It’s sad, but not altogether surprising that tired cliches and worn tropes, which make even less sense wrapped around a beautiful female lead and a buff male costar, can so thoroughly impress people whose primary job function is to be critical.
Last year, Barbie premiered to record box office returns and significant critical acclaim. Reviewers around the world praised the movie for its whip smart satire of relations between the sexes. For example, Sheri Flanders, writing for The Chicago Reader proclaimed, “[Director] Greta Gerwig serves up a frothy confection of fashion and fun coupled with searing social critique of the iconic doll in the movie Barbie.” Kiko Martinez of The San Diego Current claimed Barbie was “one of the most thought-provoking social commentaries and empowering mainstream comedies in recent years. The ‘I’m Just Ken’ scene should be playing on a loop in the Louvre.” Chris Barsanti, Pop Matters, observed, “Gerwig had given no indication she (or anybody, really) could produce such a hot-pink masterpiece of goofball humor, winsome Jacques Tati [a mime and silent film actor] alienation, and low-key patriarchy seminar.” The San Francisco Chronicle hailed the film for focusing on the “contradictions and constraints that make being a woman so impossible” and showcasing how “women [are] bending over backwards to fit into the increasingly tiny space between ‘not enough’ and ‘too much’ when it comes to gender performance, beauty, confidence and motherhood.” “With buckets of pink paint and a 64-year-old archive of dolls at its disposal, the Barbie movie takes a crack at healing everyone who struggles with the gender binary, whether it’s cis men craving human connection, women feeling trapped by unrealistic expectations, or nonbinary people wanting to be seen and understood.” At the time, I made no secret of my skepticism without even having seen the film, suspecting that any movie purported to advance progressive values, much less one helmed by a female director, would be praised well beyond its merits. Politics has, unfortunately for us all, prevaded all aspects of culture in recent years and movies are no exception. Check the right boxes, and you will almost undoubtedly be graded on a curve. This was to be more than expected in an era where your political perspective passes for virtue and merit, and Barbie certainly checked all the right boxes.
What I didn’t expect, however, was the film to serve as a microcosm for the intellectual bankruptcy of the establishment, revealing how little more than tired cliches and worn tropes can so thoroughly impress people whose primary job function is to be critical. Barbie, for all the hype, is essentially the searing social commentary of a college dorm room following a few too many bong hits. The entire film is framed by the murky concept of a “patriarchy,” where Barbieland is contrasted with the real world by virtue of one being run by women and the other men. In Barbieland, “Barbie has a great day every day. Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him.” The Barbies themselves occupy all of the positions of power, from the Presidency to the Supreme Court. They win all the Nobel Prizes, perform all major job functions including construction workers, and generally live in a female paradise, closing each day with a party. The real world presents the opposite scenario, where one character quips, “I’m a man with no power, does that make me a woman?” and even Mattel is a victim of the patriarchy. As a businessman Ken meets describes it, “We’re actually doing patriarchy very well…we’re just much better at hiding it.” The utterly incompetent and useless CEO of Mattel, portrayed by Will Farrell notes, “Women are at the foundation of this company! There was a female CEO in the 90s and then another one… at some point. So that’s two right there!” Besides, “I am the son of a mother, and the nephew of a female aunt. Some of my best friends… are Jewish!” Ken, after decades of being relegated to sideshow status in Barbieland, immediately becomes enamored of the patriarchy concept and decides the time is ripe for a revolution. He promptly returns to Barbieland to enact his master plan of…dressing funny, living like a complete slob, and drinking “brewski beers” all day. Needless to say, Barbie herself is horrified and with the aid of two women from the real world, vows to make things right – by once again putting the males in their rightful place as second class citizens. Ken, himself, is fine with that because “To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t just about horses, I lost interest.”
Where to begin? Apparently, it has escaped everyone’s notice that Barbieland is essentially an oligarchy where the Kens have no rights, no voice in government, and no choice except to do what the Barbies say. The Barbies themselves exhibit not the slightest bit of care for the plight of the Kens, up to and including being unaware where they sleep at night and are likely homeless. In Barbieland, men are toys to be played with whenever the Barbies feel like it. The movie delights in this dynamic, noting over and over again how Ken is totally dependent on Barbie. The real world, as in the actual real world, might be messy and unfair, but Barbieland doesn’t even attempt to aspire to anything resembling equality. Rather, it wallows in inequality as its most defining feature, an inequality cheered on by critics who also appear to simply skip over a pivotal scene before Ken returns to Barbieland to create the patriarchy. He is briefly convinced his mere status as a male in the real world will grant him privileges as he’s learned in books about the patriarchy, but when he actually tries to secure a job, he’s rebuffed several times for lacking the appropriate qualifications, literally mocked and laughed at. A doctor informs him “No, I won’t let you do just one appendectomy.” Ken protests, but “I’m a man.” Yes, but “not a doctor.” He is similarly shot down everywhere he goes, even a position as a lifeguard where a real lifeguard informs him that no one is in danger on the beach itself. In fact, so far as I can tell, no one in the real world gives him anything simply for being a man, and a good looking rather buff one at that, which in a more rational critical world would undercut the entire premise. If the real world is such a patriarchy where incompetent men succeed – such as the CEO of Mattel – why can’t Ken get a job? These questions are of no interest to the critics, and neither is the movie’s penchant for violating the first rule of storytelling: Show, don’t tell. Barbie features some reasonably clever visuals and interesting production design, but the film is also loaded up with both narration and unnecessarily expository dialogue, stretching scenes that might be reasonably entertaining far past the breaking point. It’s not enough to show the Kens turn Barbie’s Dream House into a den of iniquity, the Mojo Dojo Casa House. Ken must spend five minutes explaining why he’s done so, and Barbie must be given equal time to react.
The matriarchal versus patriarchal framing is accompanied by no shortage of grievance mongering concerning the plight of overall women in general. Women who have apparently been traumatized by…playing with Barbie dolls and socialized on an impossible body image. In one of the few interesting conceits in the entire movie, Barbie and her fellow residents of Barbieland are convinced that they have empowered women in the real world by allowing them to imagine they can be whatever they want to be in life. As the opening sequence explains, prior to Barbie, dolls for young girls were designed to look and, at times, even function as infants, essentially preparing them for motherhood and nothing else. Barbie, however, changed all that with adult dolls that did everything, from being a doctor to going into space, a message of empowerment in an era where empowerment for women was still hard to find. Barbie enters the real world expecting to be a hero, only to be called a “fascist” for creating unrealistic expectations in what has become yet another tired cliche. Last year, Psychology Today reported on “Barbie & Unrealistic Body Expectations in 2023.” “In a new study, nearly 1000 women opened up about the impact of Barbie dolls on their body image and how specifically they compare themselves. A whopping 82% believe Barbie portrays unrealistic body expectations to girls and women. The top body parts women compare are waist (42%), legs (34%), hair (28%), chest (27%), and face (26%). Additionally, while 3 in 5 women believe the latest Barbies are better at reflecting all body types than previous dolls, 69% still think Barbies can lead to body image issues.” This is sad, a tad ridiculous, but not altogether surprising: The meme that a doll is somehow detrimental has been pushed in some quarters for close to a generation. Articles on the topic go back a decade or more. Is it any wonder women are repeating what they’ve been told their entire lives? Boys, of course, have also played with toys for decades that promote the unrealistic. Most boys, however, didn’t think they’d grow up to look like He-Man or be the super cool ninja, Storm Shadow from GI Joe. To a large extent, fantasy – as in what will not and cannot exist in the real world – is the entire point of play as a child learns to separate this fantasy from reality, realizing as they mature that what exists in their dreams does not necessarily translate into the real world. Rather than lean into this obvious lesson and the reality that demonstrating women can achieve whatever they work hard to achieve is far more important than the shape of a doll, Barbie prefers the full on woe-is-me-to-be-a-woman approach, even while casting Margot Robbie, one of the most beautiful women in the world, one who actually looks like a Barbie doll.
