In this opinion piece, I argue that not only does the film not deserve Best Director or Actress Awards, I have no idea why it’s up for Best Adapted Screenplay. Plus, learn the REAL STORY behind Barbie.
Was BARBIE actually snubbed by the Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024?
After the pink extravaganza known as BARBIE hit theaters and was heralded as one of a pair of movies bringing feature film-attendance back from the brink, we now are witnessing another huge brouhaha, this time demanding “WHY WAS IT SNUBBED BY THE ACADEMY?” In this case, the accusations of “snubbing” refer to the fact that neither Margot Robbie (as the dimwitted doll) or Greta Gerwig (the first female director to make a 100 million dollar film that broke box office records) failed to receive Best Actress and Best Director nominations. Entertainment pundits have variously proclaimed, “well, comedies never get nominated in these categories” or “this part of the voting populace (directors) is still dominated by men.” Yet, three films by female directors were nominated for Best Picture and one, ANATOMY OF A FALL, did receive nominations for its writer/director Justine Triet and star Sandra Huiller.
Upon seeing these headlines and hearing various entertainment gurus crying foul, I had to admit that my reaction couldn’t have been more opposite, “Finally – some sense has prevailed.” The larger question, for me, was rather why this film could possibly be up for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay? Adapted from what? A Mattel product catalogue? A photographic archive of Barbie outfits?
For months I have had the feeling that I might be the only woman on the planet who found this film not only completely incoherent, but downright disturbing and unfunny. Was it because I was too old, being largely influenced by 2nd wave, rather than 3rd wave feminism? Was it that I was too dense to grasp the brilliant satire? My daughter politely explained that the film was “really for Millennials and Gen Zers,” but didn’t it hearken back to the time of Barbie’s invention with the fabulous opening celebrating the black and white bathing-suited “Stereotypic Barbie” who appeared on the scene in 1959? And wasn’t it intended as some sort of feminist declaration with America Ferrera as Gloria, a disgruntled Mattel employee delivering an angry soliloquy about the modern challenges of being a woman, praised again and again in the press as a female call-to-arms for our times? This was, for many movie-goers, including this writer, clearly the highlight of the film. And, it’s worthy to note that Ferrera WAS nominated for her Best Supporting Actress role.
This led me to my next question, a question I always ask my students, “Who was this movie intended for?” Was it targeted at Millennial mothers to take their young daughters to, thus stoking their appetites for the giant Barbie Dream Houses, Barbie sports cars, Robbie Perfect- Barbies and her outfits that would shortly dominate the toy departments in Target and Walmart?
Or was this a nostalgia trip for those of us who grew up on glamor Barbie, a doll conceived by Mattel President, Ruth Handler as a way to sell endless merch, as middle class wealth and spending exploded in post WWII America?
Or, perhaps it was primarily targeted at 3rd wave feminists (as my daughter argued), fed up with misogyny, gender stereotypes – those thoroughly in support of #metoo and, in many instances saying no to the idea of motherhood and the oppression it might bring? After all, as some pundits pointed out, Barbie was an independent woman, unmarried yet with her own home, car, a vast wardrobe, and a seemingly bottomless bank account.
Ruth Handler had not invented Barbie as the film implies. In an incredible and arguably exploitive deal, she produced the doll by replicating a high class call girl who originally appeared as a cartoon character in the German tabloid Bild. Bild Lilli, as she was named, insinuated herself into various compromising situations with wealthy men and other rapacious males as a way to gain attention, favors and gifts. In one campaign, she was touted as “the star of every bar.” The cartoon led to the creation of an actual polystyrene doll by Max Weisbrott which was definitely not promoted to little girls, but rather to men as an adult gag gift. But, eventually, Bild Lilli or just Lilli caught on with children.
By the time Ruth Handler spotted Lilli on a European vacation, it was already obvious that promoting a doll focused on glamor and the obsessive acquisition of accessories represented a new marketing opportunity for the toy industry. The Handlers had already built Mattel’s fortunes through the sale of doll furniture, but Lilli would take the company into a whole new stratosphere. The Doppelganger, Barbie, based almost exactly on the patented design of Lilli, would be more Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES than Shirley Temple who might sing or say witty childish things while having her golden tresses brushed. As the BARBIE movie celebrates, little girls were exhorted to toss their baby dolls away and embrace a whole new role – not as mothers, but as what exactly?
