The Barbie movie hates men?
Warning: This post contains some mild spoilers for the new Barbie movie.
So Barbie happened this weekend. (You can read my review here.) I genuinely loved it and I’m thrilled that it has been both critically and financially successful. But shocker, a certain contingent of men were shocked to discover that the movie really didn’t cater to their perception of how the world is supposed to work.
Comments on articles about it, nearly hour long rants about it, review bombs - all declaring that Barbie is anti-man.
I guess I get their confusion. The overwhelming majority of movies are made for and by men. This was a movie made for and by women. It’s a massively pro-woman movie, and since we rarely get movies of that type, I suppose that could be mistaken as anti-man.
There is one particular scene that apparently supports this anti-man idea. Near the end of the movie, the Barbies have rescued BarbieLand from the patriarchal takeover by the Kens, restoring the dynamic that existed before, meaning women are in charge. A couple of the Kens come up and ask for seats on the Supreme Court and President Barbie refuses, instead offering them places on a lower court. Helen Mirren’s voiceover says that Kens will have as much power in BarbieLand as women have in The Real World.
Many men, including critics I like, believe this undercuts the lesson of the movie, that unbalanced power dynamics are problematic. Isn’t the goal for feminists to have equality, not just women in charge of everything?
But I have to ask, when has any “man movie” been tasked with delivering equality? Granted, that’s not something that is usually asked in movies geared toward men, but let’s look at one that did seem to ask that question in some way, 2018’s Ready Player One.
In this film (based on a book written by a man, adapted by a man, and directed by a man), the inequality is focused more on class than on gender, but there is a competition between a man and a woman throughout the film, both looking to escape poverty by finding the Easter eggs that were left behind by James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS, a virtual world where nearly everyone exists to escape the real world, because out there, everything is awful all the time.
The two main Gunters (egg hunters) are Parzival and Art3mis. They develop a relationship, but as things progress, Art3mis asks Parzival to back off because she doesn’t believe he’s taking the contest seriously enough. He does not, spending most of the back half of the story trying to get back together with her over her objections. Eventually she gives in and in trying to stop the bad corporation from winning, and despite being the superior player through the bulk of the film, she gives up her chance to win so that Parzival can. He gets the girl and control over the OASIS, which he then shuts down two days a week, because the real world is important now that Parzival has money and a girl, I guess. Tough break for the folks who rely on the virtual world for their income (which is almost everyone else).
Ultimately, the story about equality from the male perspective is one where keeping the status quo (not charging for access to OASIS) is good enough. No changes are made for the greater population, just for the people who won the game.
In Barbie, despite the attempted overthrow of the government, the commandeering of the Dream Homes, and the brainwashing of the Barbies, the Kens are allowed to go back to what they were doing before, but this time with a better sense of themselves without Barbie. It is more or less the status quo. No Ken is kicked out of BarbieLand or put in jail, they just aren’t given Supreme Court seats.
What I hear in this critique is precisely what America Ferrera mentions in her speech. That for women not to be seen as anti-man, they must ignore bad behavior from men. They have to be everything, including forgiving of actions that are harmful, even when there is no acknowledgment of the harm.
The truth is, the movie used the “she’s everything, he’s just Ken” tagline as a bit of a bait and switch. Yes, Barbie gets to be everything: President, Supreme Court, Doctor, Lawyer, Writer, etc. But because she represents women, she also has to be everything: Successful, Humble, Tough, Kind, Pretty, Thin, Not Too Vain, etc. The “everything” is a blessing and a curse.
But it’s flipped for Ken as well. After the Barbies distract the Kens and take back the seat of power, Ryan Gosling’s Ken is distraught. Margot Robbie’s Barbie follows him and they have a discussion about what to do now. In it, he says, “It’s Barbie and Ken. There is no ‘just Ken.’”
And that’s the point. It’s not that he’s “just Ken” in that he has no value. It’s that he’s “just Ken” because he doesn’t need Barbie to be a full person. His value isn’t determined by Barbie’s interest, he has value just by being Ken. “Just Ken” can be seen as derogatory, but it can also be read as empowering.
Barbie tells him, “You’re not your girlfriend, you’re not your house, you’re not your mink. You’re not even beach. Maybe all the things you thought made you, you, aren’t really you. Maybe it’s Barbie. And it’s Ken.” Being just Ken is a curse, but it’s also a blessing.
I’ll be honest, that sounds pretty pro-man to me.
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