The Prairie Thistle

My husband took our oldest daughter to see Barbie yesterday. I even convinced him to wear a pink shirt. 🙂 She was thrilled. And he was… supposed to see Oppenheimer.

The original plan was for me and my girls to see Barbie, but when she was under the weather on the original date, we saw it without her and he stepped in to take her when she was feeling better.

I just didn’t feel up to paying to see Barbie twice. I like director Greta Gerwig, but I can see why people are upset by the Barbie movie. I found it… a fun summer movie. It’s meant to be quite provocative, I think (most of Gerwig’s pieces are). What it’s not is subtle. While many of her other movies are quirky, slice of life, and believable even, this one is over the top with ridiculous imagination and obviously not meant to be taken as real. It’s also quite funny, poignant at times, and quite enjoyable to watch.

As far as its feminist message, hmm, that’s tough to describe. Actually, I was quite confused at times over just what the movie was trying to say. Mid-watch, I tried to start ignoring the overt anti-patriarchal messaging in order to just get a grasp of the plot.

Even though it was a bit all over the place, the messaging I got was this:

• You’re beautiful no matter how you look.
• You’re beautiful as you age, and if you age.
• Through a brief history of Mattel, viewers learned Barbie was created by a feminist so that girls in the 50s could learn they could actually have jobs and be whatever they wanted to be and that wasn’t bad (revolutionary).
• The type of matriarchy that could exist in the West could be just as off-balance and strange as a patriarchy, hey, isn’t it fun to play with that concept and AT LEAST get people to see it as a possibility.
• Women don’t need men. Men shouldn’t need women. But asking other people to be their best selves and finding support in those people is OK.

There were also several plot lines that didn’t quite reach their full potential for me:

• A struggling mother/daughter relationship, which resolved but was kind of weak.
• The board of Mattel – all rich, white males – don’t seem to face any consequences and are even sort of are sympathetic in the end – I mean, fine, but what?
• The main character gets to be effortlessly tall, thin, blond and beautiful, and screams at the thought of wearing no make up and getting cellulite; she then learns to appreciate other people’s beauty and also her own (a fine message, but it just didn’t come through meaningfully to me).
• And…

Then there’s the Kens. I must admit I didn’t quite get it them as a concept. They were created to be Barbie’s boyfriend, but Barbie just doesn’t like him. At all. And he has a hard time receiving no for an answer – a few times. And then he gets radicalized (basically becomes an Incel). And then anything stereotypically masculine is ridiculed. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. And then his character’s point of growth seems to be when he realizes he needs to be his own person without Barbie. Which is all a ridiculous and cathartic romp. But generally I found it bordered on hating on men and didn’t produce a satisfying message to me about men and women.

I thought about some of us who have been justifiably upset about patriarchy in the circles I’m familiar with. What if someone had given us a ridiculous amount of money when we were super, super angry at patriarchy and Christianity and then told us we could make a movie? It would probably tell a lot of truth and be cathartic and a lot of people would get hurt. Am I right?

That’s what Barbie felt like. Yes, I could laugh and share justified anger with a theatre full of people; there were laughs and indignant exclamations rippling throughout the audience in all the right places. But overall it felt like Greta Gerwig is/was super angry at patriarchy and got a big budget movie to express that with. Which is also fine. Women SHOULD get to express their anger. Even in big-budget Hollywood art? Male directors have done it, females can, too. Fine. But it’s not satisfying to me as a social commentary.

You can’t take a small amount of insights and a BIG AMOUNT of ANGER and make something that is ultimately good. Men and women weren’t portrayed well in this movie. The social fallout in the United States – I don’t know about around here – is that the right wing conservatives are even angrier at the left because of this movie. For me, I’m just tired of all the polarities. And all the anger. Even if it’s wrapped up in pink smiles and songs.