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Movie Review: ‘Barbie’

NEW YORK (OSV News) – Life in plastic may be fantastic but the tedious ideology-driven comedy “Barbie” (Warner Bros.) is not. Although genuinely objectionable elements are relatively few, moreover, this is distinctly not a movie for the age group to which the figurine of the title is primarily marketed.

Margot Robbie plays the famous Mattel doll that first arrived on store shelves back in 1959. Together with her sidekick Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie inhabits a pink-hued feminist paradise where the president, the nine justices of the Supreme Court and all Nobel Prize winners are women.

Troubled and bewildered by hitherto alien thoughts of death as well as by a sudden physical imperfection — a patch of cellulite on her leg — our heroine consults one of her many alter egos, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon). The problem, it seems, is that whoever is currently playing with Standard Barbie is sad and her sorrow is affecting her toy.

So it’s time to journey to the real world to meet the cause of the difficulty and, presumably, cheer her up sufficiently to restore the status quo. Ken stows away in the back seat of Barbie’s car and thus gets to share in the adventure.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Barbie discovers the tribulations — and Ken the joys — of patriarchy. Barbie also learns to her surprise that, far from being revered as a symbol of female empowerment, she’s reviled as the embodiment of women’s subjugation.

Ken manages to return to Barbie Land first and proceeds to imbue it with male dominance. Thus, by the time Barbie gets back to her natural setting, it’s not only been tainted by warped values but turned topsy-turvy.

Barbie will need the cooperation of all her many eponymous iterations to avert cultural and political disaster. Fortunately, she’ll also have the help of Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a mother-and-daughter duo from the realm of human beings.

As scripted by director Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the picture bemoans the plight of women while blithely stereotyping men as selfish, childish and aggressive. With the rivalry of the sexes raging, little of the humor (Will Ferrell plays the dizzy CEO of Mattel) and less of the sentiment (Rhea Perlman plays the wise granny who co-founded the company) works.

Despite all the controversy that continues to swirl around her, Barbie has undeniably proved a long-lasting source of enjoyment for youngsters. Her namesake movie, by contrast, is too closely focused on its own agenda to provide older viewers with much entertainment and too freewheeling to be acceptable for little kids.

The film contains stylized physical violence, a few instances each of mild swearing and crass talk, mature wordplay and brief sexual and anatomical humor. The OSV News classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Also see: From the archives: Friend or foe: Barbie turns 50

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A Catholic Young Woman’s Take: The Heart of ‘Barbie’ Is Humanity

COMMENTARY: In a touching scene, the hit film explains what true beauty is.

This summer, swathes of pink-clad women flooded into movie theaters to attend the much-anticipated premiere of Barbie , director Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster debut.

Until now, indie films were Gerwig’s bread and butter. Her projects largely center on female protagonists and pursue themes related to femininity: examining female friendship, women as artists, and the progression from girlhood to womanhood. Both Ladybird (2017) and Little Women (2019) performed and reviewed well, but neither came close to the sweeping success of this most recent project. 

According to Deadline , Barbie raked in $162 million just in its opening weekend — about twice as much as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer , with which it shared a release date of July 21. It’s the first woman-directed film to gross a billion dollars at the box office, so it’s little surprise media attention has fallen on it so heavily in the days since. Many conservative, Catholic reactions have been negative, often responding from a place of exhaustion with a media frequently peddling thematic messaging unappealing to a traditionally religious audience. It forms an understandable lack of trust between viewer and director — but Greta Gerwig is the exception, not the rule. 

Her films speak truthfully on the nature of a distinctly feminine heart, and Barbie fits well into her body of work. Its focus on mother-daughter relationship, friendship and family as a primary, enduring motivation, and concluding rejection of a world without suffering should be enough to encourage Catholic audiences to purchase tickets. But its artistic address to young women packs its most thoughtful and poignant punch. 

The film opens on its protagonist, Barbie (Margot Robbie), living a perfect life in her perfect world. Multiples of Barbie and Ken populate the artfully, highly satirized Barbieland. The detail-oriented design of the film sought to recreate the real-life experience of playing with Barbie dolls as a child, down to the shades of pink and how Barbie floats from the second floor to the first rather than taking the stairs.

Barbie’s great affection for Barbieland comes largely from its constancy: There is no change, no sadness. The dolls’ cheerfulness isn’t insincere, but there are no negative emotions or experiences for it to compete with either. Barbie has a childlike confidence in herself and her understanding of the world that has yet to be tested.

