just saw Barbie so here are some (non-spoilery) highlights:
- ken becoming DEEPLY obsessed with horses
- MULTIPLE highly choreographed dance numbers that last for several minutes
- kens job is beach
- a tween calls Barbie a fascist (?????? ok screenwriters)
- mojo dojo casa house
- kens big mink coat having a HORSE THEMED LINING
- i know we were deeply obsessed with the outfits but good god. the OUTFITS.
- extensive Barbie lore
- Barbie’s heart to heart with a lovely old woman
- the kens building a wall
- beaching one another off
- KENS SONG THAT HE SINGS FOR LIKE 5 MINUTES
- like twelve executives on one tandem bike
- depression Barbie
- ALLEN
- i am kenough :)
- gynecologist.
beautiful beautiful deeply camp coming of age story with layers and so much life. ive gained twenty new sewing projects from the opening shots of Barbieland alone. made my gf cry. 20/10
Shout-out to Ao3 for not only being transparent in the work they’re doing to try to get the site running, but for IMMEDIATELY calling out any islamophobia. They’re doing fucking WORK rn, all on a volunteer basis, and while most of the comments I’ve seen are far and away supportive I just know whoever is in charge of their socials is watching the comments section unfold with a migraine.
Anyway this is all to say I love Ao3 and the people working on it rn are dealing with absolute chaos, so the next time someone throws out a line about “why do they need a fundraiser every year” please remember today.
the thing that gets me about the barbie movie being framed as an “anti-men” movie is that it’s fundamentally untrue to the message it’s sending out. the movie is an empowering feminist piece as much as it is a cautionary tale about men letting their insecurities and doubts about their place in the world lead them to falling into the alt-right/incel/mra pipeline. it’s looking out for men just as much as it’s looking out for women, and the only reason you might find this as an “anti-men” message is because you somehow deeply believe that this is the wrong message to send
i’ll never get over how well the succession writers understand siblings but also how well they understand childhood friends and the relationship between someone’s siblings and those friends. like stewy’s little “are you into that shiv?” quip in the finale and calling roman ro-ro like their mum does thirty years after hearing it for the first time because he knows it still bugs him.
One thing I appreciate about Barbie was the emphasis on age.
I was emotional when Barbie told the old woman how beautiful she was, and when Ruth came in and helped her become human.
It was also the fact that America Ferrera was the one having the crisis that caused Barbie to do the same.
The whole concept of the toy doesn’t end in childhood. Cause she is an idea; Barbie is forever. She’s everything. She’s meant to inspire women to keep going for what they dream. You don’t age out of these ideas, they grow with you, just like how Margot Robbie grew with America Ferrera.
the fact that the first female human experience barbie goes through is being self conscious and experiencing sexual harassment mirrors how growing up as a girl one day you’re okay and the next all of a sudden you feel bad about your appearance and are receiving unwanted advances is something that can be so fucking important to be recognized in film
Barbie (2023) really had Barbie say “hey. I know the reason you hurt me is because I hurt you. I’m sorry I hurt you, because you didn’t deserve that. I know you are a better person than this, and you are fully capable of being that person. I can’t change the past, and I don’t think we can be in each other’s lives anymore without hurting each other, but i am sorry and I want you to be happy. I want you to find your identity and love yourself and live.” and then she realizes she’s also talking about herself.
she’s saying “I deserve to live. We both deserve to live.” it is one of the kindest things I have ever seen done to someone and to themselves in any piece of media ever
It was so important to have Barbie look at that woman in the bus stop and tell her she’s beautiful. Cause, like Barbie herself says, she (as an idea) doesn’t have an end. As Stereotypical Barbie, she’s meant to be pretty and fun and that’s it.
But she shows that beauty doesn’t end when you get old. Aging isn’t the end of your story, just another phase of it. That old woman is beautiful, and it’s good that she knows it.
That’s why Barbie ultimately chooses to become human. She wants to experience that new and different kind of beauty; not just her physical appearance, but that of a life well lived. She wants scars and wrinkles and cellulite. Barbie’s end is that she lives as a whole narrative rather than some eternal object of visual pleasure.
And also the way Barbie and Ken are role playing heterosexuality without any inherent sexuality of their own, without any understanding of what it means, or even any genitals at all! Just pretty-girl + handsome-guy = obviously a couple. And the way it fucks them both up! Because they’re both stereotypes, neither of them is a specialist version, no brain surgery or pilots license or Nobel prize for either of them. They’re just assigned the roles of Every Man and Every Woman. And Ken ends up doing Way Too Much because he’s hanging his entire self-worth on being important to Barbie. And Barbie just isn’t interested in him, she was assigned a boyfriend she didn’t ask for and doesn’t want and doesn’t know what to do with, just because that’s what society expects of men and women, that they will necessarily couple up and fall in love because… that’s what they do. Regardless of any personal quality of either party.
It’s about heteronormativity and amatonormativity and the unrealistic expectations society sets boys and girls up for from infancy. Barbie and Ken are every pair of toddlers sharing a sandbox while the adults around them call them each other’s little “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” even though neither party understands or is capable of understanding the implied meaning of that. Or wants to.
It’s a literal funhouse mirror of that weird pressure put on kids to perform heterosexuality from an early age. It examines how that leaves us unprepared for the complicated reality of actual relationships even if it turns out that you are heterosexual and do want sex and romance. Boys and girls aren’t really allowed to be just kids on the same team, so they grow up into men and women who generally want very different things from each other and are trained to look for it in everybody because anybody is better than nobody, and try to force it to work.
Barbie and Ken letting each other go in the end was perfect. Barbie the Every Woman realizing that she doesn’t have to be special, she just has to be, and Ken the Every Man realizing he has to seek validation elsewhere and lean on his fellow Kens for emotional support, WHICH THEY GIVE.
Truly a movie of all time.
One thing that tickled me about the Barbie movie was how Gloria’s husband is (imo) a ‘Real World’ Ken.
We see very little of him in the movie. In both of his scenes, he’s trying to speak/learn Spanish. He does nothing important or if consequence in terms of the plot… But he’s trying to learn a language his wife and daughter speak. He’s not excelling, I’m not even sure if he’s succeeding. But he is kensistently trying.
For all of the 'Real World’ men who are antagonists or opponents to Barbie, El Esposo de Gloria (as he is listed in the credits) has true Kenergy.
