While mine is likely to be a minority reaction to the new live-action movie “Barbie,” it may suggest something that could weaken the proverbial “legs” of this box-office bonanza. See, I’m troubled that I can’t figure out what “Barbie” is about.
Greta Gerwig’s movie, with its terrific cast and seemingly large budget, plays around with ideas about “gender roles,” but it isn’t clear what the movie wants to say about these wild over-simplifications. Seventies feminists asserted that the public and professional responsibilities were too often denied women for inconsequential or mythical reasons.
The movie has reversed those ideas. Imagine a world in which Supreme Court Justices were all women (only a third of them are currently) and where the president, surgeons, writers, diplomats, and physicists were all women. In the movie’s Barbie doll land, all these oddly selected professions are professed by Barbies.
So we’re in for a more colorful version of Norman Lear’s 1977 sitcom “All That Glitters.” Right? Not so fast, nimrod.
The Barbies don’t actually do any work. No work is required in the perfection of Barbieland. Then, Adam and Eve like, “Classic Barbie” (Margot Robbie) thinks of death. Why? There isn’t any aging in Barbieland, no war or disease. Barbie goes to see “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinon) who has become odd of appearance and behavior because the child who played with her had a wild hair.
Weird B suggests that something similar may be happening to Classic B, and that she should go through a “portal” to the “real world” to discover what is happening. So off Classic goes up the pink brick road, only to discover that Ken (Ryan Gosling) has hitched a ride. As a “male,” he has no real place in Barbieland and has begun to regret this. Maybe the wizard can give him a real life.
It turns out that Classic’s manipulator is a grown woman and mother (America Fererra) who works for Mattel, who makes Barbies. Ma has been troubled by the adolescent revolt of her daughter, and has used Classic for something like therapy.
The FBI discovers that the dolls are in the real world. An odd agency to select. Anyway, Ken runs off back through the portal. Classic has to escape the clutches of a Mattel Board pretty much right out of the movie of “How to Succeed at Business Without Really Trying.” Will Ferrell plays the CEO. Ma and daughter escape with Classic.
Back in Barbieland, they discover that Ken has taken some of the gender attitudes he found people in the real world had, and has reversed the gender roles in the toy village. Still, no one has any actual work to do, even after the change.
As was the case when women were running things at the beginning of the film, everybody seems pretty happy with that status quo in Ken’s version of their world. All except Classic. Again. She’s the dog in Barbieland’s manger. She convinces the other Barbies to trick all the Kens into a sort of West Side Story rivalry with songs and dances. Meanwhile the Barbies take charge of all of what would be the “responsible” positions.
And here the movie goes searching for an ending, any explanation that might get the film over.
Now there isn’t anything wrong with “Barbie,” if one expects no more of a big time, live-action film than one does of a cartoon. But the film seems to suggest it wants to be more than confusing and colorful entertainment. OK. OK. But what does it mean?