Her first sign of divergency comes mid-bespoke song-and-dance routine. “Do you guys ever think about dying?” she asks, still smiling ear to ear.

They haven’t. They can’t even answer her question. But Barbie’s new awareness haunts her the next day, as she burns toast, falls from her roof rather than flying, and – most horrifically — loses her perfectly arched foot. “I would never wear heels if my feet were like this,” she grumbles about her newly humanized gait.

As she continues to malfunction, Barbie loses the imaginative confidence that trademarks every doll in Barbieland. The dolls are kind, gentle and entirely self-assured. When they accept awards, they acknowledge that they deserve them. When Barbie’s feet fall flat, and she spots the first formation of cellulite on her thigh, she experiences embarrassment for the first time in her life. She doesn’t know how to describe the growing, gnawing lack of control she feels as her relationship with her body and the world around her fractures. 

The worry that grips her draws its strength from the film-defining quandary of identity. Barbie wonders what power her emotions have over her and whether her newfound heartbrokenness poisons her very self. “Barbie doesn’t get embarrassed,” a doll reminds her when she confesses her insecurity. Regardless of her resistance to change, our protagonist now balances precariously between who she was supposed to be — Stereotypical Barbie — and terrifying uncertainty in who she is now. It’s a profoundly human, distinctly teenage girl phenomenon. 

Despite her despair at showing signs of humanity, Barbie’s first interaction with a woman in reality is perhaps the film’s most touching scene. Seated on a bench, she makes eye contact with an elderly woman at the opposite end. They just look at each other for a moment before Barbie, quietly awed, says with absolute sincerity, “You’re so beautiful.”

“I know it,” the woman replies, her furrowing brow showing her own honesty.

They laugh together. That moment is all joy. So it stings when Barbie forgets what she saw in that woman, a person showing all the signs of aging she had been so afraid of, and turns a crueler eye onto herself. 

Barbie’s affirmation to the other woman wasn’t cloying or cliché. She didn’t say it to be nice, because Barbies don’t need cheap compliments to convince them of their loveliness. They know it because they know who they are. Barbie’s crisis of identity throws that into disarray. Within 45 minutes of admiring the beauty and dignity of the woman in front of her, she’ll weep over how little of the same she finds within herself. 

Our designated angst-riddled teenager Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) will say it for us. “What’s her ending?” 

Quickly, decisively, it’s clear that it won’t be a romance with Ken (Ryan Gosling) that sends Barbie contentedly off into the sunset. “She’s not in love with Ken!” Sasha snaps at the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell), who is eager to suggest that conclusion. She’s sharp and defensive in her reply. But Barbie answers gently. “I’m not in love with Ken,” she echoes simply, shaking her head. 

It’s not an attack against Ken or an invalidation of romantic love. It’s just the truth. The end of her story won’t be romance with a man, just like the preteen and teenage girls watching in the audience. The adolescent chapters of their lives likely won’t end with riding off into the sunset with a husband. Much more often than not — and for the better — they will first learn to love through the profundity of female friendship. Gloria (America Ferrera), the human forming Barbie’s experience of the world, remarks how she never owned a Ken doll. As all children do, little girls get to know themselves through the artistic expression of play, and so, as they ought to be, Barbie(s) and her friends are center stage.

Ruth (Rhea Perlman), Barbie’s creator (both in life and art, having named the doll after her daughter), leads Barbie away from the overcrowded finale into a softly lit, empty space. They engage in one-on-one conversation. Alone, with her creator, Barbie asks the questions that she has been slowly and painfully piecing together. It looks a lot like prayer.

“So being human’s not something I need to — ask for? Or even want? It’s something that I just discover I am?” she says, slowly, her voice thick with weariness and relief.

It’s such a childlike question, really — a return to girlhood. Barbie learns that she is not at war with the sadness or joy or fury or grief welling up in her heart every day. She doesn’t have to resist the rise and fall of an emotional sea breaking in her chest. Her feelings change nothing about her identity. She holds final sway over them, and they must yield to her acceptance or refusal. And still, Ruth reminds her that each emotion is an essential piece of the human experience. “Now, feel ,” Ruth tells her, leading into the final montage of the movie, centered on joy. 

“ Yes ,” Barbie whispers, in a quiet acceptance of all her newfound humanity entails. 

