[ Turns out Greta Gerwig’s Barbie" movie is a Biblical metaphor
after all... ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS BARBIE  
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Alissa Wilkinson
July 20, 2023
Vox
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_ Turns out Greta Gerwig’s 'Barbie" movie is a Biblical metaphor
after all... _

"She's Everything. He's just Ken.", Poster for the film 'Barbie -
Warner Bros. Pictures

 

In a May feature in Vogue
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and co-writer Greta Gerwig cheekily compared Barbie and Ken to Adam
and Eve. “Barbie was invented first,” she said. “Ken was
invented after Barbie, to burnish Barbie’s position in our eyes and
in the world. That kind of creation myth is the opposite of the
creation myth in Genesis.”

The quote snagged some attention, in part because Gerwig has played
with theological themes before in her work — most notably in _Lady
Bird_
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in which Sister Sarah Joan borrows the wisdom of philosopher and
mystic Simone Weil to advise her titular charge. The Genesis
comparison does sound a bit like a joke, though, at least when applied
to plastic dolls. In the Bible, God makes the first man, Adam, from
the dust of the ground, and then knocks him out, takes his rib, and
fashions it into a companion for him: Eve, the first woman. They live
in a perfect world, the Garden of Eden.

God has one command for his creations: They can eat the fruit of any
tree in the Garden except one, the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil.” Naturally, that’s what they do. (It’s humanity’s
first failure in the “you had one job” department.) Immediately
they realize they are naked, and they feel ashamed, and after
receiving a series of curses having to do with labor (both of the
agricultural and natal kind) they are sent out into the cold, hard,
not-so-paradisiacal world.

And that’s the story of why life sucks.

While that’s not strictly the story of _Barbie_ — a delightful
and often gaspingly funny movie, by the way — it turns out Gerwig
wasn’t just having a laugh when she brought up the creation myth in
the Vogue interview. _Barbie_ is thoroughly, and more or less
textually, a surprisingly wise excavation of one interpretation of the
text and its meaning, as well as the meaning of Barbies as products of
culture, the gender wars, and feminism more broadly. You know, typical
blockbuster stuff.

There’s a history of filmmakers talking a big game when it comes to
taking existing intellectual properties (Marvel characters, say, or
nostalgia sequels) and “saying something” with them. Occasionally
it works (see _Black Panther_
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One_
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More often it is, at best, pretty shallow; consider _Ocean’s Eight_
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Marvel_
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wondrously, _Cats_
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director Tom Hooper described
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being about the “perils of tribalism.”

_Barbie_ is not the kind of IP that naturally lends itself to
cinematic and philosophical musings. But in Gerwig’s hands, along
with her co-writer Noah Baumbach, it’s sly and just about as
subversive as a movie can be while still being produced by one of its
targets (toy manufacturer Mattel, which the movie relentlessly tweaks
over discontinued Barbies and Kens) and distributed by another (Warner
Bros. Discovery, which gets one expertly barbed zinger). Loaded with
movie references from the ’60s beach party genre to the trippy dream
ballets of midcentury musicals — and, uh, Stanley Kubrick’s 1968
masterpiece _2001: A Space Odyssey — _it is cinephile
wish-fulfillment rolled in nerdiness and covered in pink sprinkles.
Should _Barbie_ be a smash hit, Mattel may wish to replicate
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success with other IP, but it’s hard to imagine any future films
rising to _Barbie_’s level of sheer cleverness, rather than pure
corporate pandering.

[Image reads “spoilers below,” with a triangular sign bearing an
exclamation point.]

On the _2001_ point: The movie (like one of its trailers
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beginning, with a scene ripped from Kubrick’s film. In his, a tribe
of apes in a barren prehistoric landscape learn to make tools and then
are suddenly confronted by a giant, mysterious, towering rectangular
monolith. In Gerwig’s, a group of little girls equipped only with
baby dolls and tea party accessories are suddenly confronted with a
giant towering monolith of their own: a curvy Barbie, which inspires
them to smash their boring baby dolls. In voiceover, Helen Mirren
announces that, thanks to the creation of Barbie and then her many
career-focused iterations (Doctor Barbie, Scientist Barbie, President
Barbie, and so on), “all problems of feminism and equal rights have
been solved” in the real world.

