John and I went to watch Barbie yesterday, but I’m still not sure what to make of it. I had been looking forward to seeing it for a couple of weeks: I’d heard a bit about it, and got the impression that, despite outwardly being a kids film about a doll, the film was actually quite satirical and subversive. That made me fairly eager to go and see what the fuss was about, but now that I have, I can’t make my mind up about what the film was trying to say. It was clearly only about dolls to the extent that Animal Farm is only about farm animals. There is a lot of commentary about patriarchy, capitalism and the role of women in contemporary society. Yet beyond that, if we try to read anything deeper into it, the messages seem to get more confused. The film was clearly trying to say something about sexism, but what?

In the film, all the dolls live happily in Barbieland, having parties and going to the beach. Then, at one point, one of the Barbies and one of the Ken dolls have to travel to the supposed real world to find out why the girl playing with the barbie is becoming so sad. There, the Ken doll learns about contemporary patriarchal society, and realises that it is the Kens rather than the Barbies who should be running things. When they return home the Ken (of which there are a great many nauseating wankers) insists that they take control of Barbieland and that the Barbies should be housewives. The normal power structure is only restored when all the Barbies are told about the cognitive dissonance they have to endure as women in contemporary society, thus breaking the spell of patriarchy.

Thus there are a lot of confused and confusing messages in this film. At one and the same time, it purports to be a critique of modern, capitalist patriarchy; yet it also upholds it by saying women should enjoy being fun loving and glamorous. There is also a lot of weird, weird shit about the executives from Barbie manufacturer Mattel charging around the place which didn’t make much sense: was that a lampoon of capitalism, a defence of it, or did the filmmakers just want Mattel to appear just because they were funding the friggin’ film?

I left the cinema yesterday afternoon feeling like I had just been on some sort of acid trip. I didn’t know what the film I had just watched was about, and still don’t. It was as though the film was trying to say too much, do too much, and as a result essentially said nothing. Mind you, at least it was an improvement on the lobotomy of a film we saw last week. Of course, I now want to read up on what other critics are saying about it, particularly guys like Kermode. Perhaps I’m missing something; perhaps I need to rewatch it. Yet, while being a children’s film, Barbie truly is a puzzling film: It’s obviously trying to say a lot, but the question is, what?