For a teenage girl, life often involves significant emotional turmoil. Young women question themselves, how others perceive them, and it’s no easy feat to realize that every other girl in the room is doing the same. Lack of confidence often begins with distrust of the self, especially during a time when your own feelings and perception of the world seem pitted against you. Suddenly, everyone — including yourself — is all too eager to highlight how you’re falling short.

In an acknowledgement of this experience, Barbie continually turns back to peer within the self. The director’s goal was not to show a Barbie-fied version of tired deliberations on female vocation. Gerwig doesn’t concern herself with telling her female audience what to do. The film’s final, gentle message rather encourages them to discover who they are. Barbie extends a peaceful hand in a cultural frenzy of messaging pulling at the loose threads in adolescent women’s hearts. Because of that, it’s well worth taking your daughter to see it.

VIEWER CAVEAT

Barbie has a PG-13 rating, for suggestive references and brief language.

• catholic movies

Meghan Schultz A former Register news intern and Hillsdale College graduate, Meghan Schultz works in public relations based in Washington, D.C. More of her freelance writing can be found here and at her Twitter, @schultzmeghannn.

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Movie review: ‘Barbie’

Life in plastic may be fantastic but the tedious ideology-driven comedy “Barbie” (Warner Bros.) is not. Although genuinely objectionable elements are relatively few, moreover, this is distinctly not a movie for the age group to which the figurine of the title is primarily marketed.

Margot Robbie plays the famous Mattel doll that first arrived on store shelves back in 1959. Together with her sidekick Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie inhabits a pink-hued feminist paradise where the president, the nine justices of the Supreme Court and all Nobel Prize winners are women.

Troubled and bewildered by hitherto alien thoughts of death as well as by a sudden physical imperfection – a patch of cellulite on her leg – our heroine consults one of her many alter egos, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon). The problem, it seems, is that whoever is currently playing with Standard Barbie is sad and her sorrow is affecting her toy.

So, it’s time to journey to the real world to meet the cause of the difficulty and, presumably, cheer her up sufficiently to restore the status quo. Ken stows away in the back seat of Barbie’s car and thus gets to share in the adventure.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Barbie discovers the tribulations – and Ken the joys – of patriarchy. Barbie also learns to her surprise that, far from being revered as a symbol of female empowerment, she’s reviled as the embodiment of women’s subjugation.

Ken manages to return to Barbie Land first and proceeds to imbue it with male dominance. Thus, by the time Barbie gets back to her natural setting, it’s not only been tainted by warped values but turned topsy-turvy.

Barbie will need the cooperation of all her many eponymous iterations to avert cultural and political disaster. Fortunately, she’ll also have the help of Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a mother-and-daughter duo from the realm of human beings.

As scripted by director Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the picture bemoans the plight of women while blithely stereotyping men as selfish, childish and aggressive. With the rivalry of the sexes raging, little of the humor (Will Ferrell plays the dizzy CEO of Mattel) and less of the sentiment (Rhea Perlman plays the wise granny who co-founded the company) works.

Despite all the controversy that continues to swirl around her, Barbie has undeniably proved a long-lasting source of enjoyment for youngsters. Her namesake movie, by contrast, is too closely focused on its own agenda to provide older viewers with much entertainment and too freewheeling to be acceptable for little kids.

The film contains stylized physical violence, a few instances each of mild swearing and crass talk, mature wordplay and brief sexual and anatomical humor. The OSV News classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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In the beginning, there was Barbie

Turns out Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie is a Biblical metaphor after all.

by Alissa Wilkinson

In a May feature in Vogue , Barbie director 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 , 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 or Rogue One ). More often it is, at best, pretty shallow; consider Ocean’s Eight or Captain Marvel or, wondrously, Cats , which director Tom Hooper described as being about the “perils of tribalism.”

The Barbie movie, explained.

• Why is everyone so excited?
• What is the movie about?
• Why the marketing campaign has everyone talking.
• What is Barbieheimer?
• What does it mean to be Ken?
• Why did Vietnam ban Barbie?
• Why playing with Barbie gets so weird.

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 its 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.

On the 2001 point: The movie (like one of its trailers ) begins at the very 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 opens in theaters on July 21.

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Barbie Land and losing paradise: Theologian muses on this summer's blockbuster

Margot Robbie poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film "Barbie" in London July 12. (AP/Invision/Scott Garfitt)

by Cathleen Kaveny

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Editor's Note : This commentary contains spoilers for the film "Barbie."

