Doing and Subverting Aren't Possible Simultaneously
As of this writing I have not seen the Barbie movie. I'm absolutely going to—it looks fun and satirical and boasts a lot of talent. It is also, without having witnessed it yet, