essay about the barbie movie

– Entertainment Analysis and Reviews

Barbie (2023) Film – Empowerment & Authenticity Explored

“Barbie” (2023) is a captivating live-action fantasy comedy helmed by director Greta Gerwig and co-written by both Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. The film boasts an impressive production team, including David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, and Robbie Brenner as producers. Inspired by the iconic Barbie doll from Mattel, the movie stars the talented Margot Robbie in the titular role of Barbie, with Ryan Gosling charmingly portraying Ken. Additionally, the film features a stellar supporting cast, including America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell.

Released by Warner Bros. Pictures, “Barbie” made its theatrical debut on July 21, 2023, captivating audiences with its imaginative storytelling and delightful performances. This much-anticipated adaptation of the beloved doll’s universe brings the world of Barbie to life like never before, taking viewers on a journey filled with laughter, magic, and self-discovery.

Plot Synopsis – What’s the movie barbie about?

Characters analysis, the meaning, themes and significance of the movie, ending explained.

The film “Barbie” takes a unique and self-aware approach, presenting a heartwarming yet humorous story of a doll named Barbie who ventures into the real world in search of meaning in life. The movie opens with a narration by Helen Mirren, who provides a voiceover about the inception of Barbie and how the iconic doll has influenced generations of little girls around the world.

Barbie, voiced by Margot Robbie, embarks on a soul-searching journey as she discovers her purpose and identity in the real world. Throughout the film, Greta Gerwig artfully blends comedy, emotional depth, and tongue-in-cheek dialogue to explore the complexities of being a teenage girl and the various challenges and aspirations that come with it.

As the story unfolds, Barbie encounters a range of experiences, including finding unexpected friendship, dealing with self-doubt and societal expectations, and coming to terms with her own uniqueness. The film’s emotional rollercoaster is complemented by its wit and cleverness, making it an enjoyable experience for audiences of all ages.

The movie showcases an impressive display of visual and technical brilliance, with meticulous attention to detail in costume design and production, paying homage to Barbie’s iconic evolution over the years. The cinematography, led by Rodrigo Prieto, adds a glossy and vibrant touch to the overall presentation, capturing the charm of Barbie’s universe and its inhabitants.

Critics and audiences have lauded “Barbie” for its subversive and refreshing take on the classic doll character, making it one of the most anticipated and talked-about blockbusters of the year. Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Barbie has been praised for its charisma and charm, while Ryan Gosling’s comedic performance as Ken has garnered considerable attention.

While “Barbie” does have moments of melancholy and emotional resonance, it ultimately leaves viewers with a sense of hope and inspiration, celebrating the power of embracing one’s individuality and finding meaning in life’s journey.

Overall, “Barbie” (2023) stands as a delightful and innovative addition to the world of live-action adaptations, offering a fresh and empowering perspective on the beloved doll character that has captured the hearts of millions for decades.

In the 2023 film “Barbie,” directed by Greta Gerwig, there are several characters who play significant roles in the story. Here are some of the key characters and brief descriptions of each:

• Barbie (Voiced by Margot Robbie): The titular character and the heart of the film. Barbie is a beloved doll who embarks on a journey from her fantastical world to the real world in search of meaning and purpose. Throughout the film, Barbie discovers her individuality, navigates self-doubt, and learns to embrace her uniqueness. Voiced by Margot Robbie, Barbie’s portrayal brings charm, charisma, and vulnerability to the character.
• Ken (Played by Ryan Gosling): Ken is Barbie’s iconic companion and love interest. In the film, Ken is portrayed as a hilarious “himbo,” a man who may be attractive but not particularly intelligent. Ryan Gosling’s performance brings humor and wit to the role, making Ken a memorable and endearing character.
• Helen Mirren (Narrator): Helen Mirren lends her voice to the film as the narrator. She provides insights into the history and significance of Barbie, offering a thoughtful and reflective perspective on the character’s cultural impact.

• America Ferrera: Known for her roles in “Ugly Betty” and “Superstore,” Ferrera plays a character who befriends Barbie in the real world, helping her navigate the challenges she encounters.
• Kate McKinnon: A versatile comedian known for her work on “Saturday Night Live,” McKinnon brings her comedic talents to the film, portraying a quirky and humorous character.
• Issa Rae: An acclaimed actress and writer, Issa Rae’s character adds depth and nuance to the story, contributing to Barbie’s emotional journey.
• Rhea Perlman and Will Ferrell: Both actors bring their comedic prowess to the film, adding laughs and humor to the narrative.
• Other Cast Members: The film features an array of other characters who interact with Barbie during her adventure, each playing a unique role in her growth and self-discovery.

It’s worth noting that Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” is characterized by its self-awareness and clever humor, which extends to the portrayal of these characters. They contribute to the film’s subversive and refreshing take on the iconic doll, making “Barbie” a memorable and entertaining cinematic experience.

“Barbie” (2023) directed by Greta Gerwig carries several layers of meaning, symbolism, and significance that contribute to its overall impact and reception. Here are some key aspects to consider:

• Self-Discovery and Identity: At its core, “Barbie” explores the theme of self-discovery and identity. Barbie’s journey from her fantastical world to the real world represents a quest to find her true self and purpose. This mirrors the journey many individuals go through in adolescence and young adulthood as they navigate their identities and aspirations.
• Empowerment and Individuality: The film celebrates the power of embracing individuality and authenticity. Barbie’s character evolves beyond the stereotypical image of the doll, breaking free from societal expectations and embracing her unique qualities. This message promotes self-empowerment and encourages viewers to be true to themselves, regardless of external pressures.
• Feminism and Female Empowerment: As an iconic symbol of femininity, Barbie has often been criticized for perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards and gender roles. Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” addresses this criticism head-on, subverting traditional tropes and presenting Barbie as a complex and empowered character. The film challenges societal expectations and promotes a feminist perspective on female representation and empowerment.
• Social Commentary: “Barbie” is self-aware and includes social commentary on various themes, including consumerism, pop culture, and the impact of media on body image. The film acknowledges Barbie’s historical significance and addresses the complexities of her cultural impact, both positive and negative.
• Humor and Satire: The film’s humor and satire add layers of entertainment and commentary. Through tongue-in-cheek dialogue and comedic situations, “Barbie” pokes fun at societal norms and expectations, offering a fresh perspective on a well-known character.
• Cultural Iconography and Nostalgia: “Barbie” is rich in cultural iconography, featuring nods to various eras of Barbie’s history and the impact she has had on generations of fans. This nostalgia appeals to audiences who grew up with Barbie and fosters a sense of connection and familiarity.
• Visual and Technical Brilliance: The film’s production design, costume design, and cinematography play a significant role in the storytelling. The attention to detail in recreating Barbie’s world and her iconic looks showcases the significance of the character in popular culture.

The ending of the movie “Barbie” (2023) is a poignant and emotionally resonant conclusion to Barbie’s journey of self-discovery and empowerment. Throughout the film, Barbie, voiced by Margot Robbie, ventures from her fantastical world to the real world in search of meaning and purpose. As the story unfolds, she grapples with self-doubt and societal expectations, ultimately learning to embrace her uniqueness and authenticity.

In the climax of the film, Barbie faces a crucial moment of decision. She must choose between returning to her original world, where she was initially created as a doll, or remaining in the real world, where she has discovered her true self and found meaningful connections with others.

This decision becomes a symbolic representation of personal growth and empowerment. Barbie’s choice to stay in the real world signifies her embrace of her individuality and her willingness to face the complexities and challenges that come with it. It highlights the importance of authenticity and staying true to oneself, even when it may be easier to conform to societal expectations or revert to a familiar but less fulfilling existence.

The emotional weight of the ending is amplified by the heartfelt performances of the cast, particularly Margot Robbie, who infuses Barbie’s character with vulnerability and strength. The audience witnesses Barbie’s growth from a seemingly perfect doll to a multidimensional and empowered individual.

In the concluding moments, the film leaves viewers with a sense of hope and inspiration. Barbie’s journey is not just about self-discovery, but also about finding her voice and becoming an agent of change. The movie shows that embracing one’s uniqueness can lead to a profound impact on the lives of others, inspiring them to do the same.

The movie’s visual brilliance and attention to detail in recreating Barbie’s iconic looks showcase the character’s cultural impact and nostalgic significance. The clever blend of humor and emotion in the film makes it a captivating and thought-provoking cinematic experience.

In the climax, Barbie’s choice to stay in the real world symbolizes personal growth and her acceptance of her true self. This poignant ending leaves audiences with a sense of hope and inspiration, reminding them of the importance of embracing uniqueness and empowering others to do the same.

“Barbie” (2023) is a delightful cinematic celebration of empowerment, individuality, and the journey of self-discovery. Greta Gerwig’s vision and the stellar performances of the cast bring a fresh perspective to the iconic character, making the film a memorable and empowering addition to the world of live-action adaptations.

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How the “Barbie” Movie Explains the Psychology of Patriarchy

Is patriarchy a toxic response to the discomfort of being human.

Posted August 21, 2023 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• "Barbie" is an allegory of the rise of patriarchy.
• The film criticizes Mattel's patriarchal vision of female empowerment.
• "Barbie" is optimistic about our ability to refashion our world.

The Barbie movie begins with a parodic nod to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey , where in the opening scene, the appearance of a black obelisk signals a milestone in the evolution of humankind—violence enters the community of peaceful apes who will now evolve into homo sapiens . In Barbie , the obelisk is replaced by Barbie (whose legs are equally monumental) and the apes by little girls who destroy their baby dolls; a new era in play has begun. This comic moment points to the different levels at which Greta Gerwig’s brilliant movie signifies: It’s a movie about dolls, to be sure, but also a movie about evolution, not simply that of dolls and play but also about the rise and endurance of patriarchy, seen through the lens of psychology.

The term “patriarchy” has been criticized for failing to acknowledge the oppression and injustice that exist within male identities. The film acknowledges this criticism when Aaron, the low-ranked administrator at Mattel, says, “I’m a man without power. Does that make me a woman?” But patriarchy is nevertheless grounded in gender , as bell hooks, who is well aware of identity -based power differentials, maintains: “Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females. ”

Barbie was created by Ruth Handler, a woman who defied the gender roles and restrictions of her time but who nevertheless designed a doll in which a limiting, oppressive ideal of female beauty prevails and whose character is all about her clothes and her body (see my essay “Barbie’s Body Project”).

Barbie’s impossible proportions advocate beauty standards (thinness above all) notorious for being internalized to the detriment of self-esteem and self-acceptance on the part of girls and women. Barbie’s feet make it impossible to move freely, from an attacker, or just to function. The first sign that there is a breach of boundaries between Barbieland and the Real World is that Barbie’s feet get flat; when she wears heels in this condition, she comments, “I would never wear heels if my feet were shaped like this.”

Let’s not be too hard on Handler; it was 1959, and in any case, as Gloria points out—she’s the Real World woman who caused the breach by imagining a line of Barbies in crisis—women internalize patriarchal ideals. The primarily male executives who ran Mattel after Handler elaborated on this inherent bias . Although women rule in Barbieland, it nevertheless embodies a patriarchal vision of a feminist universe since feminist theories do not advocate a simplistic reversal of privilege in which someone is still oppressed and disempowered. And with a few exceptions that aim at inclusiveness, the Barbies still look like Barbie.

The Kens of Barbieland are “women.” Ken #1 lives in a world where “Barbie has a great day every day, but Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him” (a description eerily reminiscent of abusive relationships). Ken lives in a psychological state of lack, a “life of blond fragility” where it “doesn’t seem to matter what I do/I’m always number two,” and where being second is tantamount to being nothing.

Barbie cruelly dismisses him; “every night is girl’s night,” to which he is pointedly not invited. He exists to partner with Barbie, and one of the happy outcomes of the film is that he learns to search for his identity apart from his persona as “and Ken,” as in “Barbie and Ken .” This secondary status, epitomized by Ken #1, accounts for the competition between the Kens, which exists from the start of the film. Humans compete when resources are scarce, the resources, in this case, being love, status, and recognition.

Sent off to entertain himself while Barbie tries to locate the source of the breach, Ken goes to Century City, where he discovers a world in which men rule. Barbie observes, “It’s almost like reverse here.” He acquires some simplistic ideas about patriarchy; in the Real World, it isn’t all that involved with horses and mini-fridges. But he understands its fundamental principles, and Gerwig makes it clear that they rule our world as well.

On her return to Barbieland, Barbie finds that Ken is in the process of turning it into a Kendom, thereby acquiring the respect and importance that he has lacked. And there’s an element of revenge as well, captured by one of his favorite songs, "Push" by Matchbox Twenty, with the signature line “I want to push you around.” Barbie finds that the Barbies have been brainwashed into supporting the patriarchal order of things, a comment on what happens to women in the real world (Handler and Barbie’s body come to mind). With the help of Gloria, Barbie figures out that the way to deprogram the Barbies is by stating the contradictions within patriarchal expectations for women. Barbie, who is becoming increasingly astute as well as human, observes, “By giving voice to the cognitive dissonance of living under patriarchy, you robbed it of its power.”

The Barbies trick the Kens into missing the vote to change the constitution that would make Barbieland into a Kendom by using competition between the Kens to provoke a battle. The battle is a comic fest (catch the guy giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to his hobbyhorse) that suddenly transforms into a brilliantly choreographed dance number; Gerwig was inspired by musicals of the 1940s. The transformation has meaning as well as spectacle, allegorizing the posturing—literal posturing through dance moves—and display so germane to patriarchy.

In case you miss the point about the psychology of patriarchy, it’s stated overtly but subtly in an almost throwaway line by Handler, who guides Barbie through her decision to become human. (This movie offers a wonderful rendition of the trope of “becoming human,” seen in characters like Pinocchio, the Tin Woodman ( Wizard of Oz ), and Data ( Star Trek: The Next Generation .) Handler tells her that being human has its drawbacks. For one, you die: “Ideas live forever. Humans, not so much.” And “being a human can be pretty uncomfortable. Humans make up things like patriarchy and Barbie to deal with how uncomfortable it is.”

There’s the moral of the movie: We find both terrible and creative ways to deal with the inevitable lack and the awareness of that lack that come with being human. Handler also suggests that patriarchy is not biological or inevitable for humans, a counter-argument to a widely accepted belief (see works by Grenta Lerner and Angela Saini). Humans make up things, like patriarchy and Barbie. And what is made can be unmade. Maybe we’ll see “Ordinary Barbie” after all!

hooks, b (2004). The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love . Washington Square Press.

Jones, W. Barbie's Body Project (1999). In Y. Z McDonough (Ed.). The Barbie Chronicles: A Living Doll Turns Forty (91-107). Touchstone Press.

Gerder, Lerner (1987). The Creation of Patriarchy . Oxford University Press.

Saini, Angela (2023). The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality . Beacon Press.

Wendy Jones, Ph.D. , a practicing psychotherapist and former English professor, is the author of J ane on the Brain: Exploring the Science of Social Intelligence with Jane Austen .

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Let’s Never Stop Questioning What Barbie Is Really About

As the secrets of the film are slowly stripped away, there’s a case for maintaining the debate over Barbie ’s true intentions.

So—wait. Do we know what Barbie ’s about? Maybe we should keep debating?

The text below is from the original article, published July 11, ahead of Barbie ’s release:

For months, the Barbie movie’s vast unknown has been one of its greatest assets. What little we understood amounted to a pair of highlighter-yellow rollerblades, dangled aloft by the spray-tanned arms of a bleached-blond Ryan Gosling: nostalgic, symbolic, a triumph of marketing honed along a (plastic) razor’s edge. Every new set photo, character poster, and teaser trailer that collected over the months leading up to Barbie ’s July 21 release has been received and dissected with the self-serious thrill of an 8-year-old planning their themed birthday party. Which, to be clear, is exactly as it should be. Questioning Barbie , like assembling an identity as a child, is a necessary pursuit. This is what movies like Barbie —and icons like the doll herself—are made for: both the indulgent pleasure and the outrageous nuance of mythologizing.

