Bananas for "Barbie"

Hey Barbies!

Let's talk about the most talked-about movie in the recent history of movies: "Barbie" (2023).

First and foremost: Seeing this movie was a goddamn delight.  I went with a family member on a Wednesday night at one of my favorite local movie theaters, and despite being well into the movie's run, the theater was still pretty packed with an enthusiastic and responsive audience.  It was peak movie-going, and I drank in every drop.  It was so much fun and an immense morale boost hopefully signaling the gradual yet progressing end to my hiatus from movie theaters.  This is the fourth movie I've seen since my first child was born, and regaining this part of myself is an exhilarating gift.

So now let's dive in!  

Spoilers ahoy, so DO NOT read further until you've seen it!

DON'T DO IT.

...Okay so:

"Barbie" is a spectacle in the absolute ultimate, best sense of the term.  It's funny, it's brightly colored, it's dynamic, it's inventive, it's exquisitely playful.  It feels, I imagine, like a trip on a pleasant hallucinogen.  There are times where it loses its coherence a bit and it's not clear exactly what's happening or where we're going, but it's so interesting and fun that it doesn't really matter.  There are songs!  There is dancing!  Like sprinkles on an already overloaded sundae, there are little cameos from accessories or side characters in the Barbie universe that inject little jolts of nostalgic childhood recognition (I remember those rollerblades!).  It induces a bubbly, delirious joy.  This is a rollercoaster where it's enjoyable to just strap in and lose yourself--let the ride do its thing.

The film's incisive social commentary is arguably at its most satisfying in the form of its asides, clever song lyrics, excellent casting decisions, and funny jabs at the bullshit of sexism.  That little speech in the all-women Supreme Court about how reason and emotion actually enhance each other rather than undermine each other?  I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.  

All that to say: I was enthralled before the opening credits concluded.

I mean that opening sequence sending up "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)??  It is at once so deliciously silly, instantly eliciting giggles, but also a deeply satisfying reappropriation of Stanley Kubrick and a flick on the ear of the invisible chorus of self-satisfied men who worship his work without taking stock of its frank misogyny*, and also so god damned meatily thought-provoking even without its cinematic allusions: Imagine the paradigm shift for little girls in the transition from baby dolls, where the child imagines herself as a caregiver, to the Barbie doll, where the child imagines herself as the woman, the object at the center of her imagination!  AMAZING.

Admittedly, I found that there are some crucial turning points where the theme of women's empowerment is more explicit that I found to be less successful than the movie as a whole.  For example, the premise that the Barbies are liberated from their Ken-y brainwashing simply by learning of the dissonance of women's roles under patriarchy didn't quite cut it.  Are we saying that naming the dissonant and impossible-to-satisfy expectations of women solves the problem of internalized sexism?  Is that the message?  That it's just... sufficient to speak aloud the completely contradictory and often asinine rules society imposes on women to then be liberated from those rules?  This criticism of patriarchy is only the most superficial of starting points, and it is nowhere near harsh enough.  It's not enough to point out that patriarchy is hollow, self-contradicting, and pathetic.  It is definitely those things, but it is also merciless and deadly.  Patriarchy must therefore not only be mocked, but smashed.  I hate to feel like a punch was being pulled at this moment, but that's how that moment landed for me.

Which is not to say you should change anything about the Ken battle-and-dance-off sequence.  Don't you dare touch that.  It's the absurd delight high point of the movie.

I am literally giggling just looking at this image.  Perfection!!

Another moment that bumped me is Rhea Perlman's line, "A mother stands still so her daughter can see how far she's come."

I can see how this would be meaningful for a lot of people with a lot of different mother/daughter relationships and I don't want to take that away from anyone, but I don't buy that statement and I don't like it.  It still pits women against each other--in this case, mothers and their daughters--when really, don't we yearn to walk alongside our mothers?  Women don't need to measure themselves against the distance they cover that their mothers could not, because that still puts women in a position of competition with and comparison against other women.  Can't we all just lovingly and supportively accompany each other as far as we each can go, together?

While some of the moments of gravitas in which characters comment on the travails of womanhood, relationships between women, and mortality as a woman in modern society have their weaknesses, the final moment when Barbie decides to become a real human woman, after that breathless and gorgeous montage of women across all stages of life and in all states of emotional exultation, that "Yes", is absolutely beautiful.

In summary, it's perhaps fitting that my reaction to "Barbie" is a bit of a contradiction: I thoroughly enjoyed it as a movie-goer.  It is the perfect movie to be seen in theaters for a fun night out.  I love that it's resonating so much with people who feel celebrated and seen by it (and that it isn't with others and that it's prompted some viewers to finally take out the trash in their lives).  It is wonderfully thoughtful, well-executed, creative, and packed with content that deserves to be reflected on and processed.  It's impressive and so pleasurable how unabashedly and boldly it accomplishes all of these things.  It's an amusement park of a movie, but it's also mobilizing brain food.  And it also has its moments where reasonable and loving allies might diverge, where there might be more to accomplish.

I gave the movie a 5.  If you haven't already, go see it!

{Heart}

* = Look.  We all know I love "The Shining" (1980) (and a good allusion to "The Shining"), but the dude was an asshole.