I've been formulating a few more thoughts on the summer of Barbie after seeing the film a couple weeks back and then again yesterday, when our plans to catch the remastered version of Coraline were sold out and we opted for another Barbie screening, which was I suppose inevitable since I've had a hard time stopping thinking about it since we walked out of theater. It's a move that had me alternating giggles and tears and by the end, both times, nursing a knot in my throat that was both sad but also hopeful. So rare do we get something that is both hilarious satire--of patriarchy, of pop culture, of girldom, and such a heartfelt dealing with these things at the same time.
People are still marvelling at little at the success, probably in an effort to reproduce it for future films, and I'm not sure that's possible, with nothing being as worshipped and divisive as the blonde doll that every female (and many males) from Boomers to Zoomers at least experienced to some degree. Something both loved and reviled as a symbol of everything wrong with consumerism and body images. But also something overwhelmingly under many a girl's tree come Christmas morning. Her essence a complicated knot of feminism and anti-feminism, where you can be everything you want to be, as long as you are statuesque and thin and unbelievably perfect.
There is a line where Barbie says something about wanting to be the creator, not the product, right before she decides that the gloss and glitter of the Barbie world is not for her. A montage of shots of women backed by that Billie Eilish song that makes me a little teary everytime I listen to it, something I do quite often. Wanting to be the inventor, not the idea. The artist, not the muse.
I have to admit, it's also a strong feminist movie somehow strangely stolen by Ryan Gosling's Ken, who provides much of the humor along with Margot Robbie, but also presents a character that is both ridiculous and sympathetic at the same time by turning the mirror around and showing men, at least in Barbieland, as characters defined by their relationship to the women. Much like the role most women actresses play in male-centric Hollywood in every damned mainstream movie and summer blockbuster. Apparently, this has left bros and aggro dudes fuming and big mad, but I don't think they quite get the irony.
In many ways, the movie felt like a layering with bits of tatters and thread from my own life. Playing with Barbie, dressing Barbie and undressing Barbie and cutting off all her hair when I ruined her in the tub. Playing with Barbie in the plastic and cardboard townhouse that eventually warped and leaned and was unsalvageable. The kind of media warping of the female body, of which Babrbie is just a product, not so much a cause. Matchbox 20's "Push" cover by Ryan Gosling that is hilarious and reminds me of the summer that song was everywhere the summer before I started grad school here in Chicago. Various bits and echos of living as a female in a male-dominated world.
Even despite catching it a second time in the theater, I feel like I need to watch it again when it hits streaming so I can mull over its gifts a little more.