The secrets of director Greta Gerwig’s long-anticipated film are, in fact, starting to dissolve: The Los Angeles premiere prompted a round of spoiler-free first reactions (mostly positive), and the official critic review embargo is reportedly up soon. But even with the film finally accumulating eyeballs, there’s still a collective sense of protectiveness over the Barbie brouhaha. We don’t want the mania to break, not yet. There are still ample dopamine deposits to be discovered in deliberating what, precisely, Barbie has to say. After a promotional music video dropped yesterday featuring Gosling’s Ken serenading his second-rate status, one particular TikTok comment best summarized this feeling: “Every time I see a trailer for this movie I am more confused but I also want to see it more.”

Even Barbie star Issa Rae has enjoyed the opacity. As she shared in a December 2022 Hollywood Reporter story , she was perplexed when Gerwig first presented the story to her. “I’ll be 100 percent honest, when she was talking, like, it was entertaining, but I didn’t get it.” she said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know what the fuck she was talking about, but whatever it is, I’m excited she’s behind it.’ And then reading it was, like, ‘Oh my God, I love her even more.’”

So, then, what is Barbie about? My hope is that actually watching the plot play out will only heighten the debate. The film’s IMDb logline encourages that possibility: “Barbie suffers a crisis that leads her to question her world and her existence.” If Barbie’s questioning herself, why would we not want to do the same?

Thus far, we’ve had such fascinating theories on the objective of her eponymous film:

1) It’s about having an existential crisis (and also, death).

Here’s what we know for sure: In Barbie , our protagonist finds herself losing her grip over her inherent Barbie-ness. “Do you guys ever think about dying?” she asks during one of her classic blowout parties, earning stunned, judgment silence in response. Dolls don’t die ! Matters only worsen from there: Suddenly, her fake shower is freezing; she falls, rather than floats, from her rooftop into her convertible; her feet slump from their iconic arch. To remedy this imperfection, she’s instructed to explore the “real world,” so she can know “the truth about the universe.”

The problem with the “truth about the universe” is that it’s a hot mess, and people die. Barbie is not a mess, nor does she ever die. She doesn’t even age. This supposedly irreconcilable truth seems to be Gerwig’s entry point to dissecting the artifice we’ve built around Barbie as a symbol of idealized femininity. What about perfectionism remains so enticing, even when we know and acknowledge its fruitlessness? And what about the changelessness of Barbie makes her seem like the perfect woman?

2) It’s about Ken becoming a villain. Or something.

The logline attached to the full Barbie trailer lays out an intriguing path for Ken, Barbie’s eternal boyfriend: “To live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you’re a Ken.”

One TikTok theory posited that Ken didn’t belong in Barbie Land because he’s “an imposter,” owing to the unexpected casting of Gosling in the role. The “Just Ken” music video further establishes that Ken can’t extricate himself from Barbie, though she finds him only ancillary. If Barbie were to cozy up to Don’t Worry Darling , the film might depict Ken growing resentful over his lesser billing beside a more successful female partner. He might even discover the real world is a rather agreeable place for cis, white, supposedly heterosexual men like himself. (Of course, we shouldn’t assume Ken’s sexuality isn’t fluid. Or that he has a sexuality! He’s a doll!) Might he then want to stay?

Even if Barbie doesn’t lay out its “men are problematic” bent quite so literally, it’s already clear Gosling’s performance is one of the best of the film. If that’s the case, there’s one hell of a debate to be had over why Ken’s character arc is so essential to our understanding of Barbie herself.

3) It’s about the inescapable clutch of corporations.

We can’t talk about Barbie without talking about the marketing of Barbie . It is everywhere: on Krispy Kreme donuts and Ruggable rugs and OPI nail polish and GAP T-shirts and toothbrushes and luggage and pool floats and ice cream and frozen yogurt and makeup and cars and blankets and hairbrushes and heels. Her Dreamhouse is on Airbnb. Every publicist pushing sunglasses or sex toys has retooled their strategy around “Barbiecore” for the summer. I have never worn so much pink in my life.

The problem with all this consumerism is jarringly obvious, even (and perhaps especially) when it’s a great deal of fun. And with fervor comes backlash, as witnessed in critiques that Barbie is little more than a flashy commercial for toy brand Mattel. These critiques, by the way, are correct . At the same time, the Mattel CEO is an actual character in Barbie (played by Will Ferrell), and all signs point to him as a primary antagonist. Therein lies the rub: Barbie is a brand, and is therefore about branding, and is then a critique of branding, in the same breath as it further establishes that branding. You see? We could keep talking about this! Forever!

4) It’s about feminism.

Well, yeah. Duh.

5) It’s about the swan song of girlhood.

[Young girls] are “funny and brash and confident, and then they just—stop,” Gerwig told Vogue in May. “How is this journey the same thing that a teenage girl feels? All of a sudden, she thinks, Oh, I’m not good enough .” It’s clear that a big chunk of Barbie ’s aim is to explore why girls abandon not only their Barbie dolls, but some of the positive beliefs associated with them.

“We haven’t played with Barbies since we were, like, five years old,” a group of teens tell Margot Robbie’s Barbie in the film trailer. Her face falls. If girls don’t need Barbie, what does she exist for? And who (or what) do they turn to instead? What happens to a girl to make her abandon what was previously such a source of enrichment? What does it mean to age, when Barbie herself cannot?

6) It’s about ... Barbie.

Barbie is a plastic paradox. She is a narrow vision of womanhood, and she is also an everywoman. She has hundreds of jobs and has never worked a day in her life. (She is also, importantly, not alive.) She is more than 60 years old and eternally, vaguely 20-something. (Past reports indicate Mattel claims she’s 19 .) She is sexy but sexless. She’s a child’s plaything, with influence felt widely on adults.

“If you love Barbie, this movie is for you,” reads the copy in the Barbie trailer . “If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you.” There is no clearer case for why the Barbie discourse should continue long past the film’s ecstatic release. She is— as the memes tout —everything! Her movie is all of the above! We need not agree on every one of Barbie ’s precise intentions; we need only recognize why there’s so much more to dissect than an endless onslaught of pink.

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Review: ‘Barbie’ is a film by women, about women, for women.

This essay contains spoilers for “Barbie.”

When we walked into the AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York City for the Thursday 3 p.m. viewing of “Barbie,” we found ourselves surrounded by pink. Women wore heels and sparkling jewelry, and young girls in sundresses clutched their Margot Robbie Collectible Barbies . We had come prepared—adorned in our own pink outfits, we happily took photos for a friend group in exchange for a few of our own. People laughed and chatted through the trailers, and broke out in whooping cheers as the movie began. Every seat was filled. The positive energy was palpable. It felt like a party.

In a nuanced approach characteristic of the director Greta Gerwig, whose previous projects “Lady Bird” (2017) and “Little Women” (2019) received critical acclaim, the Barbie movie is a hilarious, vibrant tribute to an iconic doll central to decades of imaginative play. At the same time, the film manages to be an exploration of Barbie’s cultural impact—good, bad and in-between. Through on-the-nose commentary on everything from Barbie’s representation of independent female adulthood to her unrealistic, idealized body proportions, Gerwig makes a movie as layered and paradoxical as the reputation of the doll itself.

Greta Gerwig has made a movie as layered and paradoxical as the reputation of Barbie itself.  

“Barbie” dives head-first into many controversial topics: consumer culture, growing up, parental relationships, gender dynamics and a multitude of other issues—offering commentary while managing to make the doll look great in the process. Mattel allowed the societal perceptions of Barbie to be examined, though the film ultimately reclaims Barbie, because Barbie can be whatever you want, and Barbie supports all women. Whether Barbie’s feminism is direct or ironic, the movie seemed to say, it is guilt-free to buy her.

But for a project that is arguably an action-packed, 114-minute commercial for a doll, the main thematic takeaway from “Barbie” is that life as a real woman is significantly more difficult but resolutely more worthwhile than “life in plastic” could ever be.

For those who have been anticipating the release of “Barbie,” the sold-out theaters and tremendous box office numbers (Barbie brought in $155 million on its opening weekend) come as no surprise—nor does the vibrant appearance of the audience, a result of Mattel’s marketing campaign, which included pre-film partnerships with brands like Gap and Crocs .

The promotion worked because it tapped into an existing market of people who grew up with Barbie. Created in 1959 as one of the first grown-up woman dolls for children, the affordable toy has been a controversial yet beloved plaything for decades. Like many in the audience, the two of us played with Barbies as little girls, and therefore had firsthand access to the complicated influence that such a doll—who is anything she wants to be while always looking perfect—can have on a young girl.

Using the aesthetic history of the doll as inspiration, the first portion of the movie is set in Barbie Land, where self-proclaimed “Stereotypical Barbie” (played by Margot Robbie) and the other Barbies live in a peaceful paradise, partaking in various occupations and leisure activities. Their counterparts, the Kens, do nothing except “beach” and act as platonic companions for the Barbies (when desired). These scenes are packed with clever humor and nostalgia for those who remember playing with Barbies—just like in our games, the Barbies never use stairs, only pretend to drink liquids, and say “Hi Barbie!” to every other doll in sight.

The Stereotypical Barbie’s blissful naïvete is disrupted one morning when she starts to develop self-awareness and anxiety, accompanied by dreaded flat feet and “thoughts of death.” In order to return to how things were, Barbie needs to venture into the “real world,” where she is instantly sexualized and objectified, accused of being a fascist by teenagers and jailed for assault after punching a man who catcalls her.

The main takeaway from “Barbie” is that life as a real woman is significantly more difficult but resolutely more worthwhile than “life in plastic” could ever be.

The movie follows somewhat of a hero(ine)’s journey arc, complete with a car chase and a rise to leadership, as Barbie tries to rid herself of emotional turmoil—and eventually, as she tries to save Barbie Land from Ken (Ryan Gosling), who had a much more enjoyable time in the real world and decided to bring patriarchy back to Barbie Land with him.

But while the dolls and their conflicts (full of inside jokes from Barbie history) are certainly the most fun, vibrant part of the movie, the human characters in the movie—particularly Gloria, a Mattel employee played by America Ferrera, and her daughter Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt—shift the focus away from an analysis of dollhood and toward an exploration of womanhood.

As Gloria and Sasha discover that they are at fault for Barbie’s weird behavior, they attempt to help the doll reachieve stability for herself and her community. In doing so, the audience is privy to a moving exploration of what it means to grow up as a woman, from the perspective of both mother and daughter.

The movie is almost painfully upfront about the struggles women face, giving voice to a certain exasperated frustration that may seem overly explicit, but for many responding to the film, just feels true. After Barbie is ready to give in to self-pity and existential dread, Gloria encourages Barbie to forgive herself for her mistakes and imperfections, expressing all the impossible expectations placed on modern women. “It’s too hard,” she says about womanhood, “It’s too contradictory.” Stereotypical Barbie stares at her wide-eyed, and Gloria’s daughter gives her a surprised smile. In giving voice to the emotions that started this journey, Gloria empowers the Barbies to reclaim Barbie Land.

The movie is for everyone to see and enjoy, but ultimately “Barbie” is truly a film by women, about women, for women. 

In the end, Barbie, having seen the gendered challenges of the real world for herself and heard from Gloria the exhaustion that comes with them, still decides to become a human—a woman.

In an emotional scene between the ghost of Ruth Handler, the creator of the doll, and Barbie herself, they discuss what it would mean for Barbie to leave dollhood behind. Handler holds Barbie’s hands and tells her to “feel.” The scene fades into a montage of videos of young girls and grown women, laughing, talking, playing and enjoying their lives. The videos feature women involved in the process of making the movie. When Barbie opens her eyes again, she has tears on her face (so did many in the audience).

For us, this felt very reminiscent of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Contemplation on the Incarnation , which asks the retreatant to imagine the three Divine Persons gazing down on the earth full of people and considering what stimuli imbue their senses. These scenes, of so many different people and emotions, flash before Barbie, and she is overwhelmed with the joys and sufferings of the world, with women at the forefront.

The movie ends with Barbie, newly human and clad in her designed-for-the-partnership pink Birkenstocks, going to the gynecologist. This joke wraps up all the references to dolls not having any genitals (which Barbie ostensibly receives when she makes the choice to become human), while, we think, stressing the importance of reproductive health and bringing to the big screen public discourse about a taboo topic. Like every part of the movie, Gerwig pushes boundaries of conversation through humor that is written to make women, in particular, feel seen.

At its core, the Barbie movie is a much needed tribute to womanhood. This is evident in one of the most subtle but moving scenes from the film, which occurs early in Barbie’s trip to the real world, when she sits at a bus stop, crying because nothing seems to be going her way. She looks over and sees an old woman, played by the famous costume designer Ann Roth (aging doesn’t exist in Barbie Land). Barbie smiles at her and says, “You’re beautiful.” The woman smiles serenely and replies simply, “I know.” In retrospect, this deeply humane and moving encounter prefaces Barbie’s decision to join the real world. It seems as if Barbie is recognizing the magnitude of everything a real woman is, and everything she later chooses to be.

The female characters Barbie meets in the real world show her that women manage to exist in a world that is so often against them, and do so best when working together. The movie is for everyone to see and enjoy, but ultimately “Barbie” is truly a film by women, about women, for women. It is a film we certainly will be seeing again.

Brigid McCabe is an editorial intern at America Media . She studies History and American Studies at Columbia University.

Laura Oldfather is an editorial intern with America Media . She studies Theology and Journalism at Fordham University. 

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Barbie: the patriarchy, the existentialism, the capitalism – discuss with spoilers

Greta Gerwig’s smash hit ode to women delves deeper than many would have expected from a film based on a problematic doll

• This article contains spoilers for Barbie

W hen the news first broke that Greta Gerwig would tackle a Barbie movie, excitement started to build long before anyone actually knew what that meant. Unlike superheroes or princesses or so much other exhumed IP, the glamorous doll doesn’t come prepackaged with narrative, leaving open the question of what she would do in a big-screen vehicle primarily greenlit off her brand recognition.

Gerwig’s thoughtful track record as a film-maker suggested that she wouldn’t take the gig unless she had something up her ruffled taffeta sleeve, leading many to theorize a meta element possibly sending Barbie into the real world, but nobody could have guessed the extent to which the director-co-writer has taken the concept and run with it. Even the trailers affirming that Barbie makes the interdimensional montage from her reality to ours with Ken in tow still conceal so much of the substance and atmosphere of a film with much more on its mind than the typical Hollywood product.

Now that Gerwig’s latest is out there painting multiplexes an eye-searing shade of pink, we can issue the strongest spoiler alert warning possible and pop Barbie’s head off to see what’s going on inside her cavernous neck hole. Read on for a discussion of the internal logic, the peppy pop politics, the cameos and everything else bundled with this shiny new cinematic playset:

It’s a Barbie world, with physics to match

Following a Kubrick-aping prologue that introduces Barbie in the place of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s monumental black obelisk, the film descends on Barbie Land, a soundstage fantasy of Dream Houses painted in hyper-saturated color. This realm is governed not by the laws of nature, but by the childlike illogic of playtime: Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie drinks from an empty cup, bounces off of plastic water and floats from her top-floor bedroom down to her car on the street as if carried by an invisible hand. The chipper, blunt dialogue sounds like the internal monologue of an eight-year-old’s imagination, declaring every day forever and ever to be the best day ever. When Ken (Ryan Gosling) hurts himself, Doctor Barbie heals him in the space of a single sentence. If Barbie and Ken were to kiss, one assumes they would do so by mashing their faces together at a diagonal.