In the Catholic liturgical tradition, the color pink is associated with joy. But it is not joy untinged by visceral experience of pain, regret and sorrow. In the midst of the dark season of Advent, Catholics longing for the light of Jesus' birth use pink to celebrate Gaudete Sunday. In the middle of late winter's Lenten season, pink signifies Laetare Sunday. It points toward Easter Sunday's theme of Resurrection, even as it recognizes the inevitability of Jesus's suffering and death on Good Friday.

Thinking about the color pink in this way helps bring a theological lens to the summer blockbuster movie "Barbie," about the plastic doll first produced by the Mattel toy company in 1959 and played with by millions of girls over the past 60 years.

That lens is a natural one. Greta Gerwig, who co-authored the screenplay and directed the movie, has admitted how much her Catholic education has shaped her approach to "Barbie." Gerwig's highly acclaimed film " Lady Bird " (2017) is a semi-autobiographical account of years at St. Francis, an all-girls Catholic high school in Sacramento, California.

Writer-director Greta Gerwig arrives at the premiere of "Barbie" in Los Angeles July 9. (AP/Chris Pizzello)

As many commentators have pointed out, the "Barbie" movie is in large part a feminist reframing of the doll and its messaging for modern young women. It is a joyous celebration of "girl power." But it is also an ode to perseverance, compassion and hope in the midst of suffering and injustice. Set against the inevitability of death, "Barbie" is a post-COVID creative work.

We can think of "Barbie" as yet another retelling of humanity's origin story found in the book of Genesis. Barbie Land is presented as a Garden of Eden, where all the Barbies and Kens seem to live in vivid but languid enjoyment. 

Work in Barbie Land is not an activity, much less an onerous one. Instead, work is background scenery or even merely an accessory. (Ken's job is "beach"—not "lifeguard," not "model," just "beach.") There is no sex (as everyone knows, Barbies have no genital parts). There is no food (Barbies eat pretend food). 

And there is no aging or death. While Barbie Land features Barbies of every size, shape and color, including some with disabilities, they are all between 15 and 35 years old. They are all in the pink of health.

But one day, Barbie Land begins to lose its rosy luster, as aspects of the real world begin to mar its perfection. Stereotypical Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) suddenly finds herself preoccupied by persistent thoughts of death. She has developed — gasp — cellulite. And her unnaturally arched foot, which makes wearing high-heeled shoes supremely comfortable, has fallen flat as a pancake.

The movie "Barbie" retells the fall from paradise — but unlike the biblical story, it is told as a woman's fall from paradise into patriarchy. 

There are striking correlations between the movie and the Western theological tradition. Barbie laments the undesired and unexpected collapse of her arches just as St. Augustine lamented the undesired and unexpected collapse of his penis. He speculated that there would have been no erectile dysfunction in the Garden of Eden.

Paradise does not permit our bodies to disappoint us in any way whatsoever. After the Fall, however, the betrayal of our bodies is a regular occurrence.

The movie 'Barbie' retells the fall from paradise — but unlike the biblical story, it is told as a woman's fall from paradise into patriarchy. Tweet this

In the biblical story, Eve's curiosity and greed precipitate the banishment from Eden. In the movie, it is Barbie's courage and empathy that provokes the rough transition from Barbie Land to the real world. Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) informs Stereotypical Barbie that the rip in Barbie Land is caused by someone who played with her angrily and fearfully in the real world. To save Barbie Land, Barbie has to find this human being and assuage her suffering.

In the process of coming to terms with the real world, she slowly decides she belongs there.

Here the movie takes a turn toward the felix culpa tradition, which places great value on human life and society after the Fall. In fact, as the Latin suggests, original sin might have been a fortunate occurrence. Adam and Eve gain something by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, even as they lose immortality. 

The broken uncertainty of the postlapsarian world generates opportunities for human beings to exercise their agency in cooperation with God. Relationships with one and other become sweeter, because they are given life in the face of diminishment and death.

Christian theologians have long speculated that it is better to be an imperfect, finite human being than an angel. Western filmmakers before have made the same point before Gerwig.

For example, in Wim Wenders's 1987 film " Der Himmel über Berlin " (the English title is "Wings of Desire"), the angel Damiel decides to relinquish his wings and become a human being. After an eon of observing messy and painful human life from a state of unchanging perfection, he longs to experience choice, risk and love for himself, even at the cost of immortality. When the woman he falls in love with loses her life in a tragic accident, Damiel's decision appears foolhardy. Yet he resolves to keep living, honoring the beauty in the fragility of his days.

