Imagine If This Post Was about Anything Other than ‘Barbie’
Thank you, Greta Gerwig, for the best birthday present ever.
You had to know this was coming, right?
This Barbie turned thirty-two on July 21st, the same day as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was released in theaters, so my friend and I bought tickets to a matinee showing (I think Jamie Lee Curtis speaks for all of us over thirty when she said, “I want to see Coldplay at 1 p.m.”) and went to Barbie Land.
Reader, not even the jaws of life could pry me from my seat. Normally, I am a firm proponent of movies of a reasonable length (ninety minutes and not a second longer), but I could have watched Barbie for another two hours. I would watch one of the Barbies rearrange their intensely hued furniture for fifty minutes; I would not care. Anything to stay in that prismatic utopia run by women for just a minute longer.
I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun at the movies. (OK, M3GAN.) And the fun wasn’t just limited to the screen: The whole experience was a romp. Everyone came in their pink best. We even made friends with the best-dressed in our theater:
Why take a picture in the Barbie box when you can just pose for the camera with some real-life dolls?
Warning: spoilers ahead!
I’m going to be honest: I did not know what to expect going in. Even after I watched the first trailer 2,000 times—which, duh, I’m only human!—I still had a hazy understanding of the narrative trajectory at best. What I loosely gathered was that Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) are living their cheerful and seemingly perfect lives until something goes awry, and they have to travel to the real world where they discover that living among humans is not the walk in the park it is in Barbie Land.
Me making small talk at the Ruby Tuesday salad bar.
Barbie wakes on a morning like any other: She gets out of bed and waves hello to the other Barbies going about their days below; she doesn’t take a shower as much as she pantomimes it, as she is a doll, and thus does not actually have to worry about hygiene; she eats fake breakfast; and then she heads out to engage in recreational activities at the beach alongside her Ken counterparts.
Later, at a dance party, Barbie is suddenly overcome with thoughts about mortality, or, as I like to call it, “the last step of my bedtime routine.” The next day, she struggles to go about her usual routine and discovers her feet have gone flat. She also notices that she has cellulite. Concerned and confused, she turns to the other Barbies, all of whom freak the fuck out about her flat feet and cellulite before recommending she pay a visit to Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), a disfigured but wise outlier who tells Barbie that her existential crisis is linked to the child playing with her.
In order to alleviate her affliction, Weird Barbie tells Barbie that she must travel to the real world and find her owner. As she begins her trek to the real world, she finds Ken stowed away in the back of her convertible, and acquiesces to his pleas for joining her.
The two arrive at Venice Beach in their full Barbie regalia, causing heads to turn and eyebrows to raise. The two create such a scene—getting arrested multiple times following a series of antics—that word of their presence in the real world reaches Mattel headquarters, concerning the CEO (Will Ferrell) and warranting their immediate capture.
Meanwhile, Barbie’s search for her owner leads her and Ken to a high school, where she meets Sasha, a sharp-tongued teenage girl who roasts Barbie for promoting toxic beauty standards, even going so far as to call Barbie a fascist, which made me guffaw so loud that the person in front of me turned around.
A distraught Barbie excuses herself to cry for the second time in her life. Because all she’s ever known is life in a matriarchal society, she’s under the impression that the real world is, too, run by strong, successful women. No sooner has she come to the realization that the real world does not mirror her own should Mattel pull up in a fleet of black SUVs to whisk her away.
Back at Mattel HQ, Barbie comes face-to-face with the CEO, whom she thought would be a woman. Not only is the CEO not a woman, but the armada of high-level executives that flank him are all men as well. They ask Barbie to step into a toy box, a request she initially grants, but soon senses something nefarious afoot, so she excuses herself to quickly use the bathroom and makes a run for it. Struggling to find an exit, she enters through a door where she stumbles upon a mysterious older woman (Rhea THEE Perlman) about to sit down for some tea in what looks like a kitchen on a TV set. After exchanging some heartwarming words over tea, the mysterious older woman points Barbie in the right direction, where she is able to escape.
Gloria (America Ferrera), a Mattel employee and Sasha’s mother, pulls up in her car just in time for Barbie to hop into her backseat. While they try to lose the Mattel CEO and the coterie of executives in pursuit of them, Barbie learns that Gloria is the one responsible for her existential crisis, not Sasha. Feeling adrift from her daughter, Gloria started playing with her daughter’s old Barbie, ergo transferring her concerns and anxieties to Barbie. The three then flee to Barbie Land, soon to be followed by the dudes from Mattel.