Every aspect of the first act’s setting has been informed by the rituals and aesthetics of toys and their attendant media, harkening back to the brand-savvy of The Lego Movie. During an argument, Ken hurls Barbie’s wardrobe out through the missing fourth wall of her home, and each outfit momentarily flattens into a display-fold with logo and caption while suspended in the air. An upbeat song by Lizzo delivers exposition like a commercial jingle, narrating each of Barbie’s actions as she performs them. In this land of rictus smiles and relentless sunshine, imperfection is a cardinal sin; Barbie’s existential crisis kicks into gear as she notices a small patch of cellulite on her thigh, and that her naturally high-heeled feet now stand flat on the ground. Horror of horrors – she’s becoming a real woman.

The big, bad patriarchy

Her search for a cure directs her to the real world, where she’s shocked to find that our Earth bears little resemblance to the estrogen-fueled paradise she left behind. As in their feminist Eden, Barbie and Ken came expecting a female president, female garbage-haulers, female Nobel laureates and a coterie of adoring, pliable men just grateful to share their presence. She’s shattered to find that she isn’t the inspirational role model she imagined herself to be, but he’s delighted to discover a power structure that places him and his brethren on top, and carries this thrilling new ideology back to Barbie Land. Before you can say “Simone de Beauvoir”, he’s instituted a full-blown patriarchy with all the once-empowered Barbies brainwashed into submissive, beer-serving pleasure slaves. With a little help from walking #NotAllMen counterpoint Allan (Michael Cera), Barbie must open her sisters’ eyes to the reality that there’s more middle ground to womanhood than being an accessory to a man or a flawless exemplar of femininity.

The reactionary weirdoes decrying Barbie as peddling the “woke” agenda haven’t pulled much of a gotcha, accurately summarizing the textual substance of a film about one woman’s sudden burst of institutional consciousness. Like a college freshman taking an intro class on gender – or perhaps like a high-schooler seeing a mass-market blockbuster with a developed political streak for the first time – Barbie becomes abruptly aware of the untenable societal pressures heaped upon womankind, released in a cathartic monologue by normal-person surrogate America Ferrera. She resolves the many contradictions of the male gaze by slicing through the Gordian knot, simply concluding that whatever women want is fine, so long as everyone lets them live their lives in peace. It’s a pretty anodyne statement, though it accompanies an ending that effectively reduces men to pets. The steadfast refusal to coddle male ego may be the most unabashedly subversive notion in a project often conflicted about its opposing mandates as a critical work of art and a commercial good for sale.

Stickin’ it (kind of) to the suits

Gerwig gets out in front of her decision to take a check from Mattel by centering her new corporate overlords in the film. Barbie and Ken’s shenanigans in the real world draw the attention of the Mattel C-suite, portrayed as a conference table’s worth of largely interchangeable men led by a CEO who requests to be called “Mother” (Will Ferrell) and his CFO flunky (Jamie Demetriou). Being authority figures, they naturally assume the antagonist role as they race to get their star product back in her box, a literal display case binding her wrists and ankles positioned as metaphor for an attitude of silent compliance. Gerwig’s revisionist outlook seeks to liberate the plastic and fantastic icon, allowing her a less orderly humanity in more than just a biological sense. Warhol’s axiom about art being whatever you can get away with comes to mind in surprisingly off-brand moments such as the instant-classic punch line that ties a ribbon on the film.

And yet for all the valid critique lodged by Gerwig – that this company marketing itself to little girls has entirely male management, that they profited for many years off of unattainable body standards, that they have hastily discontinued dolls like the pregnant Midge and the ambiguous Earring Magic Ken and anything else complicating their clean, hegemonic worldview – the film can’t help its promotional origins in brand synergy. Ferrera’s character pitches the CEO on a normal-person Barbie, a character unencumbered by the expectations to be an immaculately manicured beauty nor a successful career woman. Ferrell laughs this off as a non-starter until his CFO looks up from a calculator and suggests it would actually make them money, at which point the doll is put into immediate production. Gerwig’s having a laugh at her own expense, conceding that all her subversions will be happily permitted so long as they agree with the profit margins.

Everyone’s invited to the party

The first trailer revealed that Robbie-Barbie lives as one of many such Barbies populating Barbie Land, their rank a rainbow of demographic representation including Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Sharon Rooney and Ana Cruz Kayne. (Featured soundtrack artist Dua Lipa even pops by as a trio of mermaid sisters to wobble her way through a few lines of dialogue, most of which are “Hi, Barbie!” John Cena dons a wig of flowing blonde tresses as her Kenmaid counterpart.) Likewise, Gosling’s Ken rolls with an entourage of backup Kens, though in keeping with the film’s ladies-first doctrine, the second-stringer likes of Kingsley Ben-Adir and Ncuti Gatwa get slightly less to do than the ensemble Barbies. Odd man-boy out among the fellas is Cera’s Allan, the less-macho Ken alternative initially marketed as a “friend” and shown here to enjoy giving the guys foot massages. Perhaps he’d get along with the briefly glimpsed Sugar Daddy Ken, played by a sporting Rob Brydon.

Other casting choices hint at Gerwig’s personal tastes seeping into the fabric of her film-making; the narration courtesy of Helen Mirren suggests a connected cinematic universe linking Barbie and the cult comedy series Documentary Now!. Barbie creator and Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler appears with a deified glow about her in the form of Rhea Perlman, the actor’s presence a possible nod to her past gig on Cheers as sharp-tongued barmaid Carla Tortelli, the kind of flinty, funny, unapologetic woman that speaks to Gerwig. In one of the film’s most unexpectedly poignant moments, Barbie shares a brief chat with an anonymous woman on a sidewalk bench, informing her that she’s beautiful only for her to respond: “I know.” That woman is Ann Roth, legendary costume designer and frequent collaborator of Gerwig’s husband and co-writer Noah Baumbach, her celebrated body of work across more than 50 years in the industry undoubtedly a point of admiration for the director. She’s living proof that no dividing line separates fashion from high art, one of the guiding principles for the film’s sartorial euphoria.

The library of influences

It’s not hard to imagine the dead-souled version of Barbie that alienates its built-in fanbase with lowest-common-denominator laziness and creative indifference, more advertisement than entertainment. Gerwig has endeared herself to moviegoers in part for the care she’s put into the making of her grand entrée to the budgetary big leagues, much of it informed by her encyclopedia passion for cinema at large. She’s spoken in interviews about the many Technicolor marvels of the past that contributed to the vivid palette of Barbie’s blissfully non-real homeworld, everything from Golden Age musicals like The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain to transatlantic imports like The Red Shoes and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Her penchant for macro-scaled sight gags can be traced back to the oeuvres of Jacques Tati and Charlie Chaplin before him, masters of physical comedy relevant to actors mimicking the body language of posable playthings.

Other reference points work on the conceptual level; Barbie’s revelatory sight through her artificial status quo nods to The Matrix, The Truman Show, and the rest of the entries from the Onscreen Existentialism for Dummies canon. Every piece of the film speaks to some facet of Gerwig’s cinephilia, a magpie collage of favorites befitting the doodling and locker-adorning of adolescent girls. A disco number nicks fashions from Saturday Night Fever, while the kooky absurdist humor has roots in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Eclectic as these picks may be, they’re all organized under a single, fully formed sensibility. Mattel may have stamped their logo all over the film, but audiences have taken note and flocked in droves because in the auteurist sense, Gerwig has made it her own as well.

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"Barbie," director and co-writer Greta Gerwig ’s summer splash, is a dazzling achievement, both technically and in tone. It’s a visual feast that succeeds as both a gleeful escape and a battle cry. So crammed with impeccable attention to detail is "Barbie” that you couldn’t possibly catch it all in a single sitting; you’d have to devote an entire viewing just to the accessories, for example. The costume design (led by two-time Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran ) and production design (led by six-time Oscar nominee Sarah Greenwood ) are constantly clever and colorful, befitting the ever-evolving icon, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (a three-time Oscar nominee) gives everything a glossy gleam. It’s not just that Gerwig & Co. have recreated a bunch of Barbies from throughout her decades-long history, outfitted them with a variety of clothing and hairstyles, and placed them in pristine dream houses. It’s that they’ve brought these figures to life with infectious energy and a knowing wink.

“Barbie” can be hysterically funny, with giant laugh-out-loud moments generously scattered throughout. They come from the insularity of an idyllic, pink-hued realm and the physical comedy of fish-out-of-water moments and choice pop culture references as the outside world increasingly encroaches. But because the marketing campaign has been so clever and so ubiquitous, you may discover that you’ve already seen a fair amount of the movie’s inspired moments, such as the “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” homage and Ken’s self-pitying ‘80s power ballad. Such is the anticipation industrial complex.

And so you probably already know the basic plot: Barbie ( Margot Robbie ), the most popular of all the Barbies in Barbieland, begins experiencing an existential crisis. She must travel to the human world in order to understand herself and discover her true purpose. Her kinda-sorta boyfriend, Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), comes along for the ride because his own existence depends on Barbie acknowledging him. Both discover harsh truths—and make new friends –along the road to enlightenment. This bleeding of stark reality into an obsessively engineered fantasy calls to mind the revelations of “ The Truman Show ” and “The LEGO Movie,” but through a wry prism that’s specifically Gerwig’s.

This is a movie that acknowledges Barbie’s unrealistic physical proportions—and the kinds of very real body issues they can cause in young girls—while also celebrating her role as a feminist icon. After all, there was an astronaut Barbie doll (1965) before there was an actual woman in NASA’s astronaut corps (1978), an achievement “Barbie” commemorates by showing two suited-up women high-fiving each other among the stars, with Robbie’s Earth-bound Barbie saluting them with a sunny, “Yay, space!” This is also a movie in which Mattel (the doll’s manufacturer) and Warner Bros. (the film’s distributor) at least create the appearance that they’re in on the surprisingly pointed jokes at their expense. Mattel headquarters features a spacious, top-floor conference room populated solely by men with a heart-shaped, “ Dr. Strangelove ”-inspired lamp hovering over the table, yet Will Ferrell ’s CEO insists his company’s “gender-neutral bathrooms up the wazoo” are evidence of diversity. It's a neat trick.

As the film's star, Margot Robbie finds just the right balance between satire and sincerity. She’s  the  perfect casting choice; it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed stunner completely looks the part, of course, but she also radiates the kind of unflagging, exaggerated optimism required for this heightened, candy-coated world. Later, as Barbie’s understanding expands, Robbie masterfully handles the more complicated dialogue by Gerwig and her co-writer and frequent collaborator, filmmaker Noah Baumbach . From a blinding smile to a single tear and every emotion in between, Robbie finds the ideal energy and tone throughout. Her performance is a joy to behold.

And yet, Ryan Gosling is a consistent scene-stealer as he revels in Ken’s himbo frailty. He goes from Barbie’s needy beau to a swaggering, macho doofus as he throws himself headlong into how he thinks a real man should behave. (Viewers familiar with Los Angeles geography will particularly get a kick out of the places that provide his inspiration.) Gosling sells his square-jawed character’s earnestness and gets to tap into his “All New Mickey Mouse Club” musical theater roots simultaneously. He’s a total hoot.

Within the film’s enormous ensemble—where the women are all Barbies and the men are all Kens, with a couple of exceptions—there are several standouts. They include a gonzo Kate McKinnon as the so-called “Weird Barbie” who places Robbie’s character on her path; Issa Rae as the no-nonsense President Barbie; Alexandra Shipp as a kind and capable Doctor Barbie; Simu Liu as the trash-talking Ken who torments Gosling’s Ken; and America Ferrera in a crucial role as a Mattel employee. And we can’t forget Michael Cera as the one Allan, bumbling awkwardly in a sea of hunky Kens—although everyone else forgets Allan.

But while “Barbie” is wildly ambitious in an exciting way, it’s also frustratingly uneven at times. After coming on strong with wave after wave of zippy hilarity, the film drags in the middle as it presents its more serious themes. It’s impossible not to admire how Gerwig is taking a big swing with heady notions during the mindless blockbuster season, but she offers so many that the movie sometimes stops in its propulsive tracks to explain itself to us—and then explain those points again and again. The breezy, satirical edge she established off the top was actually a more effective method of conveying her ideas about the perils of toxic masculinity and entitlement and the power of female confidence and collaboration.

One character delivers a lengthy, third-act speech about the conundrum of being a woman and the contradictory standards to which society holds us. The middle-aged mom in me was nodding throughout in agreement, feeling seen and understood, as if this person knew me and was speaking directly to me. But the longtime film critic in me found this moment a preachy momentum killer—too heavy-handed, too on-the-nose, despite its many insights.  

Still, if such a crowd-pleasing extravaganza can also offer some fodder for thoughtful conversations afterward, it’s accomplished several goals simultaneously. It’s like sneaking spinach into your kid’s brownies—or, in this case, blondies.

Available in theaters on July 21st. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Barbie (2023)

Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language.

114 minutes

Margot Robbie as Barbie

Ryan Gosling as Ken

America Ferrera as Gloria

Will Ferrell as Mattel CEO

Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie

Ariana Greenblatt as Sasha

Issa Rae as President Barbie

Rhea Perlman as Ruth Handler

Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie

Emma Mackey as Physicist Barbie

Alexandra Shipp as Writer Barbie

Michael Cera as Allan

Helen Mirren as Narrator

Simu Liu as Ken

Dua Lipa as Mermaid Barbie

John Cena as Kenmaid

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Ken

Scott Evans as Ken

Jamie Demetriou as Mattel Executive

• Greta Gerwig
• Noah Baumbach

Cinematographer

• Rodrigo Prieto
• Alexandre Desplat
• Mark Ronson

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Column: The ‘Barbie’ movie’s radical message: We all need more ‘Kenpathy’

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Greta Gerwig’s box office hit “Barbie” may be a comedy, but many viewers are taking it seriously. Critics are having temper tantrums . Fans are moved to tears .

Why is this film about a toy provoking such strong reactions?

It’s not just right-wing pundits who are reacting fiercely, such as Ben Shapiro burning dolls in disgust. Ordinary people are moved to action, too. Women are breaking up with boyfriends. Others are red-flagging dating prospects who disliked the movie. On the left, it has become a litmus test for healthy masculinity.

Opinion Columnist

Jean Guerrero

Jean Guerrero is the author, most recently, of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda.”

Conservatives attacking the film as anti-male propaganda are ignoring its central message, which is that patriarchy harms everyone, regardless of gender. But some progressives caricaturing every detractor as a dweeb may be missing the subtext: a world that disregards men and their feelings is an inverted form of patriarchy and also cruel.

In the film, Ryan Gosling’s Ken feels marginalized in Barbie Land, where Barbies rule everything and Kens are second-class citizens. In a visit to the real world, Ken is awed to discover that he’s respected there.

He brings the patriarchy to Barbie Land, and when Margot Robbie’s Barbie confronts Ken in the nightmarish Kendom, he tells her his house is his alone, not hers — an echo of what she once said to him. For the first time, his face conveys real pain. “How’s that feel?” he asks Barbie. “It is not fun, is it?”

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July 16, 2023

Gosling’s portrayal of a bumbling but often sympathetic Ken serves a purpose. We can’t help but root for him, even at his most wayward. His humanity is irrepressible, regularly cracking the walls of his caricature.

Spoiler alert: After Robbie’s Barbie and America Ferrera’s Gloria, a Latina mom from the real world, work together to dismantle the Kendom, Gosling’s Ken bursts into tears. Barbie apologizes for taking him for granted for so long. She encourages Ken to discover his own identity and self-worth.

The film is a rare product of mainstream culture that invites men to reimagine masculinity for their own sake. It acknowledges the identity crisis and loss of hope, economic promise and life purpose among American men. These struggles are often ignored by progressives, but conveniently and poisonously exploited by right-wing manfluencers from Andrew Tate to Josh Hawley.

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Men represent almost 3 in 4 “deaths of despair” — from suicide, alcohol abuse and overdose. They’re lonelier than women, with a bigger decline in close friendships. Women are outpacing men in school and in the workplace.

The film’s reception has focused on its messages of women’s empowerment, but what makes it a radical story is that it also invites women to reimagine feminism so that it doesn’t ignore male struggles. Ken sings: “What will it take for her to see the man behind the tan and fight for me?” Near the film’s end, when the Barbies have the option to restore Barbie Land exactly as it was, they choose not to. Issa Rae’s President Barbie says: “No Barbie or Ken should be living in the shadows.”

Perhaps that’s why right-wing extremists hate the movie — equality is scary even in a toy universe.

In her 2004 book about masculinity, “The Will to Change,” bell hooks argued against ideas of men as the enemy and as universal beneficiaries of patriarchy, a false notion introduced by women with class privilege. “Women who have been raised in poor and working-class homes have always been acutely aware of the emotional pain of the men in their lives,” she wrote.

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At the beginning of the film, Robbie’s Barbie embodies the feminism that hooks critiqued: individualistic and inhuman, like patriarchy. She’s mythically happy and self-sufficient. When human thoughts begin to intrude in her mind, she’s horrified. “You’re gonna start getting sad and mushy and complicated,” Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie warns. Barbie can’t imagine a more terrible fate. But in the end — major spoiler warning — she chooses to become human.

Gerwig’s film is a call to humanity. “I’m weird and I’m dark and I’m crazy,” Gloria says proudly, after her daughter reveals that those are precisely the traits she loves about her mom — the traits she tries to hide. Some may see the film as anti-male because the Kens are weirder and darker and crazier than anyone. But they’re overlooking this point — flaws, mistakes and messy emotions don’t negate anybody’s value.

The first time I watched the film, its portrayal of men as mostly pathetic made me sad. As the daughter of a Mexican man who struggles with mental health issues and rarely seeks help because of a sense of machismo, I felt sorry for Ken, who couldn’t find a place in the world. I worried I was having a case of misplaced empathy. But the second time I watched it, I realized I was supposed to feel for Ken. Call it “Kenpathy.” Kenpathy doesn’t negate feminism; it’s not a zero sum game. It sees the fates of men and women as entwined.

In a thoughtful essay last month, Christine Emba in the Washington Post pointed out that men can’t fix themselves or reimagine masculinity alone. “People need codes for how to be human,” she wrote.

In the film, the Barbies leave it up to Ken to find himself. One male friend of mine, a feminist who grew up playing with Barbies, was saddened by the absence of positive male role models in the film. I was disappointed by its pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality. But you can’t expect everything from a summer blockbuster comedy.

That the movie came close to reimagining masculinity is one reason it struck a nerve. It’s meant to provoke conversations about gender roles. Beyond that, maybe it will inspire a broader interest in the fight for equality. But we can’t achieve equality without having some Kenpathy.

@jeanguerre

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Jean Guerrero is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times. Her writing has been featured in Vanity Fair, Politico, the Nation, Wired, the New York Times, the Washington Post and “Best American Essays 2019,” and she has contributed to NPR, “PBS NewsHour” and more. She started her career as a commodities correspondent in Mexico City for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. She is the author, most recently, of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda.” Her first book, “Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir,” won a PEN Literary Award. A native of San Diego, she is a graduate of USC’s journalism school and has a master of fine arts in nonfiction from Goucher College. Twitter: @jeanguerre

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‘Barbie’ is, at its core, a movie about the messy contradictions of motherhood

Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, Arizona State University

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Editor’s note: This article contains plot spoilers for “Barbie.”

The wildly popular “ Barbie ” movie has been touted for its celebration – and critique – of femininity.

As a mother and a media scholar , I couldn’t help but see “Barbie” through an even narrower lens: as a film that, at its core, is about mothers and daughters.

The film’s plot centers on a life-size doll, known as “Stereotypical Barbie,” played by Margot Robbie , who begins to malfunction: Her feet go flat, and she can’t stop thinking about death. So she leaves her perfect plastic life to embark on a quest to restore the boundary between the real world and Barbieland. Along the way, she learns that the real world is nothing like her girl-power wonderland, where Barbies hold all the positions of power and influence and Kens are just accessories.

But its thematic heart rests in the film’s examination of the tensions around being a mother – a role often taken for granted, even as the cultural fantasies of motherhood clash with the actual sacrifices that moms make.

Motherhood as mere drudgery?

I was immediately struck by the movie’s funny but chilling observations about motherhood.

“Since the beginning of time,” unseen narrator Helen Mirren intones sardonically in the film’s first line, “since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls.” (Cinephiles will immediately recognize this scene and its setting as an homage to Stanley Kubrick’s famous “ dawn of man ” opening from “ 2001: A Space Odyssey .”)

Girls appear on screen, wearing drab, antiquated dresses and playing “house” with their dolls in a primitive setting, expressionless and practically drooping with boredom. The problem with these dolls is that girls “could only ever play at being mothers, which can be fun” – Mirren pauses meaningfully – “for a while.”

Then, she adds, her tone turning cynical, “Ask your mother.”

The appeal of motherhood, Mirren seems to suggest, eventually morphs into unwanted drudgery – a reality underscored moments later when the girls meet their first Barbie, who towers above them, larger than life, inspiring them to smash their mundane baby dolls.

Barbie – a doll of a young, beautiful woman – compels kids to leave the ennui of motherhood behind for the pink plastic sparkle of Barbieland, where all the Barbies live their best lives forever, embodying feminine perfection and possibility.

The framing of motherhood as thankless and undesirable echoes mid-20th-century feminist critiques of child rearing and housework. These roles not only bound women to the home but also forced them to perform repetitive tasks that didn’t reflect their abilities and derailed their ambitions.

In her 1949 book “ The Second Sex ,” French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir argued that women, to empower themselves, needed to reject the myth that motherhood represented the pinnacle of feminine achievement. American writer Betty Friedan would echo this sentiment in her 1963 book “ The Feminine Mystique ,” railing against the image of the “happy housewife heroine” who finds fulfillment in being a wife and mother.

It’s no coincidence that these ideas overlapped with the invention of Barbie in 1959. While predating the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, did design the toy to allow girls to imagine their future adult selves , rather than simply play-acting as mothers using baby dolls.

The value in ‘motherwork’

And yet, not only do many women enjoy being mothers, but motherhood also plays an essential role in society and life.

In her 1976 book “ Of Woman Born ,” feminist poet Adrienne Rich draws a distinction between the fulfilling relationship mothers can have with their children and the patriarchal institution of motherhood, which keeps women under men’s control.

Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins coined the term “motherwork ” in the mid-1990s to highlight the experiences of women of color and working-class mothers, many of whom don’t have the resources to pursue their own ambitions over caring for their families and communities. When you’re just trying to navigate the day-to-day without wealth or other forms of privilege, options like hiring a nanny or paying for graduate school aren’t feasible or a priority.

For these mothers, the survival of their children is not a given. Instead of tedium and oppression, motherwork acknowledges that mothering can be a radically important labor of love and a source of empowerment in its own right.

In “Barbie,” the mother-daughter relationship between Gloria, played by America Ferrera , and her daughter Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt , contains these contradictions.

After experiencing a vision of the person whose sadness seems to be the source of her malfunctions, Stereotypical Barbie initially assumes it’s Sasha’s tween angst that’s disturbed the perfection of Barbieland and drawn her into the real world. Instead, Barbie discovers it’s Gloria’s loneliness – and her nostalgia for a simpler time when she played Barbies with her daughter – that has caused the rift between reality and fantasy.

Sasha and Gloria’s adventure with Barbie – first escaping the Mattel executives who want to lock Barbie in a box and then journeying back to Barbieland to rescue the other Barbies from the Kens, who are trying to take over – repairs the relationship between mother and daughter.

Gloria remembers what it’s like to find joy in motherhood, and Sasha realizes that her mother isn’t just a bland set of values against which to rebel. Gloria is a fully fledged person with a rich inner life who, by her own estimation, is sometimes “weird and dark and crazy,” which Sasha admires.

Sasha – and all the Barbies – have something else to learn from Gloria, too.

Stunned that even someone as perfect as Barbie feels like she’s not good enough, Gloria delivers a poignant monologue encapsulating, in Barbie’s words, “the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under patriarchy.”

Gloria, as a mom struggling to reconcile her deep love for her child with the fear that she’s constantly failing at motherhood, knows all too well how this cognitive dissonance wears women down.

In her 2018 book “ Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty ,” scholar Jacqueline Rose argues that motherhood is tied to notions of citizenship and nation and, for this reason, can become “the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings.”

The ending to “Barbie” rejects the notion that mothers are to blame for their children’s mistakes. Instead, the film offers another perspective through the character of Ruth Handler, Mattel’s founder, who’s played by Rhea Perlman. Handler helps Barbie see what awaits her if she chooses to become human.

Symbolically letting go of her creation and encouraging her to forge her own path, Ruth tells Barbie that she cannot control her any more than she could control her own daughter, and that mothers should pave the way for their children, not hinder them.

“We mothers,” she explains, “stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they’ve come.”

This sentimental and self-effacing message seems at odds with the film’s nuanced portrayal of motherhood through humor and critique.

But, throughout, “Barbie” invites viewers to question even its own structure, tenets and messaging – and presents multiple perspectives on motherhood.

Mothering is hard work and sometimes may even be thankless labor. It may bore or disappoint. It can be affirming or heartbreaking or both. It involves leading and following, holding on and letting go.

Being a mother shouldn’t have to be about sacrifice or about fitting some impossible ideal. Instead, motherhood can highlight the possibilities of living in – and with – the contradictions.

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• Barbie movie

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Teaching Barbie: Scholarly Readings to Inspire Classroom Discussion

Barbie is having a(nother) moment. Researchers have been studying the famous doll for years.

Since she was created in 1959, Mattel’s Barbie doll and her descendants have been fodder for feminist researchers, sociologists, gender theorists, and other academics. As we all probably know by now, the doll was invented by Ruth Handler, who noticed her daughter Barbara playing with paper dolls and giving them adult narratives and roles. At the time, most dolls looked like infants, but Handler saw a gap in the market for adult dolls for girls, and the rest is Barbie history. Initially a teen fashion doll, Barbie has gone through six decades of transformations and rebranding , becoming a cultural icon over the years and appearing as an astronaut, doctor, physicist, and just about any other professional you can think of.

Girlhood, Gender, and Sexuality

Linda Wason-Ellam. “ ‘If Only I Was Like Barbie.’ ” Language Arts , vol. 74, no. 6, 1997, pp. 430–37.

It’s impossible to understand Barbie without acknowledging the toy plays a big part in young girls’ construction of their sense of self. This ethnographic study investigates how young girls construct gendered identities and meanings through exchanges between visual and written texts, including Mattel’s book version of Cinderella, where Barbie takes on the titular role.

Catherine Driscoll. “ CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Girl-Doll: Barbie as Puberty Manual. ” Counterpoints , vol. 245, 2005, pp. 224–41.

Bringing together two relevant cultural texts for pre-adolescent girls, Catherine Driscoll considers dominant gender discourses through analyses of Barbie dolls and puberty manuals in the early 2000s as influential manifestations of the “tween” space in public and popular representations of girlhood.

Claudia Mitchell. “ Charting Girlhood Studies .” Girlhood and the Politics of Place , edited by Claudia Mitchell and Carrie Rentschler, Berghahn Books, 2016, pp. 87–103.

A good summary of what has been accomplished or found so far in girlhood studies, which has often drawn on how girls understand gender and power dynamics through playing with Barbie.

Louise Collins, et al. “ We’re Not Barbie Girls: Tweens Transform a Feminine Icon. ” Feminist Formations , vol. 24, no. 1, 2012, pp. 102–26.

Based on the insights collected from a research workshop for middle-school girls, this article asks what girls feel, think, and hope when playing with Barbie. Drawing on the insights middle-school girls delivered when discussing and reflecting on the constructions of female bodies and feminine identities in popular culture, Collins et al suggest that consumers are not simply vessels for consumption—they can be critical engagers of the products they consume.

Michael A. Messner “ Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender .” Gender and Society, vol. 14, no. 6, 2000, pp. 765–84.

How do toys help children make meaning of gender? In this article, Michael A. Messner examines this question through an analysis of children’s interactions with pop culture.

Anna Wagner-Ott. “ Analysis of Gender Identity Through Doll and Action Figure Politics in Art Education .” Studies in Art Education, vol. 43, no. 3, 2002, pp. 246–63. 

Using action figures and dolls as pedagogical tools, this article explores how art educators can engage young people in a critical dialogue to uncover preconceived ideas, attitudes, and values inherent in gendered objects.

Becky Francis. “ Gender, Toys and Learning .” Oxford Review of Education, vol. 36, no. 3, 2010, pp. 325–44.

Drawing on the claim that children learn gender through playing, Becky Francis conducts evaluated selected toys—including some Barbie accessories—to identify the gender discourses reflected in the children’s choice of toys.

Whiteness and Race

Maureen Trudelle Schwarz. “ Native American Barbie: The Marketing of Euro-American Desires. ” American Studies , vol. 46, no. 3/4, 2005, pp. 295–326.

A particular concern of Barbie critics is the brand’s focus on and centering of whiteness, which the brand has addressed through the creation of ethnically diverse versions of the doll. In this in-depth analysis of Native American Barbie dolls and what they teach girls—and society more broadly—about Native American cultures in the United States, author Maureen Trudelle Schwarz argues that Barbie sanitizes the horrors of colonialism and Indigenous oppression.

Elizabeth Chin. “ Ethnically Correct Dolls: Toying with the Race Industry .” American Anthropologist, vol. 101, no. 2, 1999, pp. 305–21.

Examining the claim that providing more diverse toys is a progressive solution to white hegemony, this anthropological study with a group of working class, Black ten-year-old children complicates the politics of representation and inclusion.

Nina Cartier. “ Black Women On-Screen as Future Texts: A New Look at Black Pop Culture Representations. ” Cinema Journal, vol. 53, no. 4, 2014, pp. 150–57.

In this article, Nina Cartier offers a short but important critique of Nicki Minaj’s Black Barbie, along with other representations of Black womanhood onscreen.

Margaret Hunter and Alhelí Cuenca. “ Nicki Minaj and the Changing Politics of Hip-Hop: Real Blackness, Real Bodies, Real Feminism? ” Feminist Formations, vol. 29, no. 2, 2017, pp. 26–46.

Examining Nicki Minaj’s body of work, particularly her embodiment of her Black Barbie persona, the authors argue that Minaj’s offers a brand of feminism that is highly marketable because it merges a language of critique and oppression.

Okafor, Chinyere G. “ Global Encounters: ‘Barbie’ in Nigerian Agbogho-Mmuo Mask Context. ” Journal of African Cultural Studies , vol. 19, no. 1, 2007, pp. 37–54.

Beyond being an American doll, the product of Barbie was exported across the world, thus spreading its message across borders. In this article, Chinyere G. Okafor writes about the doll’s impact on Nigerian beauty standards through the image of the Agbogho-mmuo mask of the Igbo ethnic group. The encounter between these two beauty standards is the site of a global image-making network, the author suggests, and its discussion allows for an analysis of the globally empowered Barbie doll and her impact on Nigerian culture.

Marketing Barbie

Marlys Pearson and Paul R. Mullins. “ Domesticating Barbie: An Archaeology of Barbie Material Culture and Domestic Ideology. ” International Journal of Historical Archaeology , vol. 3, no. 4, 1999, pp. 225–59.

Drawing on the history of Barbie since the 1950s and the distinct “single career girl” marketing strategy employed by Mattel, the authors of this article offer a systematic examination of Barbie fashions, accessories, and playsets, which they argue reveals several distinct phases in the domestic symbolism associated with the doll. By tracing the history of Barbie accessories, the authors are able to pinpoint changes in Barbie’s domestic image over the last 40 years.

