The Meta-Capitalist Dystopia of Barbie (2023)
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- Опубликовано: 24 сен 2023
- Is the Barbie movie a landmark feminist masterpiece, a liberal fever dream, a meta-capitalist dystopia, or a feature-length toy commercial? This doll weighs in.
DISCLAIMER: re: my disclaimer about making this video during the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes: I mean no offense against any other individual RUclipsrs who have included similar disclaimers in their videos. This whole section is just me doing exactly the same thing, but in my characteristic abrasive and obnoxious manner where I posture like I’m better than everyone else. the joke is, I’m a self-righteous hypocrite, who’ll take any opportunity to sincerely remind my audiences to p💀rate movies and not give your hard-earned money to film studios. So, sincerest of apologies to anyone who have felt personally attacked or offended by this part.
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Also yes when the Mattel executives first showed up and were presented as both all-men and evil I was like "oh nice we're actually going to have actual critiques of capitalism and how it's intrinsically linked to patriarchy", and then they immediately turned into benevolent cartoon characters who don't actually do anything and are just sort of...there (or saying all the infuriating lines you mentioned), and I was like "oh right Mattel sponsored this movie of course actually criticizing them is forbidden"
Thanks for the analysis! The idea that the film should have ended with Barbie saying her name is Margot Robbie is so utterly brilliant.
Wait wait, can Ryan’s kids just write a script I wanna know how Gym Class and Darells life turns out.
Oh I’m ready for barbie cynicism, third times the charm?
Or Gloria's last name since that was her barbie. All the Barbie and Ken's should have chosen to go by the names of the kids who played with them!
This was worth staying up late for. And your videos are like a splash of cold water to knock me out of my complacency or look at things from a genuinely fresh perspective. I wish more youtubers weren't just echo chambers for their own ego. You actually challenge your audience, and it makes me want to get better at media literacy myself!
You make such a good point about the names and how children actually play with their dolls. I’ve had such ambivalent feelings about the whole Barbie craze surrounding this movie, because while my Barbies were a huge part of my childhood, I was also very turned off by lots of the Mattel branding and choices, even as a kid. I remember hating how any house type play set came with flat illustrations of decor and furniture along the walls, as I really wanted to decorate the houses myself, with more realism and less pink. And you’re correct, no friends I ever knew as a kid played out any Mattel-dictated storylines. My Barbies were usually deciding if they wanted to have kids or not and trying to finish college (wow I really am the product of a single mother). Mattel’s version of Barbie has never felt like MY version.
Love your content so much, thanks for every video!
The other one got taken down right as i was commenting 😭 anyway I love how your reviews always leave me with a challenging idea to chew on. Can't wait to see what's coming up next.
Great work Vivian! When you weren't pointing out a lot that I missed, you were giving words to things I had felt but couldn't sort out into words.
And when you talked about not being allowed to have a normal girl childhood...❤ yeah
27:10 yes! i mentioned to a friend that the feminist discourse in the film reminded me of what folks were writing about on Feministing back in the 2010s. So what's next? Barbie takes on GamerGate?
Lovely video and commentary as always, I love the last part about toys and playing - the name is such a nuanced yet central point! It really helped me explain why i feel so ambivalant and low-key distant about the movie...
"Barbie" as a name has really only stood (to me) as a brand name and nothing personal. So the mom character who draws her own barbie characters didnt really feel right, now I know why - i mean, who draws an OC and call them "[descriptor] Barbie"?! As an creator the first thing I do is naming my OCs, and that is usually the point of departure for creating their story! ...but changing name is to change the brand! So ofc they wont change that......
I loved Barbie...and so far I'm really loving this media analysis.