This theme culminates in the climactic speech of the film, one highly referenced and lauded by critics, but so loaded with worn out laments, it could’ve been cribbed from the introduction to a feminism seminar. Gloria, a woman from the real world who’s drawings of Barbie with cellulite (seriously) prompted the events of the film, and the mother of the young woman who called Barbie, a fascist proclaims, “It is literally impossible to be a woman…Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people.” Oddly, this speech occurs in a movie where the male protagonist Ken, tired of second class status, soon proclaims on his own that he’s “Kenough” and not going to simply be a symbol of “blonde fragility,” which would appear to highlight the obvious fact that LIFE AIN’T EASY FOR ANYONE, pardon the slang and the all caps. It is unclear what world progressives inhabit wherein men can simply strut around being mean, quashing other people’s ideas, and more with no repurcussions, but things take an even stranger turn when the speech continues. In Barbieland, “You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining…You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault. I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”
If women truly believe this is the case – and pretty clearly some not-insignificant subset does – then, once again, where to begin? The litany of challenges women (and only women) supposedly face is and always will be irreconcilable. To the extent the statement is comprehensible, the underlying theme is abject nihilism, nothing more and nothing less. The human condition, the contradictions and obsessions that define us as people in the first place, do not allow a life free from competing demands, suffering, hardship, or offer any reward simply for surviving. There is no point, either achievable or conceivable, where life makes sense, much less where anyone is doing everything right. As Macbeth put it far more succinctly, “Life is a tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Expecting otherwise, is wishful thinking bordering on insanity rather than anything resembling the feminism it purports to be. It is true that women are subject to uniquely competing demands as the only sex that can bring life into the world and as individuals in their own right with goals and aspirations beyond motherhood, but so what? The reality is both a blessing and a curse, like so much in life for both men and women. A blessing in the sense that women have the ability to experience a whole world of emotions forever denied to men, and in the modern era at least, women have more choices about what they would like to experience than ever before. A curse because every choice is another opportunity denied, a competing demand that cannot be reconciled with the reality of having limited time on this Earth. No one, no matter their gender, can be everything or have everything. Everyone knows this, of course, and yet we’re supposed to believe challenges in life are unique to women or perhaps women are uniquely unsuited to these challenges. The feminists would never put it that way, but what other conclusion is there when the critical speech of a searing social commentary concludes with a lament that no one hands out medals for surviving this cold, cruel world and a whimper of “I don’t even know?”
Regrettably, there might have been a better story in there somewhere. The idea that Barbies live in a female paradise while callously disregarding the men in their lives, compared with a real world where men tend to be more emotionally hardened and distant, is interesting, as is the notion that a Barbie should in principle have empowered women, but in practice, many women today believe the opposite. Between the two, there is the potential to explore the difference between fantasy and reality, especially with a living, breathing fantasy in the lead role, bringing us back to the nature of childhood play. Instead, the progressive bent of the overall narrative and popular culture in general can’t help itself from devolving into the usual bugaboos of sexism and oppression, the lens through which every aspect of life must be interpreted whether or not it leads to inane conclusions or reflects any fundamental truth. It must also necessarily denigrate men beyond all recognition by depicting them as hopelessly inept clods who, given a chance to make the world they want it, live like animals rather than do anything productive, requiring benevolent women to keep them in line, but who am I to comment? The magic trick is that the nonsense actually works and the film was lauded as some kind of brilliant statement, instead of laughed at for the immaturity of its recycled tropes as it should’ve been or the downright insulting depiction of men in general. Perhaps the problem is with me and me alone, who expects more than being told, rather pedantically, what I’ve been told over and over again whether or not it makes any sense, and who expects the supposedly educated to show a little discernment and critical thinking, rather than clapping like trained seals at a progressive treat. Either way, this is where we stand today: If progressives build it, they will come.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 