Erica Rand. “ Making Barbie. ” Barbie’s Queer Accessories , Duke University Press, 1995, pp. 23–92.

Delving deep into the history of Barbie and Mattel’s uneven and deflecting history around the character, Erica Rand writes about the erasure of Ruth Handler from the history of the doll’s creation by Mattel (something that has been curiously rectified in Gerwig’s film) and the gender meanings made by the company that invented Barbie.

Postfeminism, Pop-feminism, and Other Critical Lenses for Classroom Discussions of  Barbie

Rosalind Gill. 2007. “ Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility .” European Journal of Cultural Studies 10 (2): 147–166.

To understand the complexity of Barbie, it’s important to understand the existence of postfeminism and how it manifests through media culture. In this article, Rosalind Gill suggests a few approaches to engaging with postfeminist pop culture in critical and feminist ways.

Jess Butler. “ For White Girls Only? Postfeminism and the Politics of Inclusion. ” Feminist Formations , vol. 25, no. 1, 2013, pp. 35–58.

In this article, Jess Butler delves into the lack of intersectional perspectives in the literature on postfeminism, which she argues privileges a white, middle-class heterosexual subject. By drawing on the image of pop star Nicki Minaj, Butler suggests an intersectional approach to producing knowledge about postfeminism.

Angela McRobbie. “ Postfeminism and Popular Culture: BRIDGET JONES AND THE NEW GENDER REGIME. ” Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture , edited by Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra, Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 27–39.

In this article, Angela McRobbie analyzes the postfeminist messages of the Bridget Jones franchise to emphasize the “double entanglement” of being a woman, where a productive home and work life are desirable to complete a modern woman’s life.

Alice Leppert. “‘ Can I Please Give You Some Advice?’ ‘Clueless’ and the Teen Makeover .” Cinema Journal , vol. 53, no. 3, 2014, pp. 131–37.

While we probably won’t have to wait that long for academic critical engagements with Gerwig’s Barbie, reading critiques of similar films might help us think about it critically. In this article, Alice Leppert analyzes a common trope in teen films through the film Clueless: the teen makeover that makes the unpopular nerd into a popular girl.

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Shauna Pomerantz et al. “ GIRLS RUN THE WORLD? Caught between Sexism and Postfeminism in School. ” Gender and Society , vol. 27, no. 2, 2013, pp. 185–207.

A study on how teenage girls understand sexism in a society that teaches them that gender is no longer a question of concern. By exploring Canadian girls’ experience with the postfeminist belief that sexism doesn’t exist, the authors suggest that postfeminist narratives make it difficult for teenage girls to identify and name gender discrimination.

Carrie Smith Smith and Maria Stehle. “ Popfeminism. ” The German Quarterly , vol. 91, no. 2, 2018, pp. 216–27.

In this short article, the authors define the concept of “pop feminism” in a capitalist society, a critical perspective to understand Barbie as part of a postfeminist, neoliberal system of power and hierarchies.

Michelle S. Bae. “ Interrogating Girl Power: Girlhood, Popular Media, and Postfeminism. ” Visual Arts Research , vol. 37, no. 2, 2011, pp. 28–40.

Challenging the usual critiques of girl power, Michelle S. Bae offers an alternative approach for interpreting the concept — which directly implicates Barbie and the toy’s history with women’s empowerment. Understanding that the dominant discourse on girl power is still located in an essentialist frame of white Western hegemony, Bae uses the original criticisms of girl power as a starting point for arguing that girl power might be interpreted as subversive to patriarchy and are marked by contradictions.

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An Analysis of the New Barbie Movie: Reimagining Childhood Iconography and Its Impact

Type of paper: Essay

Words: 1340

Published: 08/09/2023

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In the realm of iconic cultural figures, few names hold as much recognition and influence as Barbie. For decades, this plastic fashionista has played a crucial role in shaping the imagination and aspirations of generations of young girls. In 2023, the release of the “Barbie” movie aimed to breathe new life into the character, presenting her in a contemporary cinematic light. While dismissing the “Barbie” movie as mere entertainment might be tempting, a closer examination reveals a tapestry of themes, characters, and artistic choices that have implications beyond the surface. This essay delves into the intricate layers of the movie, examining its narrative, target audience, cast, and specific characters, particularly Barbie and Ken. This analysis will unearth this record-breaking movie’s significance in modernizing an age-old character while pondering its implications for the broader cultural landscape.

What Is the Barbie Movie About?

The long-anticipated “Barbie” movie was advertised to the public at the end of 2022 when its trailer was presented before several screenings of “Avatar: The Way of Water.” The film itself ventures beyond the realm of a typical childhood tale, offering a captivating narrative that combines elements of adventure, self-discovery, and empowerment. Set in the fictional realm of “Barbieland,” the story follows Barbie, a fashion-conscious young woman who is magically transported to a world where her choices shape her destiny. Barbie embarks on a journey of introspection, transcending her reputation as a mere fashion icon. As the seemingly straightforward narrative unfolds, the audience witnesses Barbie navigating diverse challenges, each demanding her to tap into hidden strengths and adaptability. Her evolution from a fashionable toy to a multidimensional character mirrors society’s ongoing quest for broader, more nuanced representations in popular culture.

Barbie Movie Cast

The “Barbie” movie, directed by Greta Gerwig, boasts a diverse and talented cast, showcasing the entertainment industry’s push toward inclusivity and representation. The casting choices encompass a spectrum of ethnicities, backgrounds, and experiences, fostering a sense of authenticity in the characters’ interactions and personalities. For instance, while the main character is played by Margot Robbi, many other Barbies are non-white or characteristically slim. This intentional casting aligns with the modern emphasis on reflecting the real world within the realm of entertainment. At the same time, the cast features such famous figures as Dua Lipa and John Cena. The cast members’ performances breathe life into the characters, granting them depth and relatability that extends beyond their toy origins.

Is the Barbie Movie for Kids?

While the “Barbie” movie undoubtedly retains its appeal to its traditional young audience, it skillfully caters to a broader demographic. Through intricate storytelling and thoughtful character development, the film invites both children and adults to embark on an engaging, emotional journey. Subtle humor and sophisticated references sprinkle the narrative, providing a layer of enjoyment tailored to a mature audience. This shift indicates a broader trend in the entertainment industry, where creators recognize the value of creating content that resonates with different age groups, promoting shared experiences within families, and fostering cross-generational dialogue.

The Image of Barbie

Barbie’s visual representation in the movie encapsulates a contemporary aesthetic that aligns with the evolving beauty standards of today’s world. The main character’s physical attributes remain aspirational, yet the film consciously tones down the exaggerated proportions that were a hallmark of her earlier incarnations. Along with it, the movie presents Barbies of various races, ages, and body types. This adjustment speaks to the ongoing discourse surrounding body positivity and promoting healthier beauty ideals. By presenting a more realistic image of Barbie, the movie reshapes perceptions of beauty and promotes a healthier body image for young viewers.

Beyond physical appearances, the movie crafts Barbie’s image as a symbol of empowerment and determination. Her journey from a fashion-forward icon to a multidimensional character underscores the idea that women can be both stylish and strong. Barbie’s evolution into a capable problem-solver and leader reflects a larger societal shift in recognizing women’s multifaceted capabilities and challenging stereotypes that often limit their potential.

In a striking visual transformation, Barbie is depicted engaging in physically demanding activities and showcasing her prowess in ways that defy traditional gender roles. Her image as a fearless explorer, scientist, or inventor amplifies her role as a source of inspiration for young girls aspiring to careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This image underscores the importance of providing diverse role models in media to break down barriers and encourage girls to explore fields historically dominated by men.

The Image of Ken in Barbie Movie

Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, is the quintessential male counterpart to Barbie. His character experiences a noteworthy transformation in the 2023 movie. No longer confined to a secondary or supportive role (as seen in his song “I’m Just Ken”), this character evolves into a complex character with his motivations, aspirations, and character arc. Far from being a mere accessory to Barbie, Ken is presented as an equal partner who values collaboration and teamwork. His character subverts stereotypes, sending a positive message about healthy relationships and the importance of mutual respect. This development reflects shifting gender dynamics and the industry’s recognition of the importance of portraying well-rounded male characters. The exploration of Ken’s emotions and growth not only contributes to the movie’s narrative depth but also challenges traditional notions of masculinity, inspiring conversations about gender roles and expectations.

Socio-Cultural Implications of the Barbie Movie

Beyond the silver screen, the 2023 “Barbie” movie carries significant socio-cultural implications. Its deliberate efforts to modernize a cultural icon serve as a commentary on society’s evolving values and expectations. The film becomes a lens through which viewers can contemplate the changing perceptions of femininity, beauty standards, and gender roles. As Barbie navigates challenges and growth, her journey becomes a metaphor for the ongoing journey towards empowerment and self-discovery, transcending generations and cultures.

Remarkably, despite record-breaking box office and high viewer rating, the “Barbie” movie has sparked discussions and controversies that highlight its broader cultural impact. While celebrated for its positive messages, the film has also faced criticism for perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards. This duality encapsulates the multifaceted nature of Barbie’s influence, forcing us to confront the complexities of media representation and its implications for young minds. Moreover, the “Barbie” movie has paved the way for merchandise, spin-offs, and a larger franchise that extends beyond cinema, cementing Barbie’s status as a cultural icon and sparking conversations about consumerism, branding, and marketing to children.

Nostalgia and Reinvention

The “Barbie” movie’s juxtaposition of nostalgia and reinvention highlights its unique position as both a homage to its origins and a step toward the future. By preserving the core essence of the character while also injecting contemporary themes, the film bridges the gap between generations. It invites the older audience to reconnect with their childhood memories while introducing the character to a new wave of admirers. This interplay between the past and the present showcases the enduring power of cultural icons to adapt and resonate across time.

The 2023 “Barbie” movie is a testament to the dynamic nature of cultural symbols. Through its engaging narrative, diverse cast, and reimagined characters, the film transcends its plastic origins, shaping a new narrative that resonates with modern sensibilities. It reflects the entertainment industry’s commitment to inclusivity, challenges traditional gender roles, and navigates the delicate balance between nostalgia and innovation. As a piece of cinematic artistry, the movie exemplifies the potential of cultural reimagining to create relevant and thought-provoking content for both new and established audiences. In a world of constant change, the “Barbie” movie asserts that even the most iconic figures can evolve, inspiring fresh interpretations and new dialogues across generations.

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Review by Brian Eggert July 19, 2023

When Greta Gerwig signed to direct Barbie , she faced a myriad of challenges. How do you make a movie that does justice to the venerable brand, carefully overseen by Mattel? How do you make the doll, first introduced in 1959, feel relevant given today’s multifaceted discussions of gender and feminism? Can you make a movie about Barbie without it being about more than shimmering pink surfaces? How do you speak to the doll’s promotion of unrealistic and consumerist beauty standards, the perpetuation of gender stereotypes, and its damage to self-esteem? Moreover, how does making a movie about a Barbie not inadvertently carry on those negative effects? And how do you address these issues in a $100 million production without becoming a sociopolitical soapbox, and should you even address these issues? Assuming you do, who’s the audience for this movie? Will it be geared toward the same target market as the dolls, young girls between 3-12 years of age? Or a more specialized audience? Beyond all of that, Gerwig had to make a movie that somehow tackles these questions about the rather precarious icon but also connects with the summer movie crowd.

Not surprisingly, Gerwig delivers a sublimely optimistic, glittering production—until reality truncates what become complex characters. The result is a clever satire, with a riotous sense of humor and existentialism that springs from its relatable emotions—all contained in a formally ambitious candy-colored product. Barbie ends up about as good as it could be, largely thanks to Gerwig’s self-awareness as a filmmaker and storyteller. She may not adequately address every question listed above, and the plot meanders at times, but the director of Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019) leaps into a big-budget studio project with a defiant energy and unmistakably personal stamp. Given that the Barbie movie could have been a plastic and hollow commercial with no human identity, designed to unabashedly reinforce the toy brand, it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker apply her critical perspective. Gerwig treats the titular character not as an aspirational ideal but as someone whose journey represents the many challenges and contradictions of being a woman. 

The screenplay by Gerwig and collaborator-partner Noah Baumbach borrows a page from The LEGO Movie (2014), telling the story that links the toy, who inhabits a land of make-believe beholden to the almighty toymakers, and the player with said toy in the real world. Helen Mirren narrates, introducing Barbie Land, where the so-called stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) believes, “All problems of feminism and equal rights have been resolved.” Barbie lives in a blissfully idealized matriarchal world, with an all-female President and Supreme Court. Some initial gags find Barbie waking up in her dreamhouse, on a picture-perfect day, where she pantomimes showering and eating before greeting the other women in Barbie Land—all named Barbie, save for the pregnant Midge (Emerald Fennell). The male dolls, all named Ken, save for the odd Allan (Michael Cera), vie for the Barbies’ attention—none more so than the fragile-egoed alpha Ken (Ryan Gosling). Gerwig gives us a typical day-in-the-life view of Barbie, complete with a drive to the beach in her pink Corvette, only to have her interrupt an impromptu dance number by impulsively asking, “Do you guys ever think about death?” 

Gerwig explores the imaginative limits of Barbie with her production, offering inspired asides like the opening’s ode to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), where a clan of young girls toss aside their baby dolls for an adult woman toy, which is bound to destroy their self-image for years to come. Gerwig has clearly let her creative impulses run wild to inspired effect, conjuring dance sequences inspired by The Red Shoes (1948) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952), with marvelous, bubblegum-colored imagery shot brightly by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto. Another sequence through a gray-walled Mattel office feels ripped from the drab cubicle underworld of Brazil (1985), therein the opposite of Barbie Land’s pink paradise. Production designer Sarah Greenwood brings all the artistry Hollywood can muster, delivering an “A” level treatment to what looks like a more expensive version of that “Barbie Girl” music video by Aqua. Costume designer Jacqueline Durran draws from actual Barbie-brand merchandise, giving well-versed fans a knowing wink of Barbie garb throughout history and underscoring the oddities for everyone else (2009’s Sugar Daddy Ken, anyone?). 

Most impressive is how Gerwig and Baumbach’s script gives these characters dimension. Robbie’s version of the doll has profound conversations that challenge simplistic notions of womanhood, questioning her role as a doll with the help of some real-life humans, Mattel employee Gloria (America Ferrera), and her adolescent daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). Although Barbie thought she was a role model, Sasha calls her a “professional bimbo,” forcing her to reassess everything. Gloria gives more than one speech about what it means to be a woman, and it’s an inspirational rallying cry for the others—almost an extension of Saoirse Ronan’s Little Women monologue: “Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty.” But even the supporting characters feel like they have more depth than their surfaces imply. Issa Rae, Simu Liu, Dua Lipa, Hari Nef, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Alexandra Shipp, Sharon Rooney, and the rest of the ensemble appear on the same wavelength as Gerwig, perfectly aligning with the unique band of humor and message about gender equality. 

Not everything about Barbie works. When our hero faces the all-male executive team behind Mattel, she meets the company’s CEO, played by Will Ferrell, who behaves like, well, Will Ferrell—albeit unleashed as a destabilizing force in the movie. Along with the other executives, the CEO chases after Barbie to put her “back in her box,” propelling much of the second act. Yet, this conflict is never satisfyingly resolved; the CEO just sort of goes away at the end, presumably returning to his office to look over fourth-quarter projections. However, the chase leads to an overwrought scene where Barbie meets her inventor, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), in a white void—rather like Neo confronting the architect of The Matrix, with equally mind-bending implications. Moreover, the film never reconciles how, in the real world, Barbie continues to represent an unrealistic ideal for young girls. Sure, Gerwig makes inclusionary strides by showcasing Barbies of various races, hair colors, and body sizes, offering several Barbies who don’t look like the blonde-haired, blue-eyed “stereotypical” Barbie. Even though Gerwig addresses how not everyone looks like this or feels like they belong in Barbie’s idealized world (thanks to some well-timed criticisms by the narrator), the overall critique feels toothless in reality. So while Gloria comically suggests there should be an “Irrepressible Thoughts of Death Barbie” or “Cellulite Barbie,” don’t expect Mattel to release those dolls anytime soon. 

