Barbie: A examine on pink irony 

The very first live-action characteristic movie based mostly on Mattel’s iconic style doll is simply popping out solely now, in 2023, greater than 60 years after the doll was launched on March 9, 1959. It’s ironic that the doll that has been singularly chargeable for scarring the psyche of so many was launched a day after Worldwide Girls’s Day! The irony continues because the movie is opening on July 21, going head-to-head with the Christopher Nolan’s very critical Oppenheimer.

There are over 40 animation movies based mostly on Barbie from Barbie within the Nutcracker (2001) to Barbie: Skipper and the Huge Babysitting Journey (2023). The live-action film has been in improvement since 2009. A number of actors and administrators had been hooked up to the undertaking at completely different deadlines together with Diablo Cody, Amy Schumer, Anne Hathaway, Alethea Jones and Patty Jenkins, until the ultimate mixture of Margot Robbie starring because the blonde doll, with Greta Gerwig directing from a screenplay she wrote with Noah Baumbach.

Subversions galore

The 39-year-old Gerwig with Academy Award nominations for her Girl Chicken (2017) and Little Girls (2019) might sound a wierd selection to jot down and direct a movie on a plastic doll which has had individuals wax eloquent on the hurt the doll has accomplished with its stereotyping of gender roles and acceptable magnificence requirements. The trailers, nevertheless, reveal the scrumptious subversions which can be in retailer.

The teaser tells the story of the inspiration for the doll. Ruth Handler, who created the doll, apparently seen that whereas her daughter, Barbara, loved giving grownup roles to her dolls, the dolls out there had been all child dolls with chubby cheeks, dimple chin, curly hair, and particularly reasonable (sigh). When she steered a doll with an grownup physique, her husband Elliot, who was a co-founder of the Mattel toy firm, was not satisfied.

Handler, whereas travelling together with her kids in Germany, noticed the Bild Lilli doll, based mostly on a comic-strip character, Lilli. The doll was launched in 1955 in Germany and had a full wardrobe of Nineteen Fifties style — how charming that may have been! And so Barbie, named after Handler’s daughter, impressed by Lilli, was born. By the way, Handler’s son is known as Kenneth and Barbie’s on-off boyfriend is known as Ken — psychologists can have a area day with that.

Toy story

Coming again to the teaser, with its unsettling Kubrick-ian vibe from the auteur’s 1968’s 2001: A House Odyssey, we like all of the little kids taking part in with their child dolls, see Robbie as a large Barbie doll dressed within the zebra-striped one-piece swimsuit that the primary Barbie sported again in 1959. The little kids instantly destroy their child dolls trying up in awe on the glamazon towering over them.

Aside from all of the pink within the trailer, which apparently induced a worldwide scarcity, (the producers nevertheless, say the scarcity was brought on by provide chain points due to COVID-19) Barbie appears to be going by way of an existential disaster which causes her to be expelled from Barbieland to the actual world. Barbie’s arched toes have gone flat (her heels contact the bottom she says in questioning horror), making certain she doesn’t need to stroll on her signature tiptoes.

Her boyfriend, Ken, performed by Ryan Gosling, accompanies Barbie on her real-world journey. The trailer additionally has Ken asking Barbie if he ought to keep over. When Barbie asks why, he says “because we are girlfriend and boyfriend”, however when pressed about what they’re to do when he stays over, Ken admits to not understanding. The alternate reiterates the simultaneous sexualisation and neutering of the doll.

A number of avatars

As Barbie greets all of the completely different variations of herself within the trailer, it’s a hat-tip to her many avatars even when there may be each likelihood of break up personalities and different psychological well being challenges. Kate McKinnon performs Bizarre Barbie, who together with her hacked hair and scribbles on her face is a personification of kids’s tough remedy of their toys. Issa Rae’s President Barbie is a tribute to the President Doll line, and transgender actor Hari Nef as Physician Barbie is a name again to the 1973 doll which was so influential that Mattel created a commemorative replica in 2022.

Alexandra Shipp’s Author Barbie is paying homage to the Maya Angelou Barbie doll from 2021 and Emma Mackey’s Physicist Barbie is impressed by a mixture of the Scientist, STEM Chief, and Astrophysicist Barbie dolls. There’s Sharon Rooney as Lawyer Barbie, Ana Cruz Kayne as Decide Barbie, Ritu Arya as Journalist Barbie, Dua Lipa as Mermaid Barbie from 2018’s blue Dreamtopia Mermaid Barbie doll, and Nicola Coughlan as Diplomat Barbie, an echo of Australian diplomat Julie Bishop who was honoured with a Barbie doll. Fortunately, there aren’t any killer Ken and Barbie dolls — that may have been too darkish.

Celebrating the unreal

In interviews Gerwig spoke of taking inspiration from the “authentic artificiality” and “the tangibility of the artifice” of classical musicals in addition to from Mary Pipher’s non-fiction ebook on the pressures confronted by American adolescents, Reviving Ophelia (1994).

With the avowed goal of giving the viewers what in Robbie’s phrases, “the thing you didn’t know you wanted,” Barbie needs to be a enjoyable experience even with out Aqua’s neatly subversive hit single, ‘Barbie Girl’. Sure, a snatch performs within the background on the finish of the primary trailer, however that’s solely a canopy.