressed in the most banal of situations. Earning a living, taking care of a house, going to the doctor. The trajectory of the Barbie movie is less about making meaning and more about accepting the world with all its muddled history and being excited about the possibility of something new.
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* in a sense, Ruth Handler’s creation of the Barbie doll is really a form of what Tolkien would call subcreation. That is, although she does not create herself, Handler creates something in the world.