A Mattel commercial insists that “When a girl plays with Barbie, she imagines everything she can become.” But at least one scholarly study from 2014 suggests, no matter how ingrained the you-can-be-anything message, most young girls don’t learn that from Barbie; instead, they learn about a gendered world where women are valued for their sexualized appearance. That said, it would be absurd, and wishful thinking, to imagine that Gerwig could ever make a takedown movie about Barbie with the full cooperation of the corporation—even if Mattel seems to be a good sport, given how the company and its leadership are represented onscreen. Rather, what Gerwig offers is a clear-headed assessment of the doll, with equal measures of nostalgia and playful critique; an acknowledgment that, in reality, gender discrimination is very real; and a concession that Barbies represent a fantasy world. Barbie is also just a lot of fun, amounting to one of the year’s best comedies. It may not resolve the conflicts between Barbie the capitalist entity, the sexualized object, and the powerful feminist icon, but it doesn’t have to. Gerwig uses Barbie as a way of accessing real-world themes of womanhood in a delightfully entertaining way. 

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‘Barbie’ Offers a New Perspective on Women at Work — And It’s Not What You Think

"We sell dreams, imagination, and sparkle."

The Big Picture

• Greta Gerwig's Barbie defies expectations by tackling deep themes and resonating with women in a raw way.
• Barbie explores the gendered social phenomenon of women being expected to give up childhood joys and sacrifice for others.
• The film shows that women don't have to surrender their imagination and can find empowerment and joy in childhood toys.

After an astonishing box office performance and a superb critical response , it’s abundantly clear that Greta Gerwig 's Barbie is the complete opposite of the cynical consumerist propaganda most audiences assumed it to be: i.e., “It's just a toy commercial.” The multiplicity of themes that Gerwig, a female director with a pointed history of deftly summarizing the nuances of female existence, manages to balance is a staggeringly impressive triumph. What's more, said themes are moving. Scroll through social media for five minutes, and you'll witness how deeply Barbie 's piercingly tender insights about humanity and living in the world as a woman have resonated with countless femme-identifying individuals in a raw, rare way.

Personally, what I can't stop turning over in my mind is an Etalk interview with actress America Ferrera conducted before the movie's debut. Ferrera, who plays Mattel employee Gloria, speaks to how men are allowed to continue celebrating things from their childhood into adulthood, like video games and comic books, while women are conditioned to grow up, put those joys aside, sacrifice for others, and do our expected duties with a selfless, willing smile. "That was really what touched me about Gloria as a character," Ferrera explained. "This woman somehow made it to adulthood holding onto, like, the value of play and the value of aspiration and imagination. [It's] in a way counter-culture. We can be a lot of things at once ... we can be joyful and playful and imaginative and childlike and be a grown woman, professional, taken seriously."

This gendered social phenomenon Ferrera references is the narrative equivalent of a truth bomb. I found myself fist-pumping because a prominent entertainer validated the experiences and frustrations I knew like the back of my hand but had previously left uninterrogated. Moreover, Ferrera's observations tie into her character's remarkable third-act speech. Alongside every complicated issue that Barbie tackles with grace, the film champions female joy and self-expression through the avenue of our childhood toys . Now, why did Gerwig choose to incorporate such a specific theme, and why is this subtext-almost-text proving meaningful to women across the world?

Barbie suffers a crisis that leads her to question her world and her existence.

Greta Gerwig's 'Barbie' Subverts Expectations About Adult Women

Barbie's ( Margot Robbie ) journey from Barbieland into the real world culminates when she meets America Ferrera's Gloria. Contrary to Barbie's assumptions that a young girl with an existential crisis was playing with her, it's a grown woman employed by Mattel who designs potential Barbies in her spare time and despairs over her strained relationship with her teenage daughter, Sasha ( Ariana Greenblatt ). Frankly, it's remarkable that Barbie depicted an adult returning to the comforts of her favorite childhood doll in a time of distress, depression, and confusion. In her grief, Gloria turns to a symbol — a reminder of when things were simpler. She longs for the purity of that youthful, innocent joy the world's fundamental inequality ensured she could never recapture in its entirety. But Gloria tried; the Barbie that kept her company through the years (the one she tried to pass down to her daughter) transformed into a mirror reflective of Gloria's adult fears. Barbie remained a beacon of hope even though Gloria's peers probably would have wagged their fingers and tsked their tongues at a professional woman placing emotional value on a doll.

At this point, Gloria's speech about the cruel impossibilities of being a woman has taken on a life of its own. Some might dismiss it as "feminism 101," but for a blockbuster film, it's rather radical. Listening to Gloria describe how navigating the world as a woman is like swimming through a sea of knives, how our responses to every contradictory and changing demand are never good enough, sweet enough, sexy enough, strong enough, is a world-altering revelation for Robbie's "stereotypical Barbie." Ferrera's observations about the gender divide surrounding "childish" interests are a side alley conversation but still relevant to her monologue; their core message is the same.

'Barbie' Review: Greta Gerwig’s World of Plastic Is Fantastic

Girls grow up far too fast. We're sexualized by grown men before we have any comprehension or desire. A greater moral, emotional, and sexual responsibility is automatically forced upon us even though we don't seek it out. Boys will be boys, as the awful saying goes, so girls must pick up the slack and be smarter, polite, and more performative but still behave themselves by not "tempting" men into misbehavior. Any time a woman participates in fan culture with a stereotypically strong male presence, such as Star Wars , comic books, anime, or sports, we're harassed. We don't belong there, you see; nasty girls aren't allowed. But if women enjoy romantic comedies and YA novels or cry during a Taylor Swift concert, then our interests are stupid and trivial. There's no way to be a woman in a fandom space and win.

In 'Barbie,' America Ferrera's Gloria Shows That Women Don’t Need To Surrender Their Imaginations

So what fantasy solution does Barbie offer to Gloria's dilemma? Gloria and her daughter bridge the fragile gap between them because of Barbie's influence. A mother, a daughter, and a walking-talking doll save one another in crucial, intersecting ways. They swap lessons on the highs and lows of humanity . Their understanding of the world expands, and Barbie, a beloved old doll, is the linchpin for these revelations . Gloria rediscovers her strength by treasuring how profoundly Barbie impacted her life for the better. She doesn't need to throw her toys into the trash and re-commit herself to domesticity like a "proper" woman.

All Gloria must do is recontextualize what Barbie means to her as an adult. That bright, pink-fueled world of imagination and play is still open to her. Barbie still imparts empowerment and joy, even if said joy is a mature, resilient hope that had to survive the inevitability of being battered, broken, and remade. This is no Narnia where you hit puberty and get kicked out as punishment. In fact, Gloria's arc reminds me of Jim Henson 's Labyrinth , another movie that pushes back against the stereotypical coming-of-age narrative . Sarah ( Jennifer Connelly ), the teenage protagonist, doesn't have to abandon her fantasy world to grow up. Her viewpoints have matured, but her toys and creativity will always be with her "when you need us." I call that a win.

'Barbie' Empowers Women to Carry Childhood Joys into Adulthood

As a woman in her mid-30s and a self-proclaimed nerd who grew up in online fan spaces (Geocities, message boards, LiveJournal, fanfiction.net, Tumblr, etc.), I viscerally related to America Ferrera's interview. I have always been a ride-or-die geek with a strong preference for science fiction, fantasy, and anime. To this day I collect Funko Pops and design my home around these tiny plastic replicas. Despite my age, proven professional experience, and it being no one's business but my own, I'm still told I need to dismiss childish things. Cherishing my old stuffed animals, covering my walls with Lord of the Rings fan art, cosplaying at conventions, and writing fanfiction is met with active hostility. Men try to quiz me to prove I'm a true fan or shun me from social circles. "You can't have movie posters on your wall forever," someone told me.

The joke's on them. A mature, professional woman and someone who relishes the wonder of toys , play, and creativity aren't mutually exclusive concepts. Thanks to my maturing viewpoints, I engage with the media I love more than I did as a kid. These activities don't just make me happy, they're integral to who I am. They inform my passions and frame the lens through which I view the world. Figures like Leia Organa ( Carrie Fisher ) and Captain Marvel ( Brie Larson ) remind me why I keep existing despite a hostile world actively determined to grind me into dust. I buy an Ahsoka Tano action figure, place her on a shelf, and toss her a wink of solidarity when I walk by.

For Barbie to include such a subtle, intuitive, counter-cultural, and personal statement is a wonder I'm still astonished by. Like the crying women on TikTok whom the Barbie movie touched, I feel seen. More than that, I feel gratified. Through Gloria, Barbie reminds us that women shouldn't just treasure their play but nurture and reclaim it . There's nothing wrong with wearing sparkling pink outfits and Mass Effect t-shirts or trading friendship bracelets at the Eras Tour. Imagination, creativity, and enthusiasm aren’t things women must surrender because society dictates it. Barbie posits such elements as our strength — and what Barbie says, goes.

Barbie is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Barbie — Exploring the Evolution of Gender Representation in Barbie Movies

Exploring The Evolution of Gender Representation in Barbie Movies

• Categories: Barbie Film Analysis

About this sample

Words: 571 |

Published: Oct 25, 2023

Words: 571 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Allegory for gender dynamics, girl-boss feminism, progressive perspective, feminism and inclusivity, breaking gender stereotypes.

• [cram.com - "Barbie Gender Representation"](https://www.cram.com/essay/Barbie-Gender-Representation/FJRNS36FVT)
• [politico.com - "What 'Barbie' Says About the Gender Wars"](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/21/barbie-has-something-to-say-about-the-post-patriarchy-00107319)
• [medium.com - "Barbie and Gender Roles In Society"](https://medium.com/@thejuancancino/barbie-and-gender-roles-in-society-5387c6084405)
• [crossworks.holycross.edu - "Barbie As Cultural Compass: Embodiment, Representation ..."](https://crossworks.holycross.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=soc_student_scholarship)
• [thecrimson.com - "Being Barbie: An Unrealistic Ideal and a Feminist Icon"](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/4/13/barbie-movie-unrealistic-ideal-feminist-icon-women/)
• [bartleby.com - "Stereotypes: The Evolution Of The Barbie Doll"](https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Stereotypes-The-Evolution-Of-The-Barbie-Doll-E617D3BC624984F9)

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Staff essay: is the barbie movie truly revolutionary.

Full of dazzling pink sets, iconic outfits and themes of feminist empowerment, “Barbie” drew in a worldwide audience. Only a month after its release, the movie made over $1.3 billion, making it the highest grossing movie directed by a woman and 14th highest grossing movie in history , according to The Direct.

Pro- “Barbie”:

From catcalling to a lack of representation in the workplace, to passionate rants about the unachievable standards placed upon women, “Barbie” delicately, yet concisely portrays the experiences of what it means to be a woman .

The creators used the immense popularity of the brand to garner an international audience. The movie takes Barbie, a fond childhood friend for so many young children, and creates a powerful message about feminism. The movie used humor, sarcasm and wit to make the film appealing and palatable to people of all ages and backgrounds. 

However, it doesn’t sacrifice serious discussions. Seeing all of these incredible women holding positions of power (including President Barbie!), felt amazing, until an unpleasant thought surfaced: it just felt unrealistic. We started thinking about why that was, and realized that living in a society where positions of power are held by men conditioned us to believe that this is just how it is. The “Barbie” movie encouraged critical thinking through the cognitive dissonance in Barbieland.

Anti-“Barbie”:

“Barbie” doesn’t do anything to combat unrealistic beauty standards, which was disappointing when Barbies contribute to this issue. One study published by The Journal on Body Image, found ultra-thin dolls cause young children to view slimmer bodies as more ideal . Ariana Greenblatt’s character, Sasha, declares to Barbie, “ you’ve been making women feel bad about themselves since you were invented. ” Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that this is the only mention of body image. According to Bloomberg, Mattel, the parent company of “Barbie,” joined Gerwig and the producers to discuss the impact that the movie would have on the brand .

For a movie that emphasizes uplifting women, it exacerbated unachievable body standards . The movie also creates a negative body image to Barbie herself. When Margot Robbie’s Barbie begins to notice cellulite – a harmless condition that creates dimples in the skin – she panics. Additionally, the exclusion of Weird Barbie from Barbieland was a double standard. Barbieland was supposed to be a utopia for women to explore their passions and become confident, but Weird Barbie’s isolation shows that the only women who fit into society are welcome .

A massive problem with a single movie having so many themes and appealing to such a wide audience is that the movie often sacrifices depth. While “Barbie” did cover Feminism 101 , it wasn’t revolutionary . In fact, the monologue about the challenges women face, that was given by Gloria, played by America Ferrera, seemed awkward, stilted and unoriginal. 

The movie also seemed to address the patriarchy as if it were a joke . Ryan Gosling’s Ken saw the patriarchy primarily as beer and horses. The sentiment turns the concept of the patriarchy into something comedic and foolish . Opposite of how the patriarchy in our society today should be viewed: a destructive social construct.

In conclusion:

While “Barbie” creates a discussion about feminism in an easy-to-understand , accessible way, nothing new was added to the conversation. The messages were a complete regurgitation of the same things that feminists have been motivating towards forever: equal opportunity, self expression, and sisterhood. Looking to the future, feminist filmmakers need to create movies that lead to further progress in the movement.

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Dayana Lovera • Mar 22, 2024 at 8:38 am

i agree to some extent that the movie did not add anything new. At most, it highlighted points that women experience in society that are not talked about more often than they should be. like, how the expectations contradict themselves. (personally, i had not thought about that and how true it was and began looking for them in my everyday life.) but i still like the movie because it is still a conversation that needs to continue to happen and shouldn’t die. i also think that reiterating these points in a spoon-fed manner is not a bad thing. i think the point is to have more “real” conversations with less complexity that aims to confuse the opposing side in order to stump them and win the argument, and honestly yeah, sometimes that means dumbing it down for others. why? because we want them to actually understand our pov. even if it means explaining it like you would a 10 year old. its also how we could understand each other from different political sides, cultural backgrounds, physical/intellectual capabilities, and other worlds with more than one side. this is Greta’s and other writer’s pov they wanted to contribute to the convo. and i truly do think there are people out there who learned something from it. their perspectives matter. her contribution may not have been too different from what others have said before, but everyone wants to tell their piece and every perspective is different in some way. and we should allow them. and i think it will encourage others to tell theirs, and we will learn new things from them, even it much of it overlaps with what others have already said. and i cant wait to hear their stories too and see what other branches it creates in the conversation of equality of the sexes. heres to more conversations that can bridge the gap and make us better and more loving humans! 🙂

Tobias • Mar 18, 2024 at 1:40 pm

Love this article!

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“barbie bootcamp:” a look inside the mattel archive that inspired the film.

As the doll celebrates its 65th anniversary, Mattel execs Lisa McKnight and Kim Culmone look back at what the movie unearthed (see: Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken).

By Nicole Fell , Mia Galuppo March 21, 2024 10:53am

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For longtime fans of all things Barbie — which is currently in the middle of celebrating its 65th anniversary — Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film provided a different level of enjoyment. Filled with references to notable dolls and doll accessories from decades past, Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s Ken wore bespoke ensembles dating back to brand’s 1959 inception.

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The filmmakers behind the $1.44 billion grossing movie were briefed on Barbie’s origin story and were taken to the Barbie archive at Mattel headquarters in El Segundo, Calif.

