The best part about the new Barbie movie is, hands down, Ryan Gosling’s Oscar-worthy performance as Ken. In Barbieland, the Kens are second-class citizens who rely entirely on being noticed by Barbie in order to feel any self-worth.
Barbie doesn’t notice Ken very much. She has girls night every night. He’s not allowed to stay over. It’s not even clear if the Kens have actual houses of their own. So it’s no surprise that when Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken go to the real world and he starts to notice that men are treated much, much differently there, he starts to have an awakening.
He discovers that in the real world, not everything is run by women. In Barbieland women control government, the Supreme Court, and the world essentially revolves around them, while the Kens get table scraps. Ken is so in awe of the patriarchy, he brings it back with him from the real world and soon Barbieland is barely recognizable.
The funny thing about Ken’s patriarchy is that it’s actually kind of awesome. They have brewski beers. They all live in “mojo dojo casa houses” and ride horses. It’s not violent. The Kens just want to play games and Matchbox Twenty songs on their guitars. Most of the Barbies are “brainwashed” into thinking everything is fine and dandy, but Barbie—having been to the real world—is immune. And she’s horrified, though it’s a peculiar horror. She lost her house to Ken and the Barbies have lost their total control of society. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t spend much time exploring how the matriarchy led directly to the Kendom revolution.
Instead, Barbie and her allies work to trick the men and de-program the brainwashed Barbies, and in the end they take back Barbieland and their iron grip on society. There is a bit of soul-searching between Ken and Barbie. She apologizes for how she’s treated him and tells him that he needs to figure himself out and not rely on her for his feelings of validation, which is great (and leads to the I Am Kenough shirt, which is hilarious) but they don’t give any Kens a spot on the Supreme Court and as far as we can tell, they still don’t have houses—let alone mojo dojo casa houses.
This is a bit strange. It was a good opportunity for a broader reconciliation, and a moment where the Barbies could have realized that treating Kens as second-class citizens has consequences that are bad for everyone (much like treating women as second-class citizens in the real world makes things worse for everyone).
I mean, in the real world we actually do have several women on the Supreme Court, many women in high positions of government, as executives at major corporations and so forth. It may not be an entirely equal world, but it’s a lot more equitable than Barbieland! Besides, the Kens and their gentle patriarchy are basically harmless. Their worst sins—weirdly, given they have been second-class citizens forever in their world—are things like mansplaining or being vain and self-centered, which isn’t any different from the Barbies.
I wish the movie had taken this allegory a bit further and really had the Barbies reckon with their matriarchy. As a parallel to our patriarchy, it could have been super effective. Instead, the movie leaned heavily on ham-fisted exposition about how hard it is to be a woman, and dragged out every stereotype in the book to relentlessly drive home the point. I enjoyed it (my review) but I still maintain that it spent far too much time preaching to the choir rather than trying to change anyone’s mind for the better.
I’m off to drink my brewski beers and ride a horse over to my boy’s mojo dojo casa house now. Maybe jam out to some Rob Thomas tunes and talk about how awesome the patriarchy is while we watch The Godfather.
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