Filmed in black and white, " Der Himmel über Berlin " makes its point about the poignancy of human existence in shades of gray. The "Barbie" movie makes the same point using the color pink. After her escape wreaks havoc with their bottom line, the all-male leadership of the Mattel Toy Company offers Barbie the opportunity to resume her perfect life in Barbie Land — all she has to do is get back in the packaging box (complete with zip ties to constrain her wrists) and go home.

Barbie instinctively recoils from returning to life in a box. Yet her reasons for remaining in the real world are far from selfish; in fact, they touch upon the transcendent. 

She is mesmerized by the loveliness in the face of an older woman — someone she would not come across in Barbie Land. She confronts the appalling truth that Barbie dolls have been used to make real women feel inferior and inadequate about themselves. And she commits herself to make things better, now treating work as a noble human activity rather than as a fashion accessory.

What, exactly, does it mean "to make things better"? While justice is fiercely honored, the moral virtue that animates the movie is compassion. Barbie breaks down in tears when she hears about the anger and pain of her human being, who is not a little girl, but rather a grown woman named Gloria (America Ferrera) trying to raise her bright and complicated teenage daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) seemingly without much help from her husband.*

Mother and daughter detest and resent how the doll was used to manipulate them with false standards of femininity and rigid standards of perfection. At the same time, they do not let their anger get the best of them; they do not leave Barbie in the clutches of the evil toy company, which only wants to use her to generate more money. When they hear about her insecurities, they recognize that Barbie is a victim of the patriarchy too.

We know that the point of Barbie's creation was not to diminish or demean real women. We know because Ruth Handler, her creator, said so. Ruth, played by Rhea Pearlman and modeled on the doll's actual inventor, firmly but kindly reminds Barbie (and the audience) that no one can actually be Barbie — except, of course, for Barbie herself. 

Ruth's goal in creating the doll was to enable little girls to dream broadly about their lives as grownups. Playing with Barbie was supposed to unlock their creativity, not suffocate their self-worth.

Ruth wants what is best for Barbie, too — which means letting her take her own path. After warning her about the disadvantages of reality, Ruth acquiesces when Barbie decides to pursue an imperfect life of creativity in the real world rather than a perfect life as a created object in Barbie Land. No theologian could put the point more vividly.

Looking at Barbie Land from the perspective of Ken is rather like looking at Eden from the perspective of Eve. Do we really know whether Eve was happy? Tweet this

Unlike God, human creators are always flawed. One problem with Barbie Land is that no one, including Ruth, seems concerned about Ken's well-being. Barbie Land isn't a patriarchy, of course. More troublingly, it isn't a sinless matriarchy, where women take responsibility for all their political children, male and female.

In fact, the very first cracks in Barbie Land were experienced by Stereotypical Ken (Ryan Gosling), not by Barbie. Ken inchoately desires something more out of his life, and out of his relationship with Barbie, than being an affable boy-toy. He wants love, respect — and sex.

His own voyage to the real world introduced him to the patriarchy, which he unsuccessfully attempted to bring back to Barbie Land. After the Barbies defeat this endeavor, in part by turning the Kens against each other, Ken becomes a broken man. 

He at least had the good sense to recognize that patriarchy wasn't all it was cracked up to be, even for men. And he had the courage to admit that he was really into riding horses like a cowboy, not the patriarchy itself.

Looking at Barbie Land from the perspective of Ken is rather like looking at Eden from the perspective of Eve. Do we really know whether Eve was happy? If so, why was she so receptive to the temptations of the serpent in the first place? She was created, after all, as a helpmeet for Adam, not for her own sake.

But given Barbie's history, it might be more useful to examine Ken's plight in view of the new Eden created by 1950s postwar white American family life. This era is increasingly the object of our nostalgia. As Betty Friedan trenchantly exposed in The Feminine Mystique (1963), the homes that were made during that time were not entirely blissful for the women who were supposed to be at their heart. Many housewives felt numb and alienated in their suburban utopias, although they couldn't quite explain why.

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie star in a scene from the movie “Barbie.” (OSV News/Warner Bros.) 

In my view, Ken's existential crisis in Barbie Land is not very different from the crisis experienced by Friedan's stereotypical 1950s white housewife. Suffocating under norms imposed upon him by rigid social roles, Ken struggles to find an identity that is not fully defined by his partner, who is a more powerful and compelling figure than he could ever be. 