“We gave them what I call the ‘Barbie Bootcamp,’” says McKnight of first meeting with Robbie, Gerwig and other members of the Barbie team. “Full immersion into the brand.”

In speaking about the company’s process with Jacqueline Durran, the Oscar-nominated costume designer for the film, Culmone says, “My team and I created multiple decks of chapters of Barbie’s fashion history.” The costume designer also did her own research, and the team often went back and forth to provide the designer with physical samples and different versions of Barbie fashion packs.

For McKnight, who has been with the company for nearly 25 years, the Barbie movie was like a partial scrapbook of her own career history. She says, “Sugar Daddy Ken to Video Girl Barbie, some dolls that I worked on, it was just a kick to see them all larger than life.” Sugar Daddy Ken, also known as Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken, was priced at $82 upon launch in 2009 and was meant to appeal to adult collectors.

“Barbie was created at a time when women couldn’t even have their own bank accounts and created by a female entrepreneur, working mom,” McKnight said. “It’s a great reminder when you think about how far we’ve come.”

There was also some other unexpected reminders.

“We had a doll that came with a dog that pooped called Pooping Tanner. It came with a pooper scooper.” Barbie featured a life size Pooping Tanner that wandered around the home of Weird Barbie (played by Kate McKinnon). Says McKnight, “I will say, it was a bestseller.”

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Barbie Land and losing paradise: Theologian muses on this summer's blockbuster

Margot Robbie poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film "Barbie" in London July 12. (AP/Invision/Scott Garfitt)

by Cathleen Kaveny

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Editor's Note : This commentary contains spoilers for the film "Barbie."

In the Catholic liturgical tradition, the color pink is associated with joy. But it is not joy untinged by visceral experience of pain, regret and sorrow. In the midst of the dark season of Advent, Catholics longing for the light of Jesus' birth use pink to celebrate Gaudete Sunday. In the middle of late winter's Lenten season, pink signifies Laetare Sunday. It points toward Easter Sunday's theme of Resurrection, even as it recognizes the inevitability of Jesus's suffering and death on Good Friday.

Thinking about the color pink in this way helps bring a theological lens to the summer blockbuster movie "Barbie," about the plastic doll first produced by the Mattel toy company in 1959 and played with by millions of girls over the past 60 years.

That lens is a natural one. Greta Gerwig, who co-authored the screenplay and directed the movie, has admitted how much her Catholic education has shaped her approach to "Barbie." Gerwig's highly acclaimed film " Lady Bird " (2017) is a semi-autobiographical account of years at St. Francis, an all-girls Catholic high school in Sacramento, California.

Writer-director Greta Gerwig arrives at the premiere of "Barbie" in Los Angeles July 9. (AP/Chris Pizzello)

As many commentators have pointed out, the "Barbie" movie is in large part a feminist reframing of the doll and its messaging for modern young women. It is a joyous celebration of "girl power." But it is also an ode to perseverance, compassion and hope in the midst of suffering and injustice. Set against the inevitability of death, "Barbie" is a post-COVID creative work.

We can think of "Barbie" as yet another retelling of humanity's origin story found in the book of Genesis. Barbie Land is presented as a Garden of Eden, where all the Barbies and Kens seem to live in vivid but languid enjoyment. 

Work in Barbie Land is not an activity, much less an onerous one. Instead, work is background scenery or even merely an accessory. (Ken's job is "beach"—not "lifeguard," not "model," just "beach.") There is no sex (as everyone knows, Barbies have no genital parts). There is no food (Barbies eat pretend food). 

And there is no aging or death. While Barbie Land features Barbies of every size, shape and color, including some with disabilities, they are all between 15 and 35 years old. They are all in the pink of health.

But one day, Barbie Land begins to lose its rosy luster, as aspects of the real world begin to mar its perfection. Stereotypical Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) suddenly finds herself preoccupied by persistent thoughts of death. She has developed — gasp — cellulite. And her unnaturally arched foot, which makes wearing high-heeled shoes supremely comfortable, has fallen flat as a pancake.

The movie "Barbie" retells the fall from paradise — but unlike the biblical story, it is told as a woman's fall from paradise into patriarchy. 

There are striking correlations between the movie and the Western theological tradition. Barbie laments the undesired and unexpected collapse of her arches just as St. Augustine lamented the undesired and unexpected collapse of his penis. He speculated that there would have been no erectile dysfunction in the Garden of Eden.

Paradise does not permit our bodies to disappoint us in any way whatsoever. After the Fall, however, the betrayal of our bodies is a regular occurrence.

The movie 'Barbie' retells the fall from paradise — but unlike the biblical story, it is told as a woman's fall from paradise into patriarchy. Tweet this

In the biblical story, Eve's curiosity and greed precipitate the banishment from Eden. In the movie, it is Barbie's courage and empathy that provokes the rough transition from Barbie Land to the real world. Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) informs Stereotypical Barbie that the rip in Barbie Land is caused by someone who played with her angrily and fearfully in the real world. To save Barbie Land, Barbie has to find this human being and assuage her suffering.

In the process of coming to terms with the real world, she slowly decides she belongs there.

Here the movie takes a turn toward the felix culpa tradition, which places great value on human life and society after the Fall. In fact, as the Latin suggests, original sin might have been a fortunate occurrence. Adam and Eve gain something by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, even as they lose immortality. 

The broken uncertainty of the postlapsarian world generates opportunities for human beings to exercise their agency in cooperation with God. Relationships with one and other become sweeter, because they are given life in the face of diminishment and death.

Christian theologians have long speculated that it is better to be an imperfect, finite human being than an angel. Western filmmakers before have made the same point before Gerwig.

For example, in Wim Wenders's 1987 film " Der Himmel über Berlin " (the English title is "Wings of Desire"), the angel Damiel decides to relinquish his wings and become a human being. After an eon of observing messy and painful human life from a state of unchanging perfection, he longs to experience choice, risk and love for himself, even at the cost of immortality. When the woman he falls in love with loses her life in a tragic accident, Damiel's decision appears foolhardy. Yet he resolves to keep living, honoring the beauty in the fragility of his days.

Filmed in black and white, " Der Himmel über Berlin " makes its point about the poignancy of human existence in shades of gray. The "Barbie" movie makes the same point using the color pink. After her escape wreaks havoc with their bottom line, the all-male leadership of the Mattel Toy Company offers Barbie the opportunity to resume her perfect life in Barbie Land — all she has to do is get back in the packaging box (complete with zip ties to constrain her wrists) and go home.

Barbie instinctively recoils from returning to life in a box. Yet her reasons for remaining in the real world are far from selfish; in fact, they touch upon the transcendent. 

She is mesmerized by the loveliness in the face of an older woman — someone she would not come across in Barbie Land. She confronts the appalling truth that Barbie dolls have been used to make real women feel inferior and inadequate about themselves. And she commits herself to make things better, now treating work as a noble human activity rather than as a fashion accessory.

What, exactly, does it mean "to make things better"? While justice is fiercely honored, the moral virtue that animates the movie is compassion. Barbie breaks down in tears when she hears about the anger and pain of her human being, who is not a little girl, but rather a grown woman named Gloria (America Ferrera) trying to raise her bright and complicated teenage daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) seemingly without much help from her husband.*

Mother and daughter detest and resent how the doll was used to manipulate them with false standards of femininity and rigid standards of perfection. At the same time, they do not let their anger get the best of them; they do not leave Barbie in the clutches of the evil toy company, which only wants to use her to generate more money. When they hear about her insecurities, they recognize that Barbie is a victim of the patriarchy too.

We know that the point of Barbie's creation was not to diminish or demean real women. We know because Ruth Handler, her creator, said so. Ruth, played by Rhea Pearlman and modeled on the doll's actual inventor, firmly but kindly reminds Barbie (and the audience) that no one can actually be Barbie — except, of course, for Barbie herself. 

Ruth's goal in creating the doll was to enable little girls to dream broadly about their lives as grownups. Playing with Barbie was supposed to unlock their creativity, not suffocate their self-worth.

Ruth wants what is best for Barbie, too — which means letting her take her own path. After warning her about the disadvantages of reality, Ruth acquiesces when Barbie decides to pursue an imperfect life of creativity in the real world rather than a perfect life as a created object in Barbie Land. No theologian could put the point more vividly.

Looking at Barbie Land from the perspective of Ken is rather like looking at Eden from the perspective of Eve. Do we really know whether Eve was happy? Tweet this

Unlike God, human creators are always flawed. One problem with Barbie Land is that no one, including Ruth, seems concerned about Ken's well-being. Barbie Land isn't a patriarchy, of course. More troublingly, it isn't a sinless matriarchy, where women take responsibility for all their political children, male and female.

In fact, the very first cracks in Barbie Land were experienced by Stereotypical Ken (Ryan Gosling), not by Barbie. Ken inchoately desires something more out of his life, and out of his relationship with Barbie, than being an affable boy-toy. He wants love, respect — and sex.

His own voyage to the real world introduced him to the patriarchy, which he unsuccessfully attempted to bring back to Barbie Land. After the Barbies defeat this endeavor, in part by turning the Kens against each other, Ken becomes a broken man. 

He at least had the good sense to recognize that patriarchy wasn't all it was cracked up to be, even for men. And he had the courage to admit that he was really into riding horses like a cowboy, not the patriarchy itself.

Looking at Barbie Land from the perspective of Ken is rather like looking at Eden from the perspective of Eve. Do we really know whether Eve was happy? If so, why was she so receptive to the temptations of the serpent in the first place? She was created, after all, as a helpmeet for Adam, not for her own sake.

But given Barbie's history, it might be more useful to examine Ken's plight in view of the new Eden created by 1950s postwar white American family life. This era is increasingly the object of our nostalgia. As Betty Friedan trenchantly exposed in The Feminine Mystique (1963), the homes that were made during that time were not entirely blissful for the women who were supposed to be at their heart. Many housewives felt numb and alienated in their suburban utopias, although they couldn't quite explain why.

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie star in a scene from the movie “Barbie.” (OSV News/Warner Bros.) 

In my view, Ken's existential crisis in Barbie Land is not very different from the crisis experienced by Friedan's stereotypical 1950s white housewife. Suffocating under norms imposed upon him by rigid social roles, Ken struggles to find an identity that is not fully defined by his partner, who is a more powerful and compelling figure than he could ever be. 

Ken's next task might be to give up beach for the library, so he can write The Masculine Mystique for all the men in Barbie Land.

The "Barbie" movie begins with a group of little girls playing with baby dolls in the sand. Then a larger-than-life Barbie doll descends from the air as the girls look on with wonder and admiration. They toss their baby dolls onto the ground and into the air and gather around Barbie, who smiles at them beneficently. 

The movie ends with Barbie, now going by her full name of Barbara Handler, going to her first appointment with the gynecologist.  She is no longer a plasticized giant, but rather an ordinary-sized flesh-and-blood human being. 

What should we make of these bookends? Some might say that the first scene signals a feminist ideology opposed to motherhood. I don't see it that way; in fact, I think the movie tries to broaden our notion of motherhood beyond a fixation on babies. Teenage girls, grown women, and even living dolls like Barbie need mothering, too. 

Others might worry that the last scene re-inscribes the biological tyranny women experience in a patriarchal society. My own view is more positive. I see Barbie as accepting responsibility for having a biologically complete female body that is both wonderfully strong and potentially fragile. 

The bodies of women in Barbie Land are plastic; they don't age, they don't die, they don't make love and they can't make children. Embodied women in the real world do all of these things.

And, as both the doll and the "Barbie" movie remind us, they do many other things as well. But before doing any of them, women must take care of their own basic needs, including the needs of their terrifyingly wonderful female bodies.

* This sentence has been updated for clarity.

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Come on Barbie, let’s go party:  The Barbie movie is a raw analysis of the female experience

• Ella Van Leuven
• August 28, 2023

Spoiler warning: This article reveals important plot points for “Barbie”.

With the biggest opening weekend of 2023, and the biggest ever opening weekend for a female-directed film, Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” is making waves in both the film industry and society. 

“Barbie” isn’t just a movie about the dolls that were a part of so many girls’ childhoods. “Barbie” analyzes expectations for women, the patriarchy and the female experience as a whole. Throughout the film, Gerwig does a beautiful job of discussing the expectations that are placed on women by both society and themselves. 

The film quickly addresses that Barbie was never meant to be a role model for how women are supposed to look, she is a representation of everything a woman can be. The opening sequence discusses the fact that Barbie was the first non-baby doll for young girls. Barbie has the power to encourage girls to be anything they want to be —- the president, an astronaut, a chef, or anything in between.

The movie follows “Stereotypical Barbie”, played by Margot Robbie, as she goes on a journey of self-discovery and redefines her views of the world around her. After Stereotypical Barbie starts noticing horrifying changes to her normally perfect appearance, including flat feet and cellulite, she and Ken (Ryan Gosling) make their way to the real world to both save herself and discover her true purpose. 

On their journey through the real world, Barbie and Ken meet Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a mother and her daughter who join them on their mission to save Barbie, and eventually all of Barbieland. 

One of the most memorable moments of the film is Gloria’s monologue, in which she addresses how truly impossible it feels to be a woman. She tells Barbie, “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.” Not only does society set impossible expectations for women, we also set impossible expectations for ourselves. 

Gloria’s speech is the first time many women have had these feelings put into words. Her monologue allows many women to feel truly seen in the struggles they face every day. 

While some argue that Gerwig’s film is “anti-men”, the film is truly a criticism of the detrimental effects of patriarchy and how it affects women everywhere. The film enacts a genius reversal of the roles that men and women are typically given in both film and the real world. 

In the beginning of the film, the Kens’ very existence depends upon the Barbies giving them attention. Just as women have been portrayed in film for so long, the Kens are shallow and generally don’t have a lot going on in their heads. 

When Ryan Gosling’s Ken visits the real world, he has his first experience with patriarchy, encountering a world where men run everything and women are often treated as “less than” and objectified.

Ken takes this information back to the other Kens, and while Barbie is still in the real world, he transforms Barbieland into Kendom, a patriarchal society based largely off of horses and beer. Ken transforms “Barbie’s Dreamhouse” into his “Mojo Dojo Casa House”, and he and the other Kens quickly move to take over the government and warp all the values of Barbieland.

There is a pointed difference in how Barbieland treats the Kens and how Kendom treats the Barbies. While the Barbies just let the Kens follow them around withholding invitations to girls’ night, the Kens put the Barbies into a patriarchal trance, making them wear maid costumes and forcing them to wait on the Kens hand and foot.

Once Barbieland is restored to its former state, the Barbies don’t flip the roles and force the Kens to serve them. Rather, Barbie apologizes for taking Ken for granted, pushing him to discover his own purpose apart from being in love with her.

Through its comic portrayal, with Ken eventually telling Barbie, “To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest anyway,” the film makes important points about how deeply harmful patriarchy is to women everywhere. Although Kendom feels exaggerated and includes a lot of comedic elements, it’s a very real criticism of how women are treated in the real world.

The Barbies are saved by powerful female friendships, and the film effectively snaps its audience out of the “patriarchy trance”, just like Gloria snaps the Barbies out of the trance the Kens placed upon them.  “Barbie” isn’t just a visually stunning movie about dolls. The film delivers a raw analysis of the female experience, helping women everywhere to feel seen in their daily struggle to simply exist. Through the film, Gerwig tells us that we are all Barbie, pushing women to see themselves as the powerful and independent beings we truly are.

This Post Has 2 Comments

Thank you for putting so many confusing thoughts for me into the written word. I was floored at the deep social commentary that I believed the movie exposed, rather than the fluff i had been told it was. Being a boomer, born in 1960, Barbie was a large part of my childhood and surely encouraged me to aim higher than my mother did, although she was very successful. God knows it is very hard to be a woman in a patriarchy and I did love Gloria’s monologue about the struggle of women.

