barbie discourse is sooo silly gerwig made barbieland a matriarchy and everyone was like "girlboss time! power fantasy with no consequences please!" and then the actual film came out and it was like "okay well maybe matriarchy wouldn't fix everything actually" (bare basic understanding of humanity) and people are calling that "anti-feminist" for "focusing too much on the kens" when it was actually pretty well balanced and, again, the kens were literally the original marginalised gender in barbieland. and people are saying we shouldn't care, Because They're Men. "umm what do you MEAN just flipping the genders in m/patriarchy isn't the answer... what do you MEAN i have to care about other people..." YOU ARE KEN. You Are Ken

thank u for the post abt the letterbox review of barbie it's been bringing me back to my hater stage... barbieland is if a multi million dollar company sold utopia to 5 year old girls that's the point... it's not an actual utopia...

sooo true and like ofc that multibillion dollar company made a film criticising themselves and how they market to children so they could make more profit but i mean it wasn't Actually meant to be utopia like calling it that genuinely makes me think that person didn't watch the film... you can argue the effectiveness of their attempt at this but it was a faux utopia intending to highlight how patriarchy is harmful (using barbie matriarchy - it's pretty obvious at the end when the kens give up on their power coup but they want equality n the barbie's give them like a small amount of power on the supreme court or whatever it's poking fun at the gradual 'allowances' men have graced women with irl + these moments happen throughout the movie) slash how one group of people having power over another is . bad. i'm not saying this is profound feminist politics or anything because it isn't but it just wasn't meant to be anything but a utopia except seemingly on the surface 😭

My review of the Barbie movie.

The Barbie movie starts with a 2001: A Space Odyssey homage and when Barbie shows up she is portrayed as a God who brought women's liberation to the masses. Barbie or Mattel is not the answer to the hard  questions. Throughout the film Mattel is an entity that controls Barbieland and when something goes awry in Barbieland it happens in the real world. So Mattel inadvertently controls the real world. Since one of the co-founders of Mattel was also the creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler, Mattel feels that Barbie is the essence of Girl Boss. But Girl Boss for who? 

There is no class analysis in the movie. Barbie can go out and do whatever she wants because she lives in a Wes Anderson style utopia.  Everyone is incredibly wealthy. There are no homeless people in the movie (I didn't see any when they were in the real world either). So everyone in both worlds are wealthy. There is no poverty, everyone has the same opportunities. Which is not true. The writers all come from relative privilege and comfort. So they could go out and do anything. But the woman who has struggled with Homelessness has a much harder time trying to become president as there are barriers in the way. At the end of the movie they don't address many of the issues that caused the Ken’s to rebel. Where do the Ken’s sleep? So Barbie is there for bourgeois women liberation. 

The movie's main point is that if Barbie can do it, so can you. What if Barbie wants to be a farmer, blacksmith, or a car mechanic? All of Barbie’s jobs are very bourgeois, even the cop and the Desert Storm Veteran. I know when I played with her it was more of how I play The Sims, “Oh look, a happy family.” Barbie despite everything is still a feminine role model. 

Every time Ruth Handler is on screen they give her some soft lighting to make her look angelic and every time the two women hold hands it's very reminiscent of Michelangelo’s painting Creation of Adam. So this female who is a representation of both women and a corporation is the equivalent to God. Because God created man and Mattel via Ruth created Woman. The movie is saying worship women and corporations as they may make a few mistakes but they have your best intentions. 

They also do that because they want to drive home the importance of the mother-daughter relationship because Barbie is named after Ruth’s daughter Barbara. It really felt like the feminism of the 1970s where you can be a career woman and a mother. According to the movie, the only way to dismantle the patriarchy is to strengthen the sisterhood. So have more babies. It felt extremely pro-life. It made me uncomfortable. 

The movie promotes heteronormativity despite having queer and trans people in the cast. The relationship between Barbie and America Ferrier’s character was advertised as queer like in the trailer but it mirrors more of a nuclear family. Barbie is the big sister of Sasha. This movie reminded me of a lot of films and TV from the 50’s that I have seen. Because in the end you are ruled by either a matriarchy or a patriarchy. Writer and Director Greta Gerwing said this to the New York Times, “My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men.” Either woman or man. So she doesn't acknowledge anyone else but man or woman. It may have been campy but it upheld heteronormative ideas. 

Barbie sets off on her quest because she gets some cellulite. Which was the final straw for someone who is supposed to be beautiful. There is a big barbie. You think they would be used to cellulite because she is a friend. But when Stereotypical barbie has a minor flaw of cellulite, not flat feet, the whole world ends. Isn't that part of the critique of why Barbie as an institution is bad? Barbie, like Disney, gives women and girls unrealistic ideas of how they are supposed to look. So the movie wants you to stay skinny and look hot. To be beautiful is to be powerful.

The movie was bad  but one of the worse things it did was make a genocide joke. They had America Ferrer, a woman of color, say that white women losing to the patriarchy is similar to being whipped out completely. You can tell a rich white woman wrote it because if you tell a white lady no she feels like she is the most oppressed person ever to exist which in a way turns her into a Karen. 

In short the movie promotes cis women and corporations as gods. Cis women are gods as they are mother’s. And they are the only way to help change the world for the better. You can have a fat friend just don't be fat yourself. Also rich people having an inconvenience is equivalent to genocide because poor people just don't exist in the world. The movie was written by people who live in their own little world, and it shows. It could have been viewed as leftist if it was made in about 1985 but today? No.