2023-08-14 07:32:06
The Barbie movie is a phenomenon in and out of theaters. It has become the highest grossing film directed by a woman and a recurring theme on social media. Photographs of spectators dressed in pink who use this color as a claim for feminism; parents who defend that this film is incomprehensible for children’s audiences; messages asking to bring boyfriends and friends to the screening to gauge how toxic their masculinity is based on their reaction; and disappointment for those who expected a fun exercise in nostalgia and found a film loaded with feminist content.
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Laura Freixas, writer and former president of Clásicas y Modernas, introduces that it is normal to wonder, in this context, what is happening with Barbie and whether or not this film is really feminist; because part of a doll known worldwide for being a sexist figure, to make it an icon of this movement.
Despite the fact that according to the experts interviewed this corresponds to a great marketing operation… Could the film have managed to be feminist?
An 11-year-old girl known as “The Black Barbie of Complexo do Alemao” displays her doll in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
AP Photo/Bruna Prado
The issues addressed in the film are those of the liberal current of feminism
GLASS ROOF AND MANSPLAINING
Laura Freixas responds with an affirmative, but clarifies that Barbie “is liberal feminism, much more focused on addressing issues such as professional equality, the glass ceiling or mansplaining (condescending explanation of a man to a woman). In that sense, she does it well, with a lot of ingenuity, ”she argues. A humorous example of the latter is the scene in which one of the Barbies pretends not to have seen The Godfather to give her the pleasure of explaining it to one Kens, who will quickly fall in love with her cinematographic ignorance.
Barbie does not allude in her speech to other problems that are accepted by the current of radical feminism, such as motherhood and family care. “The Barbies are –in the film– young, beautiful, healthy women without children”, points out Freixas. In Barbieland, no one is caring for sick people, no one is vulnerable due to their economic situation, and no one can be a victim of prostitution. “The film is about privileged women living in a western country, where they are supposed to have all the freedoms. Her complaint is that despite this, there is no equality ”.
Freixas concludes that Barbie has achieved something very important, which is to spread a certain feminism. “A soft feminism, but one that is not assumed, far from it, by all of society.”
A woman dresses as Barbie in a protest act calling for government elections in Lima, Peru.
AP Photo/ Martin Mejia
PATRIARCHY
Anna Domínguez, spokeswoman for the Calala Women’s Fund, also affirms that “the film is feminist, but it is a very specific feminism.” The conclusion reached by the spokesperson for this foundation is the same; it is a liberal feminism closely linked to an economic system and a specific culture. “You can see it in the cars and the clothes they wear; the symbols and the narrative are those of the West and the problems it deals with are those of white women within this culture”.
Barbie’s greatest success, in Domínguez’s opinion, has been its portrayal of the patriarchy. “It explains very well how it works and the inequalities that it implies in positions of power,” argues this spokesperson, adding that the film manages to bring this concept closer to anyone, regardless of their knowledge of feminist theory, due to the vividness of its examples.
One of the most iconic scenes of the film in this regard is when the protagonist asks at Mattel –the company that currently manufactures the doll– about the woman in charge and in her place is found a board made up exclusively of men; although she is told that she can always talk to her secretary, that she is a woman. “And the humor, so current and absurd that she has used to convey it, is what has made the film’s feminism work,” defends Domínguez.
On the contrary, from this foundation what they have missed the most in the film is a greater intersectionality. Although racialized women appeared, no mention was made of other forms of discrimination that they may be suffering; nor is there open talk about homosexuality or gender identities other than those of men and women.
“Barbie’s is just a feminism and there are many. Here only gender inequality is analyzed, but the many other inequalities suffered by women are not taken into account”, concludes Domínguez, who sees in this the key to defining the doll as a liberal feminist.
A group of girls participate in a march for the film in La Paz, Bolivia, to watch the film together.
EFE / Luis Gandarillas
sorority
Solidarity between women -sorority- is another of the star themes of the film; the union of the Barbies is the key to resolving the conflict that the plot raises -and who says the plot, says the Kens-. Sisterhood is a transversal theme in all feminisms, according to Núria Sara Miras, professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Barcelona. Even so, Barbie represents the feminism of the first waves that the movement had in Europe and the United States, “without reaching the issues that have been fundamental to the third wave, such as class, race, abilities or sexual orientation” adds the expert.
Students in the Philippines turn their graduation into an act of denunciation dressed as ‘Barbie’.
AP Photo/Aaron Favila
Discrimination against women is attributed exclusively to their gender
“With this film, a golden opportunity has been lost to show that the future must be built together with men”, says Josefa Ros, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid. Ros adds that there is a danger, if the film’s message is simplified, of leaving the room believing that the solution to patriarchy may be to create a world that is just as unfair, but with men occupying the place that women currently occupy. . “I don’t think this idea can help feminism,” she concludes.
Various analyzes point out that what the film tries through Ken, Barbie’s boyfriend, is to caricature the representation that has historically been made of women. “The film makes fun of the role of many women in men’s films, where we know nothing about them; only what is the relationship they have with the same men. They don’t have their own projects, they don’t have a house, they don’t have any friends”, says Freixas.
However, using this cliché to construct the Kens has made the portrayal of men too concrete; accentuates the difference between the genders. “This simplification is not realistic, men are in society and we have to make this change with them,” Domínguez also argues.
“This very marked binary, in which all women are good and all men are bad… It is dangerous to focus the message on the fact that the fight is against men,” concludes Calala’s spokeswoman.
An attendee at the San Diego (California) International Comic-Con recreates Ken.
EFE/EPA/Allison Dinner Read also
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