Barbie: Ideology and the Culture Wars
This review takes a critical perspective of this popular movie; but let’s begin by saying that Barbie is a clever film – it is engaging, funny, well-directed, well-acted, and a little provocative. Yet it is also a very problematic movie if we ‘look awry’ and take a more curious stance.
Any Hollywood movie that addresses feminism and patriarchy and at the same time promotes the Barbie corporation Mattel while targeting huge box office success will crash into the very contradictions that this movie did. I watched it with my son and daughter and felt we were simultaneously being both entertained and manipulated by corporate America. I also experienced a troublesome ideology at work.
In spite of the film’s ‘progressive-corporate’ gender equality agenda, the beneath-the-surface ideology worked to amplify and throw flames onto the culture wars, which is the chosen territory of anti-progressive and populist right forces rising across the globe.
I could imagine the Mattel executives and shareholders laughing out loud - not with, but at the audience as their company received positive brand coverage and profits beyond their wildest dreams. Re-branding Barbie/Mattel as the next generational progressives, and at the same time creating huge profits for Mattel and the corporate backers of the movie….. what could be better!
I will briefly share what I liked and didn’t like about the movie before offering a short polemic with the aim to stimulate discussion that leads to a less ‘fake-woke’, more engaged diversity and equity agenda.
What I liked about the movie:
I appreciated the calling-out of structural patriarchy and as the movie affirmed, a lot of work remains to undo patriarchal power.
This was a clever and creative movie. The movement between doll-world and real-world was not easy, but it really worked well.
The perspective of the young feminist/daughter and her changing relationship with her mother represented different generational expectations and experiences and was one of the more thoughtful perspectives.
The overall aesthetic of the movie was uplifting; the glitzy, bright, camp and colourful imagery worked to make the film bright and engaging.
There was a feel-good and funny side to the film… but this also leads to the problematic side coming up.
What I didn’t like about the movie:
It was sooooo USA! The American culture wars are already an unwelcome cultural export and this movie amplified and exploited the country’s culture/gender wars mercilessly.
Progressive women’s, men’s, queer and non-binary voices have been trying to erode the binary polarisation of gender and this Barbie movie undermined this work. It amplified and distorted the binary, portraying men and women in totalising ways and as opposites.
The portrayal of all men as pathetic, ego-driven and dumb, was destructive and divisive. As I sat with my young son I wondered what message he was taking away. The statistics around boys failing education (particularly low economic status) and the suicide rates of young men should be a warning to those portraying men in such a negative and singular way.
The film also was derogatory to women, showing how women were so easily brainwashed by patriarchy in past generations, and only needed a good rational argument to awaken them from their slumber. This was an insult to powerful women from the past, including my grandmother, my mother, the feminists and lesbians I marched with on various campaigns in the 80s and 90s with their chant ‘we are women and we are strong’. Different women made different choices, some with more agency than others, some more politically active than others, and many groups of women fighting each other along the way (feminists have a similar track record to Marxists when it comes to group splitting something we now see between trans activists and so called TERF feminists). Yes, patriarchy did and does exert power through many forms, but women have always resisted that power and exerted power of their own in diverse ways.
The end of the film was a poor repair job; it was a clumsy and apologetic attempt to repair the damage done by its demeaning impact on gender identity in order to be less divisive, but it felt too little, too late.
The final message was a sugarcoating, yet another statement of the American dream and individualism. Ken discovered he was just ‘me’ and not just defined by his relationship with Barbie. Barbie was freed from being a perfect doll, to truly be an American individual, her own atomised and unique self, free from patriarchy perhaps, but not free from the capitalist-individualist, free-choice ideology.
Ideology at work
Ideology was hard at work in this movie. Not the kind of ideology from the past where the Big Other tells you what to think, as in Fascism, the Soviet Union, and Orwell’s 1984 or other repressive regimes. Today, as the philosopher Zizek and others point out, ideology works through ‘positive culture’ where we internalise the social injunctions of how we should be e.g. ‘we should be happy ‘we are free individuals who can make our own lives’ – these are capitalist injunctions that undermine social resistance to consumerism, or collectivist models of change. Because this ideology is internalised, we police ourselves and each other and therefore have no resistance to them. There is no Big Other to fight.
We have to ask why this movie is the biggest hit of the year, well beyond expectations. To date (Sept 2023), the film has grossed $1.38 billion and has become Warner Bros highest highest-grossing film.
Reasons for its success
It was filled with stars and, at a surface level anyway, a much-needed summer feel-good movie.
It reaffirmed the chosen ideology of our times i.e. American Dream individualism, which makes us feel that we are filled with individual agency and are in control, and we can choose our futures.
Binary polemics make us feel safe. Diversity and difference raise challenging questions of ourselves, whilst binary polemics are easier to navigate. There is the good us and the bad other. Populist right-wing politics thrive on binary polemics; clear black-and-white boundaries are drawn around nations, genders and cultures. In this movie the ideology of the right was hard at work; there was a ‘good us’ (women and the progressives who support them) and a bad them (all men until redemption came and individualism took over).
Therefore, you’re not just watching a fun movie, you’re also ‘on message’ being progressive and ethical. This added to the feel-good factor i.e. having fun and affirming your self-righteous progressive identity.
Conclusion
Feeding the Culture War
The Barbie movie exploited the culture/gender wars for financial gain. Whilst the director and others acted in good faith to offer an anti-patriarchy movie, the water is muddied when constant Mattel marketing takes place, and the degradation of men is so polarising. It could have been different, but the box-office success demands simple polemics, ending in USA individualistic freedom.
Mattel gained millions of dollars from the movie. The chairman and CEO said “We significantly increased free cash flow and continued to gain market share…Importantly, this moment will be remembered as a key milestone in our company’s history with the release of the Barbie movie.”
The progressive left, particularly in the USA, has fallen into the trap of enjoying the culture war as much as the populist conservative right. When the left is busy feeding the culture war, they are off-task, forgetting their aim of creating a more equitable society. Instead they gain excess pleasure from hating the bad other and creating self-righteous, ego-driven - fake woke- collective identities.
On the surface, Barbie was a liberal-progressive movie and did a job on patriarchy, yet in doing so it re-affirmed and amplified the gender war that feeds the populists. Corporate America cynically exploits whatever it can for profit; culture wars included.
Nuanced and diverse positions were absent in this totalising gendered movie. There was a lack of any strong, emotional and caring male characters who also struggle with toxic masculinity (Alan wasn’t enough!). I realise that the movie is just a movie, but it is also a cultural phenomenon that sends a big message.
The Barbie movie could have been different:
It is possible to address diversity and social equity issues without amplifying the culture wars.
Feminist issues and patriarchy need addressing by challenging male dominance and those who continue to support it, but not by demeaning all men which feeds the toxic masculinity response.
Be wary of the American individualistic dream narrative - it’s the oldest capitalist narrative around, and all you have to do is to look at poverty levels in the USA to see it is a completely false narrative – time to lose it!
So enjoy the movie, but be awake; yes ‘awake-woke’ in the real sense to divisive politics, and feel just a little uncomfortable as the corporate profits go through the roof while you eat your popcorn.
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