I'll say this, people can correctly assess that this movie isn't "deep" per say, but that seems to be something most people can handle accepting. Yes it's all about toys, yes it's fairly shallow, but in terms of emotional resonance it's reassuring to see how many cis-men are internalizing the messaging in the movie. And beyond that this is neither the first nor likely the last hyper critical review of this movie I've seen and while many have been pushing back at those assessments, many have also been accepting those flaws and admitting they still enjoyed the final product. A friend of mine that reviewed the film said "this is one of the only times I've ever seen my entire theater watching the movie" and I think that speaks to the level of filmmaking. Maybe it doesn't deserve the money it made at this time especially, but it's rare for people to actually seem excited by a movie because it looked well made and interesting. I don't think it got that off of "live action Barbie" cause I know I wouldn't have gone out to see it with my friends if that were the case. Which just on a personal level, it was one of few instances where all of were comfortable dressing outside our normal gender boundaries for an event like this. Which I know corporations shouldn't be the arbiters of that, but part of the reason that they're so restrictive about what's shown in media is because they know even a suggestion of further tolerance is enough to push the boundaries on what people accept on all ends. I'd rather use moments like this to better ease my more conservative friends (or as they'd call it, moderate/centrist) into questioning everything under the guise of simple enjoyment than bar them off from it and try instead to shove them in the deep end of extremely challenging hyper existential films. Hell, I can't even get them off of Twitter half the time. I know for me it started with liberal concepts too, basic ideas around feminism and civil rights that taught me to question things. And then when I started questioning them I got pushed further into beliefs that reflected my desire for base human rights. I'm comfortable using Barbie as a stepping stone for people that don't understand what makes filmmaking and art truly creative so that they can stop and ask themselves "wait, if this is good, does that make all Marvel movies bad?"
First off, I will say that of course the Barbie movie is highly liberal and of course has all of the issues that a highly liberal corporate movie would have. There are, however, a few things that I would like to say. 1. As much as this movie might not be radical in its politics, the fact that the movie is one of the first movies to be A: centering a female perspective, and B: as popular and as big as it is even with men (obviously no shit women have made countless films centering their perspective it's just that most men haven't engaged with them until now). This means that there are plenty of aspect about the film that are probably as obvious as "the sky is blue" since you're a woman but are radically new concepts to the guys now engaging. Also, Ken's aesthetic is now giving men options to play with more colors in their fashion. Obviously, this is an absurdly low bar to pass, but that's where Hollywood is. 2. I actually have a few issues with how you characterize this as a "kid's movie", and I don't say this from some conservative "oh no, we can't let a kid hear the word vagina" kind of place. Mostly, I'm sensing a little bit of likely unintentional degrading rhetoric here. I'm not sure how women view this, but for me, as a guy, when guys (and now some women thanks to liberal feminism) want to insult men, they call them gay, compare them to women, or compare them to children. I think you're doing a bit of this last part when it comes to this especially when stating that this movie only makes sense if you have the media literacy of a child. To me this implies that you think the masses are like children in a way that feels insulting, and I don't think that's actually the case. I think mostly that most people are not taught media literacy, so it would make more sense to state that they are simply not educated in media literacy in a way that doesn't come off as insulting. I feel as though the way that you've stated that this movie is a kid's movie implies that the adults (which I'm pretty sure consists of most of the audience) have failed to grow up and should feel bad about themselves. Generally, a few comments here and there to me felt degrading to children (who I believe are just as smart as adults but just not as experienced) and to others by comparing them to children.
This was fantastic! I think you're the first person whose hit some of the criticisms I had while watching the movie vis a vis patriarchy and it was really cool to see the bit about play at the end. As a cis guy, I only got an interest in Barbie when I grew up and started reading about childhood media culture, that gave me a bit more of an appreciation for the chaotic, self-defining ways kids played with and remixed media and eventually I came across essays on Barbie in that light. So the first third of the movie ended up baiting me into thinking it would be more incisive than it actually ended up being (focusing on the way play is imagined through the visual humour, the prologue that sort tongue-in-cheekly dismisses the idea that corporations or plans could condition kids to play a particular, the existence of weird Barbie and the idea that Barbie land could be effected by play). It didn't seem to unreasonable at that point to assume the movie might take a smaller stake, and be about Barbie going to the real world, being confronted by the less ideal lives children lived or the idea that not all people playing with Barbies were privileged young girls (which the movie almost does) and then growing from that knowledge. So the shift to the top-down story about constitutions etc was baffling (after all that's the very kind of 'programmable childhood' ideas the movie's voice over seems to mock).