This commentary perfectly clarifies my experience of watching Barbie—and never having had one instead opting for all forms of sports. ( Not to mention that I was probably too old to play with dolls when Barbie first appeared!). I would have liked to have been able to articulate so well what the film is telling us. Now I need to see it again.

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A Feminist Analysis of the Barbie Movie

Barbie lives in Barbieland, which for some is a feminist utopia in which women can do anything: be president, have highly professional careers (the entire Supreme Court are female) as well as wear high heels and throw all night parties. 

However all is not well in Barbieland: Barbie starts having nightmares and thinking about death, because the people in the real world are sad. So Barbie, accompanied by Ken, visits the real world to find her human family and solve their problems. 

In the real world, Barbie is shocked by ‘the patriarchy’. She finds herself subjected to objectification and harassment. When she finds her family, the teenage daughter thinks Barbie is nothing more than a professional bimbo who makes women feel bad about herself. 

It turns out this teenage girl is the source of sadness. She has stopped playing with her Barbie dolls because she blames them for men hating women and women hating women. 

Ken, on the other hand, feels empowered by ‘the patriarchy. In contrast to his emasculated life on the beach in Barbieland, in the real world He ends up thinking he can do anything just because he is a man. At one point he barges into a hospital thinking he can perform surgery, without any qualifications or experience. 

Back in Barbieland Ken changes things. The Supreme Court are demoted to a cheerleading squad, the president ends up serving men drinks. Every night is a ‘boys’ night and every barbie exists just to be ogled for male pleasure.

When Barbie returns she eventually manages to rally the barbies to overthrow their oppressors. Ken and Barbie apologies and the Barbies accept that a new society needs to be established with better rules for kens. 

In a hideous postmodern/ commercial twist Barbie meets with the spirit of the Mattel founder. She finds out she is uncertain of her role in the world because there is no set role. The film ends with Barbie returning to the real world: her story carries on ‘evolving’. 

Barbieland: Analysis 

At one level this film is a feminist commentary in line with what we might call Bimbo Feminism. This holds that women can embrace femininity and succeed professionally. 

It is also a criticism of Patriarchy and especially the manosphere. When Ken returns to Barbieland he convinces the Kens that their rights have been eroded by women. They adopt toxic forms of masculinity in order to reassert their power.  

This is also a movie about male as well as female roles. It is about how Kens (men) struggle to cope with increasing female power, many falling back on toxic masculinities. 

The movie is also a commentary on the uncertainty of gender identities and how they are open to interpretation. 

It also maybe gets us thinking about what use masculinity is at all going forwards: perhaps the future is one of abandoning heteronormativity entirely?

It seems to fit in well with postmodern feminism.

The Conversation: Greta Gerwing’s Barbie Movie is a ‘feminist-bimbo’ classic .

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Unforgettable, Hilarious, And Empowering Lines From The Barbie Movie That Had Us Laughing And Cheering

Don't blame me, blame Mattel.

BuzzFeed Staff

It's been some time since the release of Barbie , but I'm not over all the hilarious and uplifting quotes from the film. Here are my top 41 favorite quotes, including the funniest roundup of Ken lines, and Gloria's heartwarming and powerful monologue.

1. "every night is girls' night.” —barbie (margot robbie), 2. "how can i be a fascist i don't control the railways or the flow of commerce." —barbie (margot robbie), 3. "there are no multiples of allan. he’s just allan.” —narrator ( helen mirren ), 4. "she's not dying, she's just having an existential crisis." —gloria (america ferrera), 5. "i'm a liberated man. i know crying's not weak." —ken ( ryan gosling ), 6. "midge was barbie's pregnant friend. let's not show midge, actually. she was discontinued by mattel because a pregnant doll is just too weird." —narrator (helen mirren), 7. "by giving voice to the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under the patriarchy, you've robbed it of its power." —barbie (margot robbie), 8. "so you're like 'barbie' barbie like a professional bimbo" —sasha (ariana greenblatt), 9. "that's because they're dream houses, motherf*cker." —president barbie ( issa rae ), 10. "i'm just ken." —ken (ryan gosling), 11. "no, no, no, no. i'm not a sugar daddy. this is sugar, and i'm her daddy." —sugar daddy ken (rob brydon), 12. "shredding waves is much more dangerous than people realize." —ken (ryan gosling), 13. "all of nsync allans" —allan (michael cera), 14. "you're kenough." —ken (ryan gosling), 15. "we mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they've come." —ruth ( rhea perlman ), 16. "to be honest, when i found out the patriarchy wasn't just about horses, i lost interest." —ken (ryan gosling), 17. "oh, look, a construction site. we need that good feminine energy." —barbie (margot robbie), 18. "you should heal up in no time. actually, in the time that it took for me to say that sentence, you healed." —barbie (hari nef), 19. "please call me mother." —mattel ceo (will ferrell), 20. "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" —mattel ceo (will ferrell), 21. "we have to always be extraordinary but somehow we’re always doing it wrong." —gloria (america ferrera), 22. “i will beach both of you off at the same time” —ken (simu liu), 23. *walking away* "sublime" —ken (ryan gosling), 24. "her ghost keeps an office on the 17th floor." —mattel ceo (will ferrell), 25. "you guys are not doing patriarchy very well." —ken (ryan gosling), 26. "you have to be their mommies but not remind them of their mommy. any power you have must be masked under a giggle." —gloria (america ferrera), 27. "i can do the splits. i have a funky haircut and i smell like basement." —weird barbie (kate mckinnon), 28. "you're so beautiful." —barbie (margot robbie), 29. "i'd like to see what nude blob he's packing under those jeans." –weird barbie (kate mckinnon), 30. "i do not have a vagina and he does not have a penis. we have no genitals." —barbie (margot robbie), 31. "i’m here to see my gynecologist” —barbie (margot robbie), 32. “barbie is a doctor, and a lawyer, and so much more than that.” —barbie (margot robbie), 33. *screaming* "flat feet" —barbie (hari nef), 34. "fine, get cellulite. i don't care." —weird barbie (kate mckinnon), 35. "does the label 'long-term long-distance low-commitment casual girlfriend' mean nothing to her" —ken (ryan gosling), 36. "you can tell them you’ve never seen the godfather , and that you'd love them to explain it to you.” —gloria (america ferrera), 37. "i'm trained to stand confidently here." —ken (ryan gosling), 38. "i'm sensing some kind of entendre here...and it appears to be double." —barbie (margot robbie), 39. "you have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining." —gloria (america ferrera), 40. "do you guys ever think about dying" —barbie (margot robbie), 41. and, finally, this list wouldn't be complete without gloria's big speech to margot robbie's barbie. it's too hard to pick my favorite part, so i'm just gonna give you the whole, glorious thing:.

"It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. 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. You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining. You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful. 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."

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Shakira’s comments on the ‘Barbie’ movie spark outrage and conversation

Shakira is sparking controversy with her take on the “Barbie” movie.

The “Puntería” singer, 47, revealed her thoughts, and her sons', on Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film in a recent interview with Allure.

“My sons absolutely hated it. They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent,” she said. “I’m raising two boys. I want ‘em to feel powerful too (while) respecting women. I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide.”

Shakira shares two boys, Milan, 11, and Sasha, 9 , with her ex-partner, soccer star Gerard Piqué. 

“I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity,” she continued. “I think that men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost.”

“Just because a woman can do it all doesn’t mean she should?” Allure writer Patricia Alfonso Tortolani asked the pop superstar.

“Why not share the load with people who deserve to carry it, who have a duty to carry it as well?” Shakira replied.

Shakira’s thoughts on “Barbie” were met with swift reactions, mostly critical, on the X platform.

“Not Shakira saying women’s success in society is linked to our femininity,” one X user wrote .

“women don’t owe femininity to anyone, not even themselves... what an awful take. Disappointing,” another user wrote .

“Oh Shakira love you but idk about this one,” another person posted .

Other commenters expressed confusion about Shakira’s comments and how they relate to the end of the “Barbie” movie, when Ken and the other male characters find new purpose and redefine what it means to be a man.

“That would have been the case if the ending of the Barbie movie didn’t have the kens getting their respect and their purpose being showcased,” one X user wrote .

“But he did find his power,” another person posted . “He is Kenough.”

Some parents of sons also weighed in on Shakira’s take.

“I have 4 sons (7-16). They all loved the Barbie movie, as did my husband. They turn it on all the time,” one X user wrote. “I love Shakira and I’ll attribute her reaction to cultural differences ... Barbie isn’t meant to be emasculating, I feel like it lets both sides realize n be who they are.”

“I’m a mom of two boys, too, and the movie addressed toxic masculinity,” another person wrote , in part. “Which is the thing I’m most afraid of for them.”

Some X users said they understood Shakira’s point of view. 

“It’s interesting to hear Shakira’s perspective on the ‘Barbie’ movie and its portrayal of gender roles,” one X user wrote . “Empowerment shouldn’t come at the expense of anyone’s identity. Balancing empowerment for women while respecting the roles men play in society is crucial. It’s all about finding that harmony where everyone feels valued and empowered.”

“Maybe interviewers should stop bringing Barbie up,” another person wrote on X . “If you actually read the whole article it makes sense Shakira was annoyed. She believes women can do it all but men should share in the duty. Strong men can support women.”

Elsewhere in the Allure piece, Shakira described the “transformation” of “being reborn as a woman” she experienced while working on her latest album, “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (Women No Longer Cry).”

"I have rebuilt myself in the ways I believe are appropriate,” she said. “No one tells me how to cry or when to cry, no one tells me how to raise my children, no one tells me how I become a better version of myself. I decide that.”

Lindsay Lowe has been a regular contributor to TODAY.com since 2016, covering pop culture, style, home and other lifestyle topics. She is also working on her first novel, a domestic drama set in rural Regency England.

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‘Oppenheimer’ Opens in Nuclear-Scarred Japan, 8 Months After U.S. Premiere

While some viewers lamented the movie’s exclusion of scenes from Hiroshima or Nagasaki, others said they recognized that it had another story to tell.

By Motoko Rich and Kiuko Notoya

Motoko Rich reported from Tokyo, and Kiuko Notoya from Yokohama, Japan.

Watching “ Oppenheimer ,” the Oscar-winning biopic about the father of the atomic bomb that opened in Japan on Friday, Kako Okuno was stunned by a scene in which scientists celebrated the explosion over Hiroshima with thunderous foot stomping and the waving of American flags.

Seeing the jubilant faces “really shocked me,” said Ms. Okuno, 22, a nursery school teacher who grew up in Hiroshima and has worked as a peace and environmental activist.

Eight months after Christopher Nolan’s film became a box office hit in the United States, “Oppenheimer” is now confronting Japanese audiences with the flip-side American perspective on the most scarring events of Japan’s history.

The movie follows the breakthrough discoveries of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team before the United States struck Japan with the first salvo of the nuclear age. It won seven Academy Awards last month, including for best picture .

Ms. Okuno, who watched the film in Tokyo on Saturday, lamented that it did not reflect the experiences of the hundreds of thousands of atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

“It is scary to have this film go out in the world without the proper understanding of the effects of the nuclear bomb,” she said. As for the regret that Oppenheimer expresses in the second half of the film, “if he really thought he had created technology to destroy the world,” she said, “I wish he had done something more about it.”

Bitters End, the indie Japanese distributor that released the film, said in a statement in December that it had decided to put “Oppenheimer” in theaters after “much discussion and consideration,” because the “subject matter it deals with is of great importance and special significance to us Japanese.”

Long before the movie opened in Japan, prospective viewers were angered by American fans who seemed to make light of the atomic bombing with fused images from “Oppenheimer” and the film “Barbie” in an online “ Barbenheimer ” meme.

Mindful of domestic sensitivities, some theaters in Japan are carrying trigger warnings, with signs cautioning audiences about scenes “that may remind viewers of the damage caused by the atomic bombings.”

The film, which opened at 343 theaters nationwide, grossed 379.3 million yen ($2.5 million) in its first three days, making it the country’s highest-grossing foreign film so far in 2024.

Some commentators said they appreciated that the film was being shown in Japan despite the earlier controversy. “We must not create a society that makes it impossible to watch, think and discuss,” wrote Yasuko Onda, an editorial board member at The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily newspaper. “We must not narrow the eyes that see films.”

While some people, including atomic bomb survivors, have protested the exclusion of scenes from Hiroshima or Nagasaki, Yujin Yaguchi, a professor of American studies at the University of Tokyo, said that “Oppenheimer” simply reflects a conventional viewpoint that omits many others from the narrative, including the Native Americans whose land was used for nuclear testing.

The movie “celebrates a tiny group of white male scientists who really enjoyed their privilege and their love of political power,” Mr. Yaguchi wrote in an email. “We should focus more on why such a rather one-sided story of white men continues to attract such attention and adulation in the U.S. and what it says about the current politics and the larger politics of memory in the U.S. (and elsewhere).”

Some viewers who saw the movie over the weekend said they recognized that the film had another story to tell.

Tae Tanno, 50, who watched it with her husband in Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city, said she focused on Oppenheimer’s revulsion as he began to grasp the devastating damage that he and his fellow scientists had unleashed.

“I really thought that, oh, he did feel this way — a sense of remorse,” Ms. Tanno said.

That depiction of a moral conscience may reflect changes in American public sentiment, said Kazuhiro Maeshima, a professor of American government and politics at Sophia University in Tokyo.

A few decades ago, a film portraying the guilt felt by the bomb’s creator might have been unpopular in the United States, where the received narrative was that the atomic bombs had averted a costly invasion of mainland Japan and saved the lives of thousands of American soldiers, Mr. Maeshima said.

In 1995, for instance, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington drastically cut back an exhibit displaying part of the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Veterans’ groups and some members of Congress objected to portions of the proposed material that raised doubts about the American rationale for dropping the bomb.

“Thirty years ago, people thought that it was good that the bomb was dropped,” Mr. Maeshima said. “Now, I feel like there is a more ambivalent view.”

In Japan, viewers may now be more willing to watch a movie that does not focus on the victims, nearly eight decades after the end of World War II and eight years after Barack Obama became the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima .

Kana Miyoshi, 30, a native of Hiroshima whose grandmother was 7 years old when the bomb fell and lost her father and a brother in the attack, saw the film with her parents in Hiroshima on Saturday.

Like other viewers, Ms. Miyoshi was struck by the scenes of celebration after the dropping of the bomb, but she said they should not be condemned. “This is reality, and we cannot change it,” said Ms. Miyoshi, whose grandmother died almost three years ago at 83.

Many Japanese support nuclear disarmament, and the country, which has no atomic weapons of its own, relies on the so-called nuclear umbrella of the United States for protection. As North Korea strengthens its nuclear arsenal and Russia threatens to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, experts said “Oppenheimer” could stimulate discussion about nuclear deterrence as the United States approaches an election that may sharply change its commitment to global alliances.

“There’s so much to confront here in Japan’s position vis-à-vis nuclear weapons,” said Jennifer Lind , an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College who specializes in East Asian security. “This movie is coming at such a fascinating time for them to think about ‘what is our national policy?’”

Japanese peace activists also see fodder for discussion in “Oppenheimer.”

“It’s a great opportunity to think about nuclear weapons from a very international perspective, because normally in Japan the nuclear weapons issue is taught as a story about Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” said Akira Kawasaki, who serves on the executive committee of Peace Boat, a Japanese nonprofit group that operates cruises oriented around social causes.

As scientists develop artificial intelligence and other potentially destructive technologies that could be misused by governments, Mr. Kawasaki said that “Oppenheimer” offered a potential warning.

“Scientists are very vulnerable and very weak in front of all that power,” Mr. Kawasaki said. “An individual cannot be strong enough to stand up against those things.”

Motoko Rich is a reporter in Tokyo, leading coverage of Japan for The Times. More about Motoko Rich