The Unproductive Moral of the Barbie Story

T he opening of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie depicts “Dawn of Barbie,” a nod to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Rather than an evolution from ape to human, little girls abandon baby dolls for Barbie dolls after an encounter with a giant, life-size goddess. But the Barbie doll, we soon learn, isn’t true progress.

Upon seeing the giant Barbie (Margot Robbie), the little girls begin smashing their baby dolls — a detail conservative commentator Michael Knowles suggests shows that “feminism makes girls kill babies.”

The instinct to care for someone more vulnerable and the desire to be needed by others is natural in both men and women. But modern feminists have traded mutual dependence for greater autonomy. Barbie is a serious attempt by a talented filmmaker to make sense of the confusion men and women face in our post-liberal world.

The first anxiety that breaks through to Barbie is that of mortality. “Do you guys ever think about dying?” she asks her fellow dolls at a Barbieland party, much to their horror. This is a continuing theme. Gloria, a Mattel employee, later informs Barbie that life “is all change.” Her creator, Ruth Handler, informs her that “humans only have one ending.” And that’s why they make up things like patriarchy and Barbies.

On Twitter, Ross Douthat recently shared a paper by Sam Peltzman of the University of Chicago, which documents the declining rates of male and female happiness since the sexual revolution:

Fewer people marry, and when they do, they marry later. They have fewer children. Both sexes suffer when they seek meaning and purpose in isolation. This is evident early on. A recent CDC report found that 57 percent of high-school girls reported experiencing “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year.” Teen suicides, the majority of which are completed by males, are on the rise.

Barbie exists as a critique of structures that create unhappiness. The screenplay reads more like a play for intellectuals than a film with mass appeal. The characters, albeit intentionally, talk not like real people but as ideological archetypes.

The plot goes something like this: Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) begins to malfunction in Barbieland, a matriarchal society where women can be anything they want — except pregnant. She visits Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who advises her that the only solution is to go to the real world and meet her owner.

In the real world, Barbie is shocked to learn that “men look at me like I’m an object. Girls hate me.” Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), her tween owner, blames Barbie for setting “unrealistic physical ideals,” for being a product of “sexualized capitalism,” and for “destroying the planet with rampant consumerism.” She even calls Barbie a “fascist.”

Distraught, Barbie returns to Mattel headquarters, the company that makes Barbie. The chief executive (Will Ferrell) urges her to return to her box and, losing patience, tries forcing her in.

Fleeing, Barbie heads back to Barbieland with Sasha and her mother, Gloria (America Ferrera). Meanwhile, Ken (Ryan Gosling) — obsessed with Barbie and along for the ride — has noticed that in the real world, men rule, and has already brought patriarchy back to Barbieland.

After Ken establishes the patriarchy in Barbieland, the Barbies resort to manipulation to restore things to their original order. But Barbie remains discontented. In Barbieland, the Kens remain weak and useless. Every night is girls’ night. Women run everything. Barbie says that “Ken is totally superfluous.”

Barbie explains to Ken, “You have to figure out who you are without me — maybe all the things you thought made you you aren’t really you.” He’s not his girlfriend, he’s not his house, he’s not the beach. He’s a vacuous shell of man. And that’s his problem, not hers.

In the context of this specific relationship, that’s obviously true. Ken needs to take responsibility for his own life. Clearly, Barbie is better off without him. But if we take Ken and Barbie as representatives of male and female, the resolution that what men and women really need to make sense of themselves is more independence from one another is back-to-front.

The truth is that men and women were made for each other. While not every woman is destined to be a mother, her greatest happiness is nevertheless found when looking outward, in being needed by others. The same is true for men, of course. A society that cannot figure this out is one with smashed dreams and a plummeting fertility rate.