Hollywood will have needed ten years to endow Barbie with a conscience, under the supervision of its manufacturer Mattel. A year before the release of the film, it was announced that this project would be carried out by a feminist director, Greta Gerwig, capable of putting into images the evils of the patriarchy thanks to the most famous of children’s toys. Making Barbie a woke muse wasn’t won – but Hollywood and Mattel know it’s worth the effort.
How did they do it? Let’s go back to the synopsis. One morning, Barbie’s life collapses: not only is she crossed by unusual morbid thoughts, but she discovers to her horror that her feet have become flat. He must then leave Barbie Land to go to the real world, find his owner, solve the problem and recover his arched feet.
In Barbie Land, the Barbies are kind and reign over the Kens. They thus make acceptable the masculine nature, stupid and offensive, and made up of needs like beer, horses and war. However, after the doll’s foray into the real world, Ken takes over Barbie Land, which becomes a toxic patriarchal world. Ryan Gosling, hilarious in his choreographies worthy of the greatest musicals or the worst boy bands, makes odious masculinity attractive and ends up engaging in a timid repentance.
Silly and Harmless Oppressors
To the millions of people who wanted to make peace with the toy of their childhood, the target of all criticism, Warner Bros and Mattel had made a promise: “She can do anything. He’s just Ken. » This is the feminism of Hollywood entertainment: oppressors are dumb and harmless. And above all, the film seems to say, in case of flat feet, invest in a pair of Birkenstocks; if you have to seduce Ken to channel his violence, pull out a Chanel outfit. In Barbiein fact, brands are promoted to the rank of feminist weapons, and actresses – first and foremost Margot Robbie – to the rank of advertising muses.
This product placement strategy is, however, overshadowed by Mattel’s repentance, which is expressed throughout the film: the firm apologizes for having built a sanitized ideal world with its stereotypical doll as well as for having built a bomb anatomical that does not exist in real life. Even the “creator” of Barbie, Ruth Handler (1916-2002), makes her mea culpa and admits to evading taxes. But ultimately, at Barbie Land as at Mattel, nothing seems to have changed.
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