Original Barbie came packaged in a bathing suit with nothing more than implausible stiletto heels, sunglasses and a wire stand. But, most importantly, tucked in her coffin-like box was a multi-page full-color pamphlet illustrating all of the outfits that Barbie absolutely needed in order to complete her trousseau. In a sense, Barbie launched the idea that an enormous, ever-changing wardrobe was essential to every woman’s success – something radical for early 1960s mothers to contemplate, most of who had been children during the Great Depression when clothing was often turned-inside out and re-sewn to be worn another season.
Barbie had no vocation, no aspirations. Her skin-tight gowns and tube skirts made her moveable legs as limited in motion as those of the real-life young women who stuffed themselves into this mid-century couture.
Many of the outfits seen in the BARBIE movie and worn by Robbie at promotions are derived from that time and I recognized some from my own collection which is still housed, moth-eaten and faded, in an original Barbie double- wide vinyl case, along with bubblehead Barbie and velvet-headed Ken.
Carol Spencer who was hired to work on Barbie’s expanding wardrobe in 1963, participated in the design of 125 different outfits in that year alone, the team all competing in a fashion department described as “cut-throat.”
So, the very first thing that the movie gets wrong or perhaps fails to acknowledge is the real psychic damage that Barbie did and continues to do to young girls – perpetuating the notion that you measure your worth, not only by being impossibly perfect in body and face, but in your ability to acquire stuff. So, why isn’t that addressed in the film? Because the funders are hoping you’ll not think about that. After all, the main purpose of this cinematic effort (and many more evidently planned) was to revitalize a toy that had been losing market share over decades.
So, what was Mattel’s challenge, beyond selling movie tickets? Persuade modern moms, through virtue signalling, that Barbie could be thought of as a feminist icon, now being brought to life by one of the world’s most recognized female directors and embodied by an indomitable and skilled actress/producer. Then put that into a marketing centrifuge and spin it out as GIRL POWER. Perhaps the only thing more contrived than this unholy alliance was the new award created by the Golden Globes, and given to BARBIE – for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement for earning over 1.4 billion world-wide in sales. This begs the question – does it matter whether a film has artistic merit or do we now use gross revenues as the ultimate measure of creative success?
TALK ABOUT TOXIC IDEAS
In a move at satisfying DEI, the film’s casting manages to include dolls that represent Mattel’s latest two attempts at relevancy, by presenting Barbies with disabilities and in shapes and hues that are new. We even have a pregnant Midge, a doll that was quickly discontinued. But, the same underlying message is there throughout – Barbie can put on any costume, take new shapes, but is as dumb and superficial when she’s a doctor as when she’s a Supreme Court justice, author, or surfer girl. In Barbieland, appearance is all that matters.
How do we know this? Because when poor, “I just don’t know who I am without you” Ken follows Barbie into the real world of Los Angeles during her escape, he DOES learn something new. Real-life is generally controlled by men who do terrible things to keep women down. So, what’s the solution for woke Ken? Become one of those patriarchal subjugators! Go back to Barbieland, convert Barbie Dream Houses into alcohol-fueled man caves and dominate the women, who immediately become obsequious Barbie zombies, for some reason never addressed.
This ultra-toxic plot twist could possibly be funny, except it’s not. Again, why? Because characters who have been given no depth from the onset are not interesting when they turn in a new direction. And this results in them failing to amuse as well. Compare any of the four TOY STORY movies and their cleverly crafted, multi-dimensional characters with this, and you immediately get the difference.
But things get worse from there.
The Barbies must take back Barbieland! So, Barbie returns with Gloria and Gloria’s inexplicably alienated daughter, Sasha, “Men hate women and women hate women. It’s the one thing we can all agree on.” They meet at the home of Weird (wrecked) Barbie, played by the ever-brilliant, insanely versatile Kate McKinnon, who is reduced to a bizarrely acrobatic mess of bad hair and makeup. The women discuss how they will disarm the Kens by acting like females who are even dumber than they already are – which, frankly, says a lot. They’ll pretend not to understand PhotoShop basics or how to manage their finances. This will seduce the Kens by building up their egos because all men are just sponges for flattery and completely narcissistic. Then, they’ll make the Kens jealous through flirtation with other Kens, ultimately pitting them against one another in fight sequences that would make Erroll Flynn and Burt Lancaster roll over in their graves.
This construct manages to reinforce the worst stereotypes about both men AND women, the precise thing the film was supposed to be defying, and caused me to think, “if I had a son or daughter of 8, would I take them to a film that paints a so thoroughly dismal picture of male-female relations?” Knowing that young children generally do not have the cognitive skill to process satire convinced me that this was not a film appropriate for viewers under the age of 13. And, in fact, BARBIE is rated PG-13.