Ken's next task might be to give up beach for the library, so he can write The Masculine Mystique for all the men in Barbie Land.

The "Barbie" movie begins with a group of little girls playing with baby dolls in the sand. Then a larger-than-life Barbie doll descends from the air as the girls look on with wonder and admiration. They toss their baby dolls onto the ground and into the air and gather around Barbie, who smiles at them beneficently. 

The movie ends with Barbie, now going by her full name of Barbara Handler, going to her first appointment with the gynecologist.  She is no longer a plasticized giant, but rather an ordinary-sized flesh-and-blood human being. 

What should we make of these bookends? Some might say that the first scene signals a feminist ideology opposed to motherhood. I don't see it that way; in fact, I think the movie tries to broaden our notion of motherhood beyond a fixation on babies. Teenage girls, grown women, and even living dolls like Barbie need mothering, too. 

Others might worry that the last scene re-inscribes the biological tyranny women experience in a patriarchal society. My own view is more positive. I see Barbie as accepting responsibility for having a biologically complete female body that is both wonderfully strong and potentially fragile. 

The bodies of women in Barbie Land are plastic; they don't age, they don't die, they don't make love and they can't make children. Embodied women in the real world do all of these things.

And, as both the doll and the "Barbie" movie remind us, they do many other things as well. But before doing any of them, women must take care of their own basic needs, including the needs of their terrifyingly wonderful female bodies.

* This sentence has been updated for clarity.

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Catholic Movie Club: ‘Barbie’ gave me hope for the future of blockbusters

The Catholic Movie Club is a short weekly essay pulling out spiritual themes in our favorite films. You can discuss the movies with other readers in the comments on this page or in our Facebook group . Find past Catholic Movie Club selections here .

Throughout Blockbuster Month, we’ve engaged with big summer movies across the decades, seeking to find deeper meaning behind the dazzling effects and star-studded casts.

At the beginning of this series, I noted that blockbusters are often dismissed as “empty noise.” And I can admit that there’s some truth to that accusation. While I stacked the deck a bit by choosing some of the best blockbusters ever made, you’ll find plenty of weightless CGI fights, canned quips and transparent toy commercials on the summer movie slate.

“Barbie” gives me hope for the future of blockbusters.

This week we conclude with our most recent blockbuster: Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” (2023), a film that gives me hope for the future of blockbusters. Even in an age of focus-grouped corporate filmmaking, this film proves that big movies can wrestle with serious themes while still drawing a crowd. They can even touch the sublime.

In “Barbie,” the effervescent dolls exist in a plastic paradise known as “Barbieland” adjacent to our reality, where every day is a beach party. But when one Barbie (Margot Robbie) starts having intrusive thoughts of death, she embarks on a quest to the Real World to discover what’s gone wrong. Along for the ride is a Ken (Ryan Gosling), who is astounded to discover that the Real World is run by men, and begins to plot a new future for Barbieland. Their journey becomes a meditation on why we exist and what makes life meaningful.

It is (very intentionally, as Gerwig has noted in interviews) an “out of Eden” story: Barbie leaves paradise to find knowledge, and is irrevocably changed by what she learns. In this case it’s not so much knowledge of good and evil as it is knowledge of frailty, revelations about the pain and joy of living in flesh instead of plastic. But just as the Fall is sometimes called felix culpa (“happy fault”) because it led to our redemption through Christ, Barbie’s loss of innocence also turns out to be salvific, for her and others.

“Barbie” is a blockbuster in the truest sense of the word, a maximalist spectacle of dazzling costumes, dance numbers and big emotions. Of course, it’s also made an enormous amount of money, currently ranking as the highest-grossing film of the year and the biggest opening weekend in history for a film directed by a woman. It is also undoubtedly a corporate project, designed to sell toys. This makes it even more miraculous that it’s so thematically rich. The voices of Gerwig and her co-writer and spouse, filmmaker Noah Baumbach, come through loud and clear, instead of being flattened into something safe and inoffensive. This is a $100 million movie that makes allusions to the works of Jacques Tati and Demy, Tim Burton’s “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show” and the big studio musicals of the early 20th century. It’s the biggest movie of the summer, and its climax is (essentially) a conversation with God. That’s pretty extraordinary.

