Why You Liked … Barbie

In 2023, one of the best movies wasn’t about a superhero or a spy. It was about Barbie, the 64-year-old fashion doll. She arrived to teach us about fun, joy, playfulness, and telling the patriarchy to go fuck itself.

Mattel’s Barbie, inspired by a German adult fashion doll, Bild Lilli, is back with her unapologetically grown-up roots. She’s not here to remind us of dollhouses. Barbie’s here to redefine play itself.

See, the history of Barbie and Bild Lilli is… confused, if you look at the real world. Bild Lilli was based on tabloid comic-strip character Lilli. She had a good run until 1964 when Mattel hoovered up the Lilli rights, sunsetting Bild Lilli so Barbie could shine brighter, and no doubt avoiding the outstanding meteor shower of inbound lawsuits.

It’s this very adult backstory that’s the precursor for the Barbie toy line telling (primarily) girls that they didn’t need to be mothers by forcing them to play with baby dolls. Their fantasies could be full of adult dreams; girls could be doctors, lawyers, astronauts, or have a television inserted into their spine.

We wouldn’t have Barbie without Ruth Handler doggedly prosecuting the idea. History suggests her husband Elliot, a cofounder of Mattel, was unenthusiastic about making a doll showcasing a girls-can-be-anything ideal. Mattel’s directors originally agreed, shining such a blinding light on the problems of patriarchy it’s a wonder we’re not all still living in caves and shouting unga-bung at each other.

It would be fair to say that Barbie’s sales outstripping Mattel’s ability to supply for the first three years of her run were one of the best I-told-you-so’s in history. Still, cash seasoning makes even crow taste good.

Life Imitates Art

This history is a material manifestation of what Barbie wants us to see. The very origins of Barbie, a doll that challenged the norms of a girl’s playtime in the 1960’s, reflect the movie’s insistence on questioning who really gets to steer culture and identity. Barbie takes the childlike wonder of Barbieland and asks, alongside some banging music, how much of that wonder is even possible in ours.

See, corporate boardrooms are only distant from a playground if they don’t control a child’s sense of wonder. The tastemakers in the 1960’s were the suits, and Barbie’s very existence challenged their idea of a ‘girl’s toy’. 

The Barbie movie sails into this storm head-on, bringing delight and whimsy to the questions about dominance, control, the patriarchy, and how difficult it is to be a woman. Where it really shines is borrowing a trick from the excellent Hidden Figures. 2016’s Hidden Figures spends a lot of time exploring what it might have meant to be a Black woman working for NASA in the 1960’s. The movie walks you through life’s challenges foisted on the weak by the powerful, but does so with a gentle heart. This heart is best felt in moments where the movie highlights racism, allowing you to draw your own conclusions on inequality. This learning tool is impactful because it doesn’t blame audiences for being white or racist. It encourages us to join the struggle for equality, and Barbie mirrors that message. Barbie uses humour and heart to let audiences arrive at their own realisations about modern-day inequality without preaching. This is storytelling at its best. It nudges. It invites. But it never demands viewers pick a side.

While Barbie is a fantasy comedy film, the issues it discusses are not make believe. It talks with passion, heart, warmth, and humour about the difficulties women face. It uses one of the world’s most contentious toy lines, often criticised for its unrealistic depictions of women, as the lens to view this struggle. See, while Barbie has become a cultural icon, she hasn’t done that without courting her fair share of concerns. Whether it’s promotion of teen pregnancy, suggesting math is impossible for women, or showcasing body proportions that would make a real human snap at the waist, Barbie has been playing tug-o-war with her own image.

The Barbie movie embraces this conflict. Barbieland is full of all things Barbie, and we get to see the wins and misses of the doll’s history. While the movie highlights inequality, it doesn’t shy away from the toy line’s own influence on culture and women’s plights. A scene early in the film has this truth bomb dropped on Margo Robbie’s Barbie. It’s an awakening she needed, and we needed to see, to be able to take the rest of the film’s messaging to heart.

It’s this sense of heart that enlarges Barbie from a cheap nostalgia play to something memorable. I was not blessed with a set of Barbie dolls as a youth, preferring the sleeker designs of X-Wings or a Transformer or two. Despite not having the Barbie chip inserted during my formative years, I found the movie insightful instead of trite, worthwhile instead of cheap.

Key Moments

Barbie has just three messages for you.

1. Embrace joy and self-expression as radical acts of freedom. Barbie isn’t afraid to have fun, look ridiculous, and be over the top. The movie revels in this spirit. It’s a celebration of uniqueness, reminding us that being true to ourselves is liberating.
2. Inequality cuts deepest when those closest to us don’t see it. Our loved ones can be blind to struggles they don’t face. Barbie’s journey reflects how painful that blind spot can be, no matter which side of the fence you’re on. It’s Barbie and Ken’s experiences in our ‘real’ world that bring a fresh, thoughtful perspective on empathy.
3. The absence of guns in Barbieland isn’t quirky; it’s profound. Barbie’s gun-free, pastel-perfect world allows for playful conflict resolution. Tensions don’t need weapons. Problems can be solved with words, humour, cleverness, and dance-offs instead. Choosing empathy and love over violence and hatred is a statement.

While there are a lot of actors credited as Barbie or Ken in this movie, the stand-outs are Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Both bring energy and charm to the screen, but it’s their clear respect for each other and the focus on the film that shines through. Robbie might be better known to moviegoers from About Time, The Big Short, or Suicide Squad. Gosling similarly needs no introduction, but it’s his ability to sideline himself to shine a light on Robbie, Barbie, and the patriarchy at large that takes courage and skill. Robbie and Gosling aren’t just stars. They’re willing participants in Barbie’s comedic, absurd revolution. Robbie brings the complexity Barbie’s awakening demands, and Gosling’s Ken is a perfect foil. Their balance keeps the movie light yet poignant, funny yet sharp.

See, the thing about Barbie is, like Hidden Figures, it doesn’t make you feel bad for being a man. There are some pretty hard-hitting scenes where we get to see just how difficult, how tiring it is to be a woman, but these scenes aren’t saying the moviegoers of 2023 are to blame. Robbie and Gosling’s performances are designed to shine a light on an issue so large we’ve (all of us) missed it. And once we’ve seen it, we can talk about it, and fix it.

Barbie is ultimately a movie about happiness. It’s designed to suggest, to dare audiences to embrace the pink, to wear faux mink, and even to enjoy Matchbox 20 and horses. It uses this intrinsic understanding of difference and its intersection with joy to suggest the key teachable moments we need to go through, especially in understanding the plight of those closest to us. And it helps us see how we can fix these issues by using our words, not weapons. There are no guns in Barbieland, and that’s perfect because if they existed, we wouldn’t have seen one of the best dance-offs in movie history.

So, What

Barbie isn’t a movie designed to challenge you very hard. It’s a movie that wants you to have fun. To poke gentle ridicule at some of the structures we’ve built around ourselves, and imagine (just for a moment) what it’d be like if they didn’t exist.

It doesn’t want men and women to switch roles. All Barbie really wants is for us (all of us!) to have fun. To live a good life, with people we love, and ensure they live a good life too. From its laugh out loud moments to its poignancy, from its highlighting of tone-deafness to its deft tones, this is a movie that sits right at the pinnacle of storytelling mastery.

In the end, Barbie doesn’t want to rewrite social structures or switch power dynamics. It simply asks us (again, all of us!) to be brave enough to laugh while we love, and to rethink our world, if only for a little while. It gives us a little glimmer of possibility, and dares us: give pink a chance.