Since it was announced that Barbie would have a film adaptation, the question immediately arose: will Greta Gerwig be able to get away with bringing back an icon as problematic as this doll in 2023? The unknown has already been cleared: yes, she has achieved it. Altogether? We have to qualify that.
The official story, one dictated by Mattel (the brand behind the toy), tells that in the 50s Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie, wanted to introduce a doll on the market in which girls could see themselves reflected and thus not continue playing only with baby dolls, which placed them in the role of mothers. “She wanted the girls to dream that they could be anything,” Handler said. The only problem is that, for a long time, the impossible was to be a Barbie. For several generations, that silhouette with a wasp waist and pointed toes has ended up representing the fact that women are programmed to pursue unattainable perfection.
Hence, the challenge for Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, with whom she signs the script, was enormous. They could either ignore that turbulent heritage and hand us a Mattel advertorial (the film meets with the company’s approval, which invited some skepticism) or come up with some stunt that, with a feminist rereading involved, would make Barbie belong in the 21st century. Not only have they opted for the second, but they also do not ignore the first. The deal between filmmaker and brand seems to have been clear: “We will celebrate the good and laugh at the bad.” This fable-like move includes winks and self-criticism, but at various times it is somewhat schematic and deliberately obvious.
Barbieland is presented to us as a fantasy world that is dominated by barbies, that is, it is a matriarchy: there is a president, doctors, judges, Nobel Prize winners… The ken also live in it, but they don’t paint anything. Margot Robbie’s character, the ‘stereotypical Barbie’ (few casting decisions more accurate than this one) is always accompanied by her particular Ken (Ryan Gosling), an insecure man who needs her gaze to exist, to feel fulfilled.
Rhythm and imagination
Not surprisingly, it is a doll that has always been sold as ‘the couple of’ and now suffers from any autonomy. The ken are jealous and hollow. It is one of the few aspects where the cartoon seems to skid. For the rest, that pink and plastic universe in which every night there is a pajama party is shot with a lot of rhythm and imagination.
Reportage
The plot thickens when Barbie needs to jump into the Real World and discovers that this other dimension, ours, is a patriarchy. Thus, by giving the doll a taste of its own medicine, Gerwig shows us the literal, and not figurative, process by which a doll can become real, human flesh.
Tears will flow from Margot Robbie’s eyes and she will begin to doubt herself, her reason for being. Can anyone think of a more pertinent but also more vaunted concept than the impostor syndrome? In that sense, the film seems to tick all the boxes of what defines fourth-wave feminism in the media, and it does so gracefully, but with a discourse that could be enriched with nuances.
From Greta Gerwig one could expect more. She is a director who in the past has shown her sensitivity when it comes to portraying female characters and the relationships between them and with them. There are the mother and daughter of ‘Lady Bird’ or the love and complicity (but also the tensions and jealousy) that existed between the ‘Little Women’ and also with her suitors. The ‘Barbie’ proposal, on the other hand, remains stuck in a binary world where they are ahead -without setbacks, without fights, without differences- and they are one-dimensional. Maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t the latter what we blamed ‘Los Serrano’ fifteen years ago?
In any case, after the intense promotional campaign, ‘Barbie’ cannot be judged only as a movie or as a ‘blockbuster’, but as a phenomenon. Among the Hollywood releases that have recently flirted with corporations and brands (Nike, ‘Blackberry’, ‘Tetris’…), this is the one that breaks all records. Without a doubt, it will be the movie of the summer, as well as its soundtrack, and articles on feminism, marketing and Zara collections will rain down. If the goal was to reach the millennial woman, they have hit the bull’s-eye.
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