Greta Gerwig’s Barbie hit the theatres in July this year. A film that had been in every cinephile’s conversations even a year before it was set to release, Barbie caused a massive ripple among all film enthusiasts.
From the get-go, Barbie is something that you would watch as a fun “reminiscing back to your childhood” film. This was also something the creators were aiming for as the central theme to market the movie, a pleasing, less-gruesome counterpart to the iconic Barbenheimer summer’s Oppenheimer. Barbie was all pink and girly and pretty actors and beach parties.
And this is how for me, walking into the theatre, dressed in pink, and walking out of it smudged with tears, was an emotional experience.
When asked about the film, the director Greta Gerwig described the film as the true female experience. There is no better way to portray the female experience than to have it re-enacted through the eyes of the beloved icon of all girls, ‘Barbie’.
For most, this female experience might just entail the lightheartedness of it all. This is what the general perception of a woman’s life has become, thanks in part to how media has shaped the anatomy of a woman’s life.
But this film, brings with it, a shock that rattled everyone who watched the film to their core. Barbie was definitely about the female experience and more so, in so many ways. But it was not just about the quirky, superficial experiences, the film sought to dig in deeper.
It started on a light tone, with dance montages and comical dialogues, all snuggled in a little too close, which in retrospect does make sense. The entire plot of the initial few scenes, was to make a setting so entirely large and wacky, that it would make you uncomfortable. Greta Gerwig, who has also been the screenwriter for the film, is to be held in praise for this one because the palpable lubricity during the start serves as the smoothest setup to what can be called one of the most emotionally moving performances in a film ever.
Barbie’s journey from a borderline emotionally numb being to someone who starts feeling emotions a little too strongly and a little too fast is something integral to the female experience, and something that has been often overlooked. There comes a point where the perfect image of beauty and poise, Barbie, feels the suffocating urge to leave and run away, a feeling that had echoed in the hearts of every woman watching the film, in varying intensities.
The one isolated point where it all hits you like a literal truck is when Barbie ventures out into the real world, Ken at her side, and realizes that the real world is not all rainbows and glitters as it seems. Which resonates so well with a girl’s experience of growing up. Every emotion has been so intricately detailed, that you almost relive all of it again. Right from the moment when Barbie steps out of the threshold of relative peace towards a violently chaotic society that questions and pokes at her for just existing, to the realization that the world is as far from being honest and transparent as she thought.
For all the hype of the film being presented as a feminist piece of media, and all the subsequent backlash it received for the same, somewhere the film also holds a great reflective experience for men as well. This is equally why I am a firm supporter in arguing that the Barbie movie is not just about the female experience, but the ‘human’ experience of growing up in a society that bases you on its ideals, and forces you into boxes even before you realize that something wrong is happening with you.
When Barbie returns to Barbieland, she realizes that the patriarchal norms of the natural world have caught up with Ken, whose sole purpose then, has become to subjugate all the Barbies. While in the past Barbieland was essentially just a ‘Barbie’ land, with no real significance for the Ken dolls, this does not necessarily mean that the Barbies were superior to the Kens in any way. The Barbieland was just a mirror towards a suggestive utopia for women, something which was neither absolute nor would ever be acceptable even if it ever was. The Kens could just exist unbothered, in their planes of existence with the Barbies, in peace, something that is severely lacking in the real world.
However, the near absurd shift towards the Ken world, when paralleled to the real world shows how boys and girls in the world grow up as equals in every sense until our minds get ensnared in the vice grip of society’s notions of power and stature. When the Barbies unite to reclaim their power in Barbieland, it’s not just an attempt at a position of equality, it is also to make the Kens realize their self-worth, something that materializes beautifully, when Ken admits to not liking the entire patriarchal narrative he engaged in throughout the movie.
There come a lot of points during the film, where we feel the immense exhilaration at being part of a community that shares the raw unbridled emotions of womanhood, and there also come moments where you are hit with profound grief at the twisted ways of the world. But arguably the best part, the moment that remains both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time, comes towards the end, with a stark realization. Barbie’s scene with her creator brings all of her turmoils to a state of calm, something which is so beautifully visualized to encompass the entire essence of the film.
The one key takeaway, which Greta Gerwig has so magnificently presented, would probably be to not see the world in blacks and whites, also something which seems to be the recurring theme of the film at several points. The ending of the film holds strength particularly in this part for the very same reason, Barbie realises that the wrongs are not just plain wrongs, just like the rights are not just plain rights. This moment of maturity is what makes this film whole, and what ties the fictional elements to human nature.
And it’s the excellent performances in the film that move us all with passion, but it’s also partly the raw sentiments that pull at the strings of our hearts. The faint familiarity of Barbie’s experiences to our own that moves you to tears.
Walking out of the film, you know that there have been elements of the film that you have thoroughly enjoyed, the shared sense of girlhood that emanated across the cinema hall, and the wide smiles on everyone’s faces. But you also know that somewhere between the innocent escapades of girlhood, this film wished to strike you in those little corners of your heart that you’ve kept hidden away, something that will echo inside you throughout your life.
This is also why I believe that the Barbie film can essentially become a classic that runs an entire generation and something that you pass on, not just as a piece of media that has been immensely popular, but also something that has had an equally profound impact on the way you view the world.