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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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Christians Should Welcome the Conversations ‘Barbie’ Sparks

More by jen oshman.

I grew up playing with Barbie. Like many women reading this, I had scores of them, as well as the Barbie Dreamhouse, the convertible, the swimming pool, and one Ken doll (Mattel sells seven Barbies for every one Ken). Generations of us gathered in each other’s bedrooms to create stories for our Barbies and act them out. We changed their clothes a lot and made-believe the good life for our plastic collections. Through them, we imagined our own futures. Barbie served the aspirational purpose that her creator, Ruth Handler, envisioned for girls.

But as we came of age, our relationship with Barbie grew increasingly distant and even cold. At first, it was just that we outgrew pretend doll play. But then we became preteens and teens and—parallel to what the Barbies in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie experience—we emerged from our playtime paradise where everything was made according to our own ideals and dreams. We had to face the real world.

We gained unpleasant knowledge. Our eyes were opened. Barbie’s aspirational qualities were countered by something sinister. As the moody teen Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) says to Barbie (Margot Robbie) when she first meets her, “You’ve been making women feel bad about themselves since you were invented. . . . You destroy girls’ innate sense of worth.”

Sizing Up Barbie

Are Barbie dolls good or bad? This is one of many philosophical questions the new film asks. And while you may assume audiences don’t want to think about weighty questions in a Barbie movie, consider that Barbie had the highest-earning opening weekend for all films so far in 2023, as well as the highest-earning one ever for a female-directed film. Greta Gerwig ( Lady Bird and Little Women ) has clearly struck a chord, fueling immense social media chatter and launching countless hot takes.

In the movie, newfound knowledge requires Barbie to leave Barbieland for the Real World. Ken (Ryan Gosling) joins her but returns early to establish the Kendom while she’s still away. The result is a power struggle between the two genders as all the Barbies and Kens try to determine their purpose and place in the world. The film may have a minor plot, but it asks major questions. Barbie is creating plenty of community and controversy, both online and in real life. It’s forcing a conversation that’s relevant for the church—but I’m not sure we’re ready to have it.

It’s Complicated

The answer to the question of whether Barbie dolls are good or bad is this: it’s complicated. The same is true of the movie and all the themes it brings to the surface. Gerwig is unwilling to present obvious conclusions throughout, highlighting the complex ways men and women relate to themselves and to one another in this cultural moment.

Gerwig’s refusal to be simply “pro” or “con” is the film’s greatest strength (other than, admittedly, Ryan Gosling’s over-the-top hilarious performance as Beach Ken). Consider just a few of the major topics Gerwig’s film explores.

Barbie is forcing a conversation that’s relevant for the church.

Barbie, herself an icon for feminism, was created in the 1950s so little girls might imagine their own grown-up lives when they play with Author Barbie, Doctor Barbie, Physicist Barbie, and more. The movie, though, causes the audience to ask, “Is feminism good or bad?” It doesn’t offer a neat and tidy answer. The film seems to say that if feminism helps little girls grow up to be all they can be and fulfill a diversity of roles, it’s good. But if feminism says men aren’t needed, it’s bad. As with all tough topics in the movie, it’s multilayered.

Some viewers have claimed the film is antimotherhood. There may be some truth in that claim. Pregnant Barbie is sidelined and called weird. The opening scene doesn’t want little girls to envision themselves as only the mothers of babies.

On the other hand, the human mother-daughter relationship (America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt) develops sweetly. Most mothers and daughters can see themselves, at least a little bit, in their dynamic. And the way they come together to cheer for one another and all women is good . There’s a photo montage near the end of the film that brings many viewers to tears. It conveys the message “Growing up as a girl is hard, but it’s very good.” Many walk away from the movie appreciating motherhood even more. Barbie’s maker says to her, “We mothers stand still so that our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.”

One of the most polarizing aspects of Barbie is its portrayal of men. It’s true, there are no genuinely good or smart male characters present (except maybe Allan). As with the toys, Ken is an accessory to Barbie. The Kens in the movie portray what it’s like to be identifiable only by one’s connection to another person.

But to say the film is bad because it makes men look bad is to miss the point of Ken and his Kendom altogether. Gerwig wants us to consider what it’s like to live in another’s shadow, something many women regularly feel—even in 2023. It would be simplistic to say the Barbie movie disses the patriarchy and exalts the matriarchy. It’s clear in the movie that neither is good for anyone.