And it's even more incomprehensible when the idea of subversive play keeps coming back, in the Ken battle, in the jump to adverts for depression Barbie.
But yeah I wasn't really able to wind this criticism into more than my general points of 'this movie is clearly serving adult gazes and models of individualist feminism and leaving behind the needs and positions of t(w)een audiences who are its alleged target audience (waves a copy of Nodelman's Hidden Adult around)' so it was really cool to see how you blended that into the criticism of names.
Sorry this is a bit rambly I just thought this was really cool!
Not too rambly at all :) great comment!
I remember watching the movie and wondering, did the writers get an email from Mattel saying "Here's the short list of things you're allowed to criticize Mattel for"
How does this channel not have more views??? 💖👏
I ask myself the same question all the time 💀
but it's probably cause I talk about a lot of controversial and dicey topics that the algorithm does NOOOT like. You should check out my back catalog for even better videos :D
It kinda felt like plastic feminism to me. I enjoyed it and laughed at many points (holy shit Barbie land looked amazing) but there were a few points where I was soured. The daughter character in particular was a mess. I also liked the other half of Barbenheimer a lot better. (Holy shit I loved Oppenheimer so much, I would’ve seen it even if it wasn’t part of an internet phenomenon, also it didn’t fall apart in its third act.)
Also the fact that people, especially here in China where I am currently living were angry even at this plastic feminism and the empathy it showed shows me that it is still revolutionary and it suuuucks.
Also, aroace Barbie.
You had me from the first 3 minutes.
I interpreted the sanitation remark Weird Barbie made to have been a request but I may be wrong. I thought she *needed* sanitation. Which makes this even worse imo, because we now have questions over how well Black President Barbie was governing Barbieland (see also: implied chronic homelessness among the Kens).
Overall, as beautiful and fun ad the movie was, I actually found it really unsettling and it sat with me for an embarrassingly long time. You really hit the nail on the head when you were talking about how Mattel the corporation was portrayed. If we include the narrator as part of their depiction/role in the movie (which i do), there were definitely parts that felt like direct clap backs at the criticism they’ve received over the years. I also agree with the lack of any real stakes or thing to be resolved in the third act. Overall, it kept hinting at something much darker, but didn’t want to commit to a full satirisation because like you said it’s at its core a commercial. What happened to make Alan seem so much more aware than the others? Or are the others all more capable of awareness and… choose against it? Mattel have agents that take them away and brainwash them back to Barbieland?? Are they trapped? Ruth handler says no but the way Mattel pulled up on Barbie suggests otherwise. What if they’d made fun of themselves a little more and indicated that the whole thing was way more sinister? Even Toy Story takes more risks in that regard, quite prominently actually.
I had a similar reaction to the Falcon and the Winter Soldier funnily enough, with the way it portrayed the military/chauvinism in a similarly “self aware” yet ultimately dismissive, sanitising and even positive manner. Any time a corporation, or the military, or the police contribute to or create a piece of media that’s framed as critical but ultimately treats them as an inevitable and neutral or even positive force, to me, it is another step forward towards full fascism. I feel a little dramatic saying that though. Anyway loved this video 💕
I’m glad you enjoyed it! You’re so right, I felt ALL that too
Always suspicious of how capitalism portrays itself
Regarding the muscular mermaid,
I think the point is to show how the ken revolution has replaced every aspect of Barbie society, even the mermaids.
