Spoilers for Barbie.
New York Times columnist Jessica Bennett organized a special outing and wrote about it in a column this week. The outing? Taking noted feminist author Susan Faludi to a matinee of Barbie and asking Faludi what she thought about it. Faludi seemed to enjoy it, and she even has some theories about the feminism and backlash politics contained within the film. As I read through the (overwritten and overwrought) column, I sort of agreed with her? Faludi thinks that the film is about abortion and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. I agree that I think it was really pointed that much of the third act of the film hinged on voting, the Barbieland constitution, patriarchal overreach and, in the final moment, a trip to the gynecologist. Some highlights from this NYT column:
Faludi’s immediate reaction: “I mean, you couldn’t write the script without 30 years of women’s studies,” Ms. Faludi said as the lights came up. “It seems to me that a big theme underlying the movie is shock and horror over what happened to us — what happened to women — from 2016 on, with the double whammy of Trump and then Dobbs. And in particular, I thought abortion was the subtext to a lot.”
Ms. Faludi explains. “I mean, it begins with little girls playing with dolls learning the origin story of Barbie — and the rejection of the idea that women can just be mothers. It ends with her going to the gynecologist.”
Ms. Faludi went on to outline a series of other allusions to our present moment: In an early montage introducing viewers to Barbieland, lawyer Barbie speaks before the Supreme Court about the idea of personhood — “which immediately made me think of attempts to create the unborn as ‘persons,’” Ms. Faludi said. Later, the Kens attempt to change the Constitution, amid Barbie lamenting how hard they had worked to create Barbieland, and “You can’t just undo it in a day.” (To which Ken responds, “Literally — and figuratively — watch me.”) Ms. Faludi’s take? “I mean, that’s what happened on Election Day of 2016.”
The Midge problem: And then there’s Midge, the doll once marketed as Barbie’s best friend, and the one pregnant doll in the Barbie universe, before she was discontinued. (You could remove Midge’s belly and baby intact from her body and then magnetically reattach it. It was weird.) Midge and her bump are in the film, too, repeatedly — a ghost that the fictional Mattel executives, and everyone else, just wish would go away. She’s there for laughs, but squint hard enough, Ms. Faludi suggested, and you could also see her as “the specter of Dobbs.”
Barbie ofers genuine catharsis. “Perhaps what’s going on,” Ms. Faludi wrote me in an email a few days after the screening, “is that women are finding a way to explore their anger about recent history without feeling like they have to drown themselves in the bathtub (in real water)….Only Barbie could say, ‘By giving voice to the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under the patriarchy, you robbed it of its power!’ and turn it into a laugh line.”
Yeah… as I said, I think Faludi makes a very good case. Is every part of the movie about abortion and feminism? No, but there’s tons of subtext (and just plain upfront text) about personhood, feminism, bodily autonomy, women’s right to “choose” and the political realities of being a woman in a modern society. I also noted, as I watched the film, that Ken’s line of “Literally — and figuratively — watch me” was actually frightening. They play it off later on, but making Ken drunk on his own patriarchal power and hellbent on achieving a completely male autocracy, a Kenocracy, was a huge f–king choice.
Photos and posters courtesy of Warner Bros/Barbie.