The cynical part of me worries that Hollywood will learn the wrong lessons from “Barbie’s” success. They’ll throw their energy into more toy movies or trying to replicate the “Barbenheimer” meme. Instead, I hope they learn that the biggest movies of the year don’t have to be all flash and no substance. People want stories that tackle the core questions of existence, especially if they’re combined with a spectacular time at the movies. You can have spectacle without sacrificing the soul.

‘Barbie’ is now in theaters.

John Dougherty is the director of mission and ministry at St. Joseph’s Prep in Philadelphia, Penn.

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Barbie: A film that asks the questions only Christ can truly answer

2023-07-24T11:03:00+01:00

More than just a parade in pink, Barbie asks some deep questions about what it means to be human, with all its flaws and limitations. But where it lacks answers, Christ provides says Beth Card

Source: Warner Bros

Contains spoilers

It would be easy to watch Barbie and only take away the message that girls should be able to be whoever they want to be without judgment or obstacle. A 90-minute feminist romp with girl power speeches and a chance to see a land where women run the world. Job done.

More on that later if you want it.

But perhaps the film’s bigger message is that life is not perfect. Not the real world or Barbie Land. At the end of the movie, Barbie chooses to be a human, because she has experienced what it is like to cry, to want to make a difference; to have relationships that require effort. She chooses to leave behind a world of fakery and experience something more genuine, even though she knows it will be harder and that, one day, she will die.

We cannot make our world perfect. Whatever you do or don’t do with your life, the only thing that matters eternally is knowing Jesus

There are good aspects to this message. The film tells us that death is a reality and that the world isn’t perfect. It tells us to stop portraying our lives as faultless when we’re actually (frequently) upset about things. It teaches us that it’s OK to question why we’re here, whether we’re meeting our full potential or whether our relationships are good or going anywhere.

A plan and a purpose

But although Barbie accurately portrays the realities of a broken world, ultimately, it lacks biblical hope. As Christians, we know life can be tough, but heaven and perfection await us. We know suffering leads to our sanctification; we know Jesus understands our pain; and we know everything is happening for the glory of God.

The film also speaks to our human design as creators and workers, and our need for a purpose. In Barbie Land, everything is finished; there is no work to do. But Barbie leans towards a life in the real world, as she feels she has a purpose there.

We all need purpose. It’s good to have goals, but placing our ultimate hope in this is risky. You can spend your whole life trying to change society or reaching your dream and it can still be taken away. Only the return of Jesus can truly mend things. Placing our identity in anything apart from God can set us up for disappointment and failure.

Equal in power

The message of Barbie is that the real world is ruled by men. Women don’t hold senior roles at work, and are instead relegated to being pretty and perfect and serving men’s needs. There are obviously elements of truth in this portrayal – as well as elements of exaggeration and a considerable lack of nuance.

In terms of the exaggeration, I can’t help but think that a woman from the Middle Ages (or even the 1950s) would be amazed at the jobs and opportunities that women have today. The examples of inequality shown in the film - an all-male company board, women being ignored and men being respected more – do still happen. At the same time, it isn’t all bad news. The fact we’ve had three female prime ministers speaks to this. 

Inequality is bad for men too. Ken struggles to know his place in Barbie Land. He is defined solely by his relationship with Barbie, something that is acknowledged within the message of the film as unhealthy. 

The female-led Barbie Land shown at the beginning perpetuates the misconception that women are not just equal but  better.  An equal society is good. But frequently, what people actually want is domination in reverse. Although this isn’t how the film concludes, it may well be the message that viewers leave with. Feminism has no room for allowing men to be better at any point, allowing the right men to lead on merit or for women to ever submit. Of course some say this is simply correcting an over-dominance that has existed for centuries, but why correct when we could simply try to live out God’s plan of servant heartedness and putting others above ourselves?

Asking the big questions

Barbie is a film that rightly raises questions about our very existence, and helpfully asks us to really think about why we are here and what our purpose is. But ultimately, it provides only one solution: society, which is too male-dominated, must be changed. Not everything about this idea is wrong. Equality is a worthy goal, but while having a female US president would be a brilliant thing, only Jesus can really mend everything.

We cannot make our world perfect. Whatever you do or don’t do with your life, the only thing that matters eternally is knowing Jesus.

And while we’re comparing, heaven won’t be like Barbie Land – a boring place where everything is perfect. The Bible tells us that we will work, but our work will be fruitful and not laboursome. And it won’t be like Barbie Land because neither women nor men will rule it – Jesus will.