SO WHAT EXACTLY WAS THE PLOT?
As a script writer and someone who teaches script writing, I next focused on the main characters and what we refer to as their arcs – the journeys that they take over the course of a film. Moved by some clever lines and some meaningful passages, including Ferrera’s rant about the thankless role women face as they strive to “stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much” and “have to have money, but…can’t ask for money because that’s crass,” I searched for the core premise – what was this movie trying to say, beyond a few clever quips and one memorable speech? Moreover, where were its characters going to land?
In the end, I could find neither a central plot, nor real theme as the climax of the film reveals our ditzy doll doing a hand-holding mind meld with the ghost of her creator, Ruth who explains, “We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.” Whatever that means. As they bond, we see a series of home videos of female faces, devoid of any context. Who are these women? What does this footage reveal? [Evidently it’s of friends and family of cast and crew.] Has Barbie changed in any significant way? What does she learn through this moment of telepathic communication? Where is Mr. Spock when we need him?
Gerwig might have built a montage illustrating the journey of women in the US, or the world for that matter. But, do we see the fight for the ERA? How about Rosa Parks refusing to be moved to the back of the bus? Shirley Chisholm or Hillary Clinton’s quests for the presidency? A scene of suffragettes marching for passage of the 19th Amendment? Women fighting to attend school in Afghanistan? Women protesting for Black lives or (dare I say) reproductive rights? Show us the pussy-hatted Women’s March on Washington – hey, it featured pink.
What might have been a truly meaningful visual commentary on women’s reality/history is reduced to something so vanilla/self-referential as to be meaningless. At that moment the film seemed as shallow as Barbie herself, buttressed up by a few reactionary scenes but ultimately chock full of cynicism, dressed up in a brilliant pink plastic fantastic world in which Barbieland’s main geographic point of real-life contrast is a Venice beach community where rollerblading prevails and its homeless population is conveniently erased.
SPOILER ALERT, BUT SERIOUSLY?
In the final scenes Barbie decides to become a real woman and move to the “real world.” However, her motivation for this is never set up, as Barbie does not seem to have done or learned anything of consequence during her earlier ventures in or out of Barbieland.
What did Barbie glean while skimming along on that Venice boardwalk and visiting Mattel headquarters? That the company is run by a bunch of male idiots who chase each other around like Keystone cops? That Ferrera’s Gloria, an undefined Mattel employee who sits at a desk like a secretary, but has something to do with outfits, suffers from a fear of death? That construction workers are rude to women dressed in skin tight, highly provocative clothes? Or that men, imbecilic or conniving, dominate everything? Good story structure would dictate that those realizations would lead to insight and some inspiring action on Barbie’s part. And yet –nothing is forthcoming.
Barbie has also previously encountered some angry teenage girls – all of whom make salient points as to why she is toxic for young women in search of positive images and role models. But if the movie is trying to get us to believe that stunningly gorgeous Stereotypic Barbie will jump start a body acceptance revolution upon becoming “real,” this rings hollow, given the choice of protagonist. As the film’s authoritative VO, delivered by Helen Mirren, observes, “Note to the filmmakers: Margot Robbie is the wrong person to cast if you want to make this point.” Seldom, if ever, do you have a film so incoherent in theme that it stops to point out its own failures. I suppose we should be grateful for that, but is a film made Oscar-worthy by highlighting its poor casting choices and inconsistent messages? Let’s hope that’s not a coming trend.
In the end, this extravaganza provides us with NO IDEA why Barbie wants to live in the real world and “see a gynecologist,” something framed as TOTALLY AWESOME, but which merely translates as nonsensical and unrelated to anything previously established. PINOCCHIO or PYGMALION or even the female reboot of GHOSTBUSTERS this is not.
Epilogue: For $75.00 you can purchase Ken exhibiting high misogyny in faux fur. For $50.00 you might have scored a special edition Weird Barbie but they’re currently sold out. Barbie Dream Houses sell for between $115.00 and almost $300.00, depending on the model. There is, of course, a Movie Barbie based on Margot Robbie at $25.00 and many variations that are more expensive due to the couture. Finally, there’s even a likeness of Gloria for $80.00.
It’s clear that Mattel has shifted a few gears in response to this blockbuster. Now, success will be measured as much by selling individual dolls, as by the accessories they have hawked for 6 + decades.