The joke is simply that the rock is a mermaid. (This is hilarious) I didn't agree with most of your points but i liked the new perspective you had on this, deceptingly deep movie. Love from Sweden 🇸🇪
I’m so thankful I found you to challenge my own perspectives of things I consume. I want to know your opinion on everything!!
also. nurses should strike. care techs should strike. it isn't just creatives and entertainers that deserve the benefits of collective action. if you labor, you deserve the worth of that labor.
so i haven't seen the Barbie film. i don't feel like i can talk about *much*. my impressions from what i've seen about it though? it seems that Barbieland simply recreates the system of oppression with a change of cast.
also i was soooooooo shocked at how easy it was to change my name in my state. getting my gender marker changed, well.... bit more of an effort, but my legal name? shockingly easy.
great video! loved your perspective on everything, you made so many great points. I especially liked how you highlighted that it's children and their imaginations that breathe life into these toys. That's something that's never really mentioned and speaks to my own childhood.
Patreon link in the description is truncated/ellipsized, fyi! Great vid!
I still think it's funny that of the two movies released on the same day, one was a cute little toy movie with a milquetoast feminist message that was also about supporting men finding new identities, and one was a movie about how white men are the worst and literally doomed the world (granted both were still very much centering a white audience), and conservatives got extremely mad at the former.
I deeply appreciate your perspective on this. I’m 40, AFAB, lived-as-cis-my-whole-life-and-too-tired-to-do-anything-about-that-now-but-actually-genderfluid, so I know my hot takes come from a very cis-woman lived experience. It’s important to me to have the trans-femme point of view, because I did laugh out loud at the gynecology joke, but you take on how the movie could have ended is really striking, and I agree that would have been a stronger conclusion. I still think the gynecology joke is funny in a millennial cringe-humor kind of way, but I do wish a movie that prided itself on diversity could have put a little more thought into how non-inclusive that joke could be.
Tangentially, I have a deeply special place in my heart for the Zellenials, as a Xennial m’self. Generational categorizations are ultimately garbage, but in-betweeners are some neat people.
Thank you for your perspective! as a fellow generational in-betweener myself, I try my best lol
There's a lot of ideas here in this list format (very friendly to my autistic a$$), but this kind of reminds me of a question I've been thinking about for a minute. I viewed the Barbie movie within the context this entire video exist to give beforehand and was able to enjoy it quite a bit via the constraints the filmmakers have both within their own ideology and within the studio system they're in. The film uses a lot of it's narration in a way that doesn't feel traditionally straightforward as a joke mocking itself, but kind of being a statement of the ideas that they can't really say or unable to articulate frequently. There's a sequence you talk about where President Barbie speaks to Weird Barbie and just gives her a state in office. What I focused on that scene was how they retrograded the Kens back as second class citizens like women are in this society, which the film knows and pinpoints itself out as doing. It's a film constantly influx and arguing within itself as it surface level is a straightforward cis white neoliberal story of individual female empowerment in argument with more complicated ideas about masculinity without patriarchy, the nonsensical idea of a gendered hierarchy, queerness inability to exist within these structured systems, and the idea of what gender expression means post dual gender concepts. It's essentially, purposeful or not, trying to make the audience have the same cognitive dissonance the Barbies have in the movie by having the film be this contrasting and contradicting mess, which is kind of genius if that is really what they're going for. Similar to Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don DeLillo's White Noise (developed around the same time as the Barbie film by Barbie's co-writer and starring Greta Gerwig as the lead actress, and can be described as Jean-Luc Goddard's "Weekend" for anxious liberals than angry communists), Barbie explores this "white liberal existential dread" that's becoming a major theme in mainstream film right now in this or "Oppenheimer."