While all of this is going down, Ken goes rogue and learns about patriarchy, a word that, even one syllable uttered, will make any dude who’s seen Entourage in theaters very, very mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Clearly this movie is anti-male! It’s perpetuating a “woke” agenda! (Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz, Piers Morgan, and your incel cousin Trent’s words, not mine.) Never mind the fact that not only is there not a shred of misandry peppered in Barbie, but, if you possess even an ounce of critical thinking, a clear message that patriarchy is harmful to everyone, including men.
But I digress.
Anyway, Ken feels empowered by patriarchy and returns to Barbie Land to promote it by galvanizing all of the other Kens and persuading them to take over. By the time Barbie, Gloria, and Sasha arrive, Barbie Land is barely recognizable. It is no longer a female-empowered Mecca, but a Kendom. Not only is Barbie’s home visibly different, but so are its inhabitants. The Barbies she knew as presidents, scientists, and doctors have all been brainwashed into being subservient to Kens as maids, housewives, and agreeable girlfriends.
Barbie is crestfallen. She tries to convince the Kens and other Barbies to restore things to the way they had been only to be rebuffed. But Gloria won’t let her throw in her towel. She helps Barbie regain her self-confidence by delivering an inspirational speech about the catch-22s of being a woman, which made the theater break out in thunderous applause.
With the help of Gloria and Sasha (whose mother-daughter relationship mends as they help take Barbie Land back), Weird Barbie, Allan (Michael Cera/everyone’s new favorite Barbie), and some other discontinued dolls, Barbie uses Gloria’s messaging to dispel the other Barbies of their subservient behaviors. Once restored, they all hatch a plan to trick the Kens into fighting each other as a means of distracting them from amending the constitution to enshrine Ken superiority forever. The Barbies succeed, restoring the all-female supreme court and the other positions of power they held before Ken’s patriarchal takeover.
Even still, Ken’s coup of Barbie Land makes the Barbies realize that their previous societal system was still flawed, and that, and I don’t know who needs to hear this (America), some changes have to be made. No longer will the outcast dolls be relegated to the shadows of their society. Kens will not be treated as second-class citizens, because, as they learn, treating any group of people as lesser-than negatively impacts everyone. Imagine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Mattel CEO and executives arrive just in time to witness the rebirth of Barbie Land, deeming everything fine, no more crisis to avert! Before they can depart, Gloria proposes Ordinary Barbie, a doll that rebels against the universal standard by just being herself, whoever that may be. The CEO initially rejects the idea, until an executive reminds him that a doll like that would make a lot of money, and then he’s all for Ordinary Barbie. (Capitalist Barbie is enjoying a long drag of a Virginia Slim somewhere right now.)
Barbie and Ken verbalize their respective failures and apologize to each other. Ken admits to feeling unmoored, and that his identity is inextricable from Barbie. Barbie reminds Ken that he is—wait for it—Kenough (an adage he proudly wears on a hoodie that you can now buy on Mattel’s website, because of course you can) and encourages him to find himself by looking inward.
But Barbie remains unsure of her own purpose. Having had a taste of humanity, she’s unsure if she wants to continue living life in plastic. As she questions her place in Barbie Land—including if she still has one, but more importantly, wants one—the mysterious woman she had run into while trying to escape Mattel HQ walks into the crowd.
We learn that this is Ruth Handler—or, rather, her ghost, who has been squatting at Mattel since 2012?—the creator of Barbie. Ruth takes Barbie by the hand, and the pair exit Barbie Land and enter an empty white void. Barbie confesses to Ruth that she doesn’t feel like a Barbie anymore, but doesn’t know where she goes from there.
“Humans only have one ending. Ideas live forever,” Ruth tells Barbie while Billie Eilish’s piano ballad, “What Was I Made For?”, plays in the background, provoking tears from several of my neighbors in the movie theater, your boy included.
Barbie is faced with a choice: return to Barbie Land and resume her easygoing life, or experience the totality of the human experience. After Ruth tells Barbie to close her eyes, we see a montage of girls and women of different ages—footage that was actually compiled from the cast and crew of the film—and Barbie begins to fathom the joy and beauty that can only be sourced from a finite life, the moments of love and connection that make life worth living.
We then flash to Barbie in the back of a car. Gloria and Sasha (and Gloria’s polyglot husband, whose time on screen is brief, but hilarious) drop Barbie off at a nondescript building. I honestly thought she was going to a temp agency.
(Looking back, I was a fool! Would Gerwig really conclude this resplendent spectacle with such a predictable ending? Shame on me for even entertaining the thought for a millisecond!)
After Gloria and her family wish her good luck, Barbie enters the office. She approaches the reception desk and joyfully announces, “I’m here to see my gynecologist!”
Boom, cut to black.
NO NOTES. SIX OUT OF FIVE BARBIES.
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Yours,
Greg
Credits
Cover art by: James Jeffers
Photo credits: All images via Warner Bros.
Editorial assistant: Jesse Adele
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