“At least,” she says, as the crowd snickers, “that’s what the
Barbies think.”

 
The Barbies live in Barbieland, an analog for the Garden of Eden,
where every day is a sunny and perfect day — especially for our
heroine, Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie). Her home is a Barbie
Dream House in Barbieland, where the Barbies run all aspects of the
world. She has a load of friends, all named Barbie, and a boyfriend
named Ken (Ryan Gosling) who hangs out with the other Kens at the
beach. He is not a lifeguard, nor is he a surfer; his job, he insists,
is “beach.”
One day, in the middle of a party, Barbie suddenly starts thinking
about death, for no reason at all (especially because she’s a
plastic doll and one that is, as you probably know, virtually
indestructible). When a tragedy strikes — I won’t ruin it —
Barbie is forced to leave paradise and go to the real world, and Ken
hitches a ride. When they get there, they discover that they’re
suddenly self-conscious and aware of being looked at (this movie’s
version of Eve and Adam discovering their nakedness). The plot soon
thickens, because not only does Barbie realize that women do not have
the same kind of standing in the real world as they do in hers, but
men can leer and jeer and make crude comments and stupid decisions,
and it’s just sort of what they do. Meanwhile Ken ... discovers
patriarchy.

I should say at this juncture that while Robbie is a reliably
excellent Barbie, it is Gosling who absolutely steals the show, in
part because the character of Ken is terrific and in part because
he’s committed so hard to the bit that just looking at him move his
arms is somehow hysterical. Gosling’s face is just a little odd, a
little asymmetrical, and he pulls off “big doofus with a big doofus
face” and “vaguely sinister idiot” with equal aplomb.

Ken’s discovery of patriarchy (which seems to have a lot to do with
the subjugation of women and with horses, as far as he can tell) is
the means through which a sort of original sin leaks into Barbieland,
though by the end of the film it’s clear that this isn’t a
typically shallow Hollywood take on feminism. Sure, Barbies were
created to teach girls that they could be anything, but what else did
they do? (By the end, we learn that in a truly ideal world, the
Barbies and the Kens would live in harmony and equality — and that
won’t happen overnight.)

But the path the movie traces is more than a little theologically
familiar: a paradise lost, destroyed by the “knowledge” of
“good” and “evil,” and a path back to restoration (with some
bonus reflections on being created for a purpose by a Creator). And
there seems to be some built-in interrogation of the Genesis
narrative, too. Would it be better, after all, for Barbie and Ken to
have continued living naively in a paradise where Ken is just “and
Ken” and everyone seems happy all the time? Or did gaining knowledge
of the outside world actually make them aware of their free will and
equip them to live better, more fulfilled lives? It’s a question
some theologians have approached throughout history, and one that
recurs when we think about history: Golden ages often appear that way
because we were naive to what was “really” going on back then, not
because they were actually better.

Let me not give you the wrong impression here: _Barbie_ is an
impressive achievement as a film and far, far funnier than any studio
comedy I can remember in recent history. There are perfect jokes about
everything from stilettos to boy bands to fascism and Matchbox Twenty;
I’m still giggling at some of the gags. _Barbie_ probably isn’t
for very young children, though the spectacle could get them engaged,
but tweens and up will find something to love.

Yet fun and thoughtfulness can go together; a blockbuster (or a doll)
need not be brainless to be fun. Gerwig’s solo directing career thus
far (which includes _Lady Bird_ and _Little Women_) is a triumph of
reimagination, an exploration of what it means to find out who you are
and not allow yourself to be shaped by nostalgia and sentimentality
while also living with deep, real love. That she managed to infuse the
same sensibilities into _Barbie_ is something near a miracle. I
can’t wait to go see it again.

Barbie_ opened in theaters on July 21._

 

* Film Review
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* Barbie
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* Greta Gerwig
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