Which leads to my question: do films like this help people to radicalize and take things like this seriously for lots of people? Both me and you are beyond what this film is trying to say strictly on an emotional and political level, getting more into conversations about the entire meaninglessness of gender concepts and Western society as a whole and how it harms people in the stuff we write, but most of the people who've made this a billion dollar film likely don't. I see what you mean when you talk about the ending, where it seemingly implicates womanhood with genitalia ( which I don't necessarily think that's what it's trying to say on purpose, but more of a manifestation of Greta's childhood stuff) and your wish to explore the post transgender/post Black Liberation concept of name liberation. Yet, as someone who lives in an area where people I know can't talk about their periods without grown men saying "gross" like they're five and being told that they can't talk about it in public despite the way it affects them, or how many people will likely have their only major philosophical texts be the Bible, the fact that it reinterprets the Adam and Eve from its patriarchal subtextual origins of domination and control into a fairy tale of feminine freedom and intellect, and having a woman, even in a light-hearted manner, care about her body in a way that's not often talked about in mainstream conversation is sadly quite radical for a lot of people. A children's film has became one of the most talked about films of the year, because everyone is so emotionally held back by our governmental systems. The pure fact that they're even speaking about the patriarchy in any meaningful manner is challenging to a lot of people I'm around in my regular day to day who argue if this is even a kid's film due to talking about "political" subject matter many don't want to deal with. I literally heard teen girls casually joking about the patriarchy publicly, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime.
Then again, it's a compromised work. It doesn't go deeper than it should have. I would argue that both "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story"(1987) and "But I'm a Cheerleader"(1999) said many of these things and better roughly a quarter century ago, the only major difference being that this film talks about how men can fit into that world and be better. The difference is that you either a film freak or queer to have likely heard of those movies and seen it, while this is made for a big audience. I completely accept the film within its limitations as something pretty impressive, but are these video essays meant to be pushing people further on that path into connecting, for example, how deeply intersecting the policing of trans bodies and the policing of vaginas are part of the same systems and push people into the next step? Part of my political evolution is watching more left-leaning people dissect things like Watchmen 2019, which expanded the parts that connected with me in the political aspects.
I'll end this with a story that recently came to my head. I'm planning soon to try and get more into the '90s riot girrrl music movement to both broaden my horizons from the many cis straight men I listen to and to get into hardcore punk and much grimier music. A conversation I hear within that movement is the co-option of the term "girl power" by the Spice Girls as their motto of sorts. In the process of them using that term, that introduced a wider demographic of girls than simply the American punks responsible for coining and spreading that term would ever reach, but in the process made that term open for commodification and watering down it's more radical messaging. In a better world, you can be able to spread the more radical ideas the way you wish to and reach that wide audience of people to decide, but society's organized to make those voices silent, or compromising them to be marketable. So do you get the people you want to listen to your message by compromising with capital in order to spread the most important parts to the vast majority who need it, or would you want to have the raw, complicated, unfiltered thoughts out there for the people who care and know enough to find it. From what I know of you, I believe you would choose the later but I understand why people do the earlier, and I personally see an assault on all fronts to be the most useful route forward.
Also, I don't really have a lot to add to this conversation about "gayest Barbie movies" outside the fact that Barbie and the Diamond Castle is the gayest one by default. If you were to make a drinking game based around finding all the lesbian subtext, you die. You just die. As someone who has seen other children's media that is overtly gay with a similar plot structure to this, the homoerotic undertones double the film's length just because of the bubbling homosexual tension the film has just under the surface.
Edited comment above to remove a reference to James Somerton for 4 hour video essay related reasons...
Knocked it out of the park. I actually liked that my sons wanted to see this movie. Yeah. It is not perfect. I have no idea how progressive that the arts will be decades from now, but i look forward to it.
I started this video before seeing Barbie; after a few minutes I figured I'd get more out of it if I watched the movie first. So it stopped and watched it (the copy I got from 1337x, let me emphasize). I'm glad I had your video to come back to, because I found the movie frustrating. You explain my frustrations very well. Of course Barbie is fun and entertaining, to a certain extent, but thematically it's both heavy-handed and incoherent. You spent a lot of time talking about the absurdities of the world it portrays -- the politics of Barbieland, the odd way "patriarchy" comes into it, etc. I think the movie having all these unintelligible elements, and then pointing them out to the viewer, is meant to be an intentional part of the humor. It's the meta layer where the screenwriters are always saying to us, "Now don't take any of this too seriously." But as you point out, the movie is also trying to saying something about reality, but the film itself undermines that message at every turn. So in the end it's really not much more than a very effective advertisement.