There are a dozen more themes worthy of dissection, and absolute proclamations about any of them short-circuit the film’s invitation to reflect on these issues from multiple angles. Prematurely proclaiming “It’s good!” or “It’s bad!” shuts down important conversations about identity and gender and how men and women can live in harmony and even advocate for each other. These conversations are certainly needed in culture. As Christians, we should admit they’re also needed in the church.

Why ‘Barbie’ Matters for the Church

Of the 40 million people who’ve stopped going to church over the last 25 years, 10 percent say they left specifically because of misogyny . More than one leading Christian denomination in the U.S. is currently embroiled in a scandal of widespread sexism and sexual abuse. Anecdotally, women in ministry across the nation will tell you they struggle to know how to function in the church because they’ve been discipled (inadvertently or not) to see themselves as threats, temptresses, or less than their male counterparts. We feel at once too much and not enough. (It may be therapeutic for one of us to write and share a replica of America Ferrera’s fiery monologue but for women in ministry.)

The Barbie movie invites a conversation about our identities both as individuals and as men and women together. We Christians have the tools to engage this conversation, both inside the church and out there in the world, but will we? Are we willing to think deeply, listen patiently, and share honestly?

There’s a significant thread throughout the Barbie movie that ponders creation and Creator, the relationship between Adam and Eve, and the question of all questions: What are we made for? Spiritual and anthropological questions abound in the film, but answers are hard to come by.

Perhaps it’s a testament to our “all over the place” cultural confusion on these topics that Barbie has sparked such a multitude of (sometimes contradictory) interpretations. In a culture grappling for solid handles to approach the slippery questions of identity, it’s no wonder the meaning of Barbie —like the toys we used to play make-believe with—is essentially whatever the viewer wants it to be. Without God and Scripture guiding the way, questions of human identity (including gender) and purpose default to subjectivity.

But whereas the movie falls short in giving clear answers to massive questions about life and gender, Christians should not. We know the God who made us and died to save us. We know what humans are made for. We know both men and women are very good and both men and women need each other. We have God’s Spirit and God’s Word to enable us to be on mission together.

Whereas the movie falls short in answering massive questions about life and gender, we should not.

Rather than slipping into the sex segregation and suspicion that comes so easily in the flesh, let’s stand side by side, eager to honor and advocate for one another. Let’s resist church versions of Barbieland and Kendom, where men and women are pitted against each other. Let’s resist too-fast and too-easy answers to complicated questions. Let’s listen to one another. Let’s behave as the siblings we’re meant to be.

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Jen Oshman has been in women’s ministry for over two decades on three continents. She’s the author of Enough About Me , Cultural Counterfeits , and Welcome . She hosts a weekly podcast about cultural events and trends called All Things , and she’s the mother of four daughters. The family currently resides in Colorado and they planted Redemption Parker , where Jen is the director of women’s ministry.

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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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G reta Gerwig’s “Barbie” has a cotton candy wispiness that would be fine for a movie about a doll that comes to life, but behind the pink frosting facade, Gerwig has spun candy that is hard—and sour.

Gerwig, and her partner, Noah Baumbach , who co-wrote the script, might appear to be apt choices to make a film about the odd person out trying to catch a break on the inside while still maintaining the quirkiness of an appealing outsider. Gerwig’s performances as an actress in Whit Stillman’s “Damsels in Distress” and Baumbach’s “Frances Ha” were iconoclastic and daringly funny. Her insouciant embodiments of “innocent as doves” but secretly “wise as serpents” space-cadets in the mold of Zasu Pitts, Billie Burke and Judy Holliday, were a breath of fresh air.

As a director, however, Gerwig’s focus and tone have become stale, dour and accusatory. The wrathful “ Lady Bird ” and the unfaithful (literally and scripturally) “ Little Women ” were both successes, taking her from “low-budget indie” wannabe to well-healed Hollywood A-lister. As such, she not only abides by the rules of the realm, but has become one of its most reliable and outspoken voices.

With “Barbie,” Gerwig does everything bigger, bolder and louder. There is no soft underbelly to this doll. The film is pepper-sprayed with bursts such as: “either you’re brainwashed or you’re weird and ugly; there’s no in-between,” and my favorite, spoken to Barbie by a teenage student (a re-run of the “Lady Bird” speech shouted by that film’s title character to a conservative religious woman, a favorite Gerwig target): “You represent everything wrong with our culture… you destroyed the planet… you set feminism back,” and so on, concluding her “j’accuse” diatribe by calling Barbie “a fascist.” That kind of red-faced hectoring never lets up. Too often I felt as though I was sitting through a “Libs of TikTok” marathon .