Doing Barbenheimer? Read our review of Christopher Nolan’s most political film to date here

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Movie review: ‘Barbie’

Life in plastic may be fantastic but the tedious ideology-driven comedy “Barbie” (Warner Bros.) is not. Although genuinely objectionable elements are relatively few, moreover, this is distinctly not a movie for the age group to which the figurine of the title is primarily marketed.

Margot Robbie plays the famous Mattel doll that first arrived on store shelves back in 1959. Together with her sidekick Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie inhabits a pink-hued feminist paradise where the president, the nine justices of the Supreme Court and all Nobel Prize winners are women.

Troubled and bewildered by hitherto alien thoughts of death as well as by a sudden physical imperfection — a patch of cellulite on her leg — our heroine consults one of her many alter egos, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon). The problem, it seems, is that whoever is currently playing with Standard Barbie is sad and her sorrow is affecting her toy.

So it’s time to journey to the real world to meet the cause of the difficulty and, presumably, cheer her up sufficiently to restore the status quo. Ken stows away in the back seat of Barbie’s car and thus gets to share in the adventure.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Barbie discovers the tribulations — and Ken the joys — of patriarchy. Barbie also learns to her surprise that, far from being revered as a symbol of female empowerment, she’s reviled as the embodiment of women’s subjugation.

Ken manages to return to Barbie Land first and proceeds to imbue it with male dominance. Thus, by the time Barbie gets back to her natural setting, it’s not only been tainted by warped values but turned topsy-turvy.

Barbie will need the cooperation of all her many eponymous iterations to avert cultural and political disaster. Fortunately, she’ll also have the help of Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a mother-and-daughter duo from the realm of human beings.

As scripted by director Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the picture bemoans the plight of women while blithely stereotyping men as selfish, childish and aggressive. With the rivalry of the sexes raging, little of the humor (Will Ferrell plays the dizzy CEO of Mattel) and less of the sentiment (Rhea Perlman plays the wise granny who co-founded the company) works.

Despite all the controversy that continues to swirl around her, Barbie has undeniably proved a long-lasting source of enjoyment for youngsters. Her namesake movie, by contrast, is too closely focused on its own agenda to provide older viewers with much entertainment and too freewheeling to be acceptable for little kids.

The film contains stylized physical violence, a few instances each of mild swearing and crass talk, mature wordplay and brief sexual and anatomical humor. The OSV News classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

—John Mulderig, OSV News

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Greta Gerwig's Catholic school upbringing heavily inspired a few scenes in the 'Barbie' movie

• Greta Gerwig says that her Catholic upbringing influenced the way she made the "Barbie" movie.
• The filmmaker told AP News that she "resonates" with "older story forms" because she went to Catholic school.
• This is not the first time Gerwig or the "Barbie" cast spoke about the film's religious references.

Greta Gerwig's Catholic upbringing had a big influence on the way she made the "Barbie" film — and it's evident in a couple of scenes.

Speaking in an interview with  AP News , the filmmaker explained that there are strong parallels between Biblical stories and the movie's setting.

"In the movie, like when it starts, she's in a world where there's no aging or death or pain or shame or self-consciousness, and then she suddenly becomes self-conscious — that's a really old story," Gerwig told AP News. "And we know that story."

Gerwig says that she has a tendency to rely on these "older story forms" due to her Catholic upbringing.

"I think I always go back to those older story forms because I went to Catholic school and I resonate with them," she added.

The 39-year-old attended St. Francis Catholic High School, an all-female school in Sacramento, California. She's listed as an alumnus on the school's webpage .

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This is not the first time that Gerwig — or the "Barbie" cast — spoke about the film's references to religious art and tales.

In the movie, there's a scene where Barbie meets her inventor, Ruth Handler, that was filmed in a way that references a famous piece of religious art, Gerwig told USA Today on Thursday.

"There's this shot where Ruth hands Barbie a cup of tea, and the way we lined it up is the exact way that God is touching Adam on the Sistine Chapel," Gerwig said.

In an interview with Vogue that was published in May, Gerwig also referenced the creation of the Barbie doll to the creation myth in the Bible.

"Barbie was invented first," Gerwig told Vogue. "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."

Margot Robbie — who plays the film's titular character — also told Vogue in the same interview that Gerwig even wrote "an abstract poem about Barbie" that was similar to the Apostles Creed to help set the tone of the film.

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