With all the praise the film has received, I was expecting a lot more from it. I wasn't expecting anything particularly insightful about feminism, but I figured I'd at least get a solid story. Instead the film is actually just about what I would have expected from a feature-length Barbie commercial, though executed with particular verve.
I especially appreciate your insight at the end about how children can and do use Barbie as the starting point for much more interesting and creative stories than anything Mattel gives us. The fact that this insight was not part of the film is particularly damning -- it reveals the film's actual contempt for the minds of children.
To answer the description, yes.
tbh it didn't bother me too too much that we didn't see how the kens instituted patriarchy because i felt like it fit in with the cartoon logic of the movie and showing it would have bogged down a plot already WAYYYYYY too bogged down by storylines. my hot take is that the kens finding patriarchy should have been the plot of barbie 2 so that the film could at least have had a chance to develop all of the things it wanted to say about patriarchy. as it is, though, barbie is really the least interesting part of the barbie movie which is just... lame
but i love that you named the dissonance in that the kens instituted patriarchy... somehow.... but it could also be voted out? like even for a movie with cartoon logic the math isn't mathing. and your analysis of how they handled mattel and ideas for the ending are so brilliant. keep doing what you do
As a theymabive enby, it almost felt like an insult to see how they washed out Alan as soon as barbies regain power
RIGHT?! I haaaated how they just completely disregarded him
hey! is the link to your patreon the correct one? when i click it it comes up blank
never mind i think it was just some glitch on safari! it works on chrome
Whew! 😮💨 that’s a relief!
omg, my name is broken 💀, but i don't mind, it's funny
The Barbie font I downloaded was the free but limited one, so no numerals 💀
Keep doing what your doing, it matters
The logic of the movie is quite clear: it’s toy logic! The writers get to pick and choose what is or isn’t logical, because they couldn’t be bothered to write actual stakes! Screw you for asking! 😁
Im afab and i thought the gynecologist line absolutely fucking ruined the ending.
Great point about the name too. Choosing her own name would have been much better.
Yes!! Validation!! Thank you :)
I loved your whole breakdown. I wanted to scream at the same scenes but had to bite my tongue so this was very cathartic 💖
Fantastic! ^_^
Well hot fucking damn! Thank you for this video!
I have been waiting for someone else to make the point that Barbie the movie is totally oblivious to the way kids actually play with Barbie. A movie that actually portrayed the Barbie multiverses my sisters and I set up would be wildly better than this movie.
movies like barbie or any blockbuster in Hollywood filmmaking are truly nothing more than systems of monopolization but hides behind the spectacle. sheer spectacle meant to ensure that we need Hollywood to make these films. we need them to enjoy cinema/art. which is sad. but yeah, barbie is pretty fantastic and its hard to take things out on it. the bus scene and montage at the end are truly beautiful, free from plastic.
curious, how do you feel about kanye west?
Overall, good music. But I wish everyone would stop talking about and paying attention to him.
Darn, at least the movie made pink cool again
Elequant as always, Ms. Strange! You really put into words some of my cynicism around the Barbie movie.
I enjoyed parts of it, it made me laugh a few times, and I can certainly appreciate the filmmaking talent on display, but I just couldn’t detach myself from the cynic in me who knew this was a glorified toy commercial masquerading as a feminist critique of the very brand it seeks to elevate. And it worked! I don’t blame anyone for liking this movie, enjoy more things in your life, please, I would never try to take that away from you. But I hate how people seem ignorant of what the film is ultimately doing. My mom, after watching it, remarked that she couldn’t believe Mattel let them get away with this. But I knew exactly how they “got away” with this. It may take some potshots at Mattel, but it ultimately launders the Barbie brand, reinvigorating people’s nostalgia in a tongue-in-cheek way. All that matters is that they sell more products, and this movie is just that, a product.
the movie is hilarius and incredibly well made, but also dissapointing in terms of discussion and depth
i’m so glad this got released again❤❤❤ don’t let the fascists get you down queen 🫅