The movie’s plot is a terse throw-away. The main doll, “Stereotypical Barbie” ( Margot Robbie ) lives in a fantasy world called Barbieland with all kinds of other Barbies who live in dream houses and drive dream cars. It is a feminist , but peculiarly unfeminine, environment in which the president is a woman, all nine Supreme Court justices are women, health care is provided by women, and businesses are run by women. The men, labeled “superfluous” citizens, are not even relegated to the sidelines; they have no place on the field at all.

A crack develops in Barbieland allowing Barbie to travel from fantasy land to the real world, a contrived plot device and a cheap “Matrix” rip-off, the first of many such “borrowings” from or references to earlier classic films, ironically ones made by decidedly non-feminist, macho filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola and, astonishingly, Robert Evans.

Each Barbie in Barbieland may have a plastic doll counterpart in the real world. Evidently, whatever happens to the doll and her owner in that realm has a concomitant effect on the Barbieland inhabitant. When the main Barbie starts developing human maladies such as flat feet and a bit of cellulite, she does not consult a Barbieland podiatrist or luposucionist (both of whom one would suspect in a perfect Barbie world would be crackerjack practitioners of their specialties), but instead travels to the real world (yes, in a pink Cadillac, pink motorboat, and pinkish rocket ship) to find the little girl whose dark thoughts has brought on her distress. Little does she know that her existential trip, for a doll, will lead her to fall into the clutches of the dark and male infested hands of the toy company that makes her, Mattel.

The Mattel conglomerate is located in Los Angeles, and traveling from one LaLa land to another could be fodder for some good jokes about how real and imaginary places may not be so different (remember the Star Trek movie scenario of the Enterprise landing in San Francisco, a place weirder than any extraterrestrial sphere could be?), but that nerve is never touched. Gerwig and Baumbach do know what side their bread is buttered on. There’s nothing new brought to this battlefield, even with Will Ferrell playing Will Ferrell playing a Ken-like dodo playing a past-his-prime jerk.

With each new performance, Ferrell is morphing into an A.I. version of himself, but in this case he sputters lines that an A.I. program, or even a Barbieland doll, would roll their eyes at.

In the real world, Stereotypical Barbie is absconded by secret service like Mattel minions while a befuddled Ken debates whether to rescue her or seek help. You may have already guessed that the film does not miss the opportunity to further emasculate Ken as he chooses to run back to Barbieland for help. Adding further insult to injury, he never returns for her either.

Meanwhile, Ferrell and his boardroom cohorts, all men in dark suits, prove to be easy, cookie-cutter targets. The strongest corporate retort to Barbie’s criticisms of their non-inclusiveness and all around non-niceness is a timid: “Some of my best friends are Jewish.”

This from Hollywood’s A-list original screenplay team?

Gerwig’s Barbie does not grow into a flesh and blood girl in the same way Pinocchio evolved into a boy through humility and self-sacrifice. She is inordinately cruel to Ken and seems to have a cold core, one that Margot Robbie sometimes brings to the surface, channeling the murderous character she played in the “ Suicide Squad ” movies, and giving her doll an edge that is sharp, if at times a bit rusty. Robbie has an inviting and generous smile which Quentin Tarantino used to enchanting effect in “ Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ,” but she can turn that smile to something sinister and deadly, as she did in the underrated “ Mary, Queen of Scots ,” in which she used her grin as a mask to soften, or conceal, the human monster, and political genius, that was Queen Elizabeth I. In “Barbie,” Robbie can’t seem to get the balance right. She holds onto the Mattel plastic while keeping the vulnerable humanity at bay.

The film begins with Barbie, standing as a tall bathing-suit clad monolith surrounded by a bevy of very young girls who defiantly smash and toss away their baby dolls. It’s not just a cheesy rendition of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” opening where the apes bang bones they learned to use as weapons, but a cold and cynical cry for emancipation from the binds of what motherhood, and traditional womanhood, represent to the modern Hollywood sensibility.

As the movie unfolds, its makers herald the positives of such liberation, but shy away from its downsides. Barbie nonetheless develops a crisis of confidence, and then one of existence itself. Her anxiety is deep, the result we’re told, of patriarchal oppression, leading Barbie to have “irrepressible thoughts of death.”

When a tale starts, not with life as the Genesis story does, but with death, and that is what the baby destroying scene represents, it is fated to come full circle. Barbie’s “irrepressible thoughts” are about more than chauvinism. Those thoughts cry out for redemption and rebirth.

Despite her eschatological concerns, this living doll has no spiritual dismay and no sense of what she was created for. Does she look to Someone who, before she was formed, knew her? Her self-reliance, cynically referred to as empowerment, blinds her to seeing that “all things in heaven and earth, the visible and the invisible…were created through Him and for Him.” Barbie jumps from battle to battle, emulating the Director’s own personal fight for the rights of marginalized women everywhere, but by never putting on “the shield of Christ ,” she is ultimately unequipped to “fight the good fight.” No wonder she and her real world counterpart have thoughts of despair and death.

Did I mention those thoughts are applauded by film’s end?

You know a movie’s script and production are weak when so much depends on a bevy of supporting and cameo appearances by underused, underwritten, or just miscast performers such as America Ferrera , Michael Cera , Issa Rae , Rhea Perlman , and John Cena who seem mostly befuddled by the polemic drivel they have to speak.

Helen Mirren is inexplicably and shamefully used as a narrator trying to elucidate the film’s mangled background story. Her commentary only makes this hapless doll world murkier and more punishing, declaring that playing with dolls might be fun, but ultimately harms little girls everywhere. Her voice, meant to be authoritative and instructive, is actually authoritarian and beguiling, like that of a matronly garden serpent.

Almost all the performances are amateurish and attention-seeking in the worst way, none more so than Kate McKinnon’s whose lack of comic skill is hidden behind by a tremendous well of self-regard. She plays “Weird Barbie”, not in a knowing and endearing sidekick-style in the vein of Eve Arden or Joan Cusack , but in a shrill and geyser-like fashion that is as jarring as her costume and inconsistent make-up.

There are several Kens, each different looking, but each behaving in basically the same way. Ryan Gosling plays the main Ken, and he almost brings it off. While watching him in all his tanned and bleached splendor, I wondered if his entire performance was nothing more than attempt to humor his director and co-star. He constantly tosses off his ridiculous costumes in the same style he throws away the beach taunts aimed at his co-Kens. Those exchanges, meant to be in-the-know jokes that would go over the heads of kids but tickle the ear of hip adults, are witless and sophomoric in their barely disguised homoeroticism .

Ken tags along uninvited on Barbie’s trip to the real world. She drives, of course, while he straddles the back seat. Unlike Barbie, Ken is captivated by the male energy of Los Angeles. He tries to bring that equine force back to Barbieland and build a society where men sport great biceps and abs, and have a great time drinking beer and dominating their female counterparts. There’s lots of male bonding in the new realm called Kendom, with men co-decorating their houses in horse motifs, exchanging outfits that include fancy furs, and doing bump, grind and male on male cheek-to-cheek kiss ala Busby Berkeley style dance routines on the beach and somewhere in the sky. This is presented as a patriarchy on steroids, a male world out of control.

Gosling’s god-like surface features seem particularly anti-feminist, the kind of physical specimen that you would not expect to find in a land ruled by powerful women, but the type you’d see on the covers of bodice-ripper novels or People’s Sexiest Man Alive issues, or perhaps in a Village People music video. But consistency is not a hallmark in the Gerwig-Baumbach universe. Discordancy is the point. The film’s liberation ethos, sexual and social, is a call, not for peace, forgiveness, and grace , or even enjoyment of what a world of toys can bring to a child, but a Progressive call to arms.

Or worse, it’s a gender studies lecture, where many Barbies and Kens are welcome, but only one voice, a very Feminist voice is allowed to speak, and be heard.

• Wokeism: Very Heavy
• Drugs/Alcohol: Moderate
• Violence: Mild
• Profane language: Minor
• Vulgar/Crude language: Minor
• Nudity: None
• Occult: None

Editor’s Notes

For the narrative arc, Writer/Director Gertwig was partially inspired by the 1994 non-fiction book Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher, which accounts the effects of societal pressures on American adolescent girls. The book has been described as a “call to arms” and highlights the increased levels of sexism and violence that affect young females. Pipher asserts that whilst the Feminist movement has aided adult women to become empowered, teenagers have been neglected and require intensive support due to their undeveloped maturity. Lead actress Margot Robbie stated that the film’s aim is to subvert expectations and give audiences “the thing you didn’t know you wanted.”

NOTE: In June 2023, a “Barbie” French poster went viral for including the tagline “Elle peut tout faire. Lui, c'est juste Ken.”, which literally translates to “She can do everything. He’s just Ken.” However, ken is the verlan slang term for the f-word in French, while c’est (“he is”) is a homophone for sait (“he knows how”), meaning the tagline could be read as “She can do everything. He just knows how to f***.” Analysts concluded that it was likely the pun was intentional, as the slang term is common knowledge among French speakers, though Warner Bros. would neither confirm nor deny whether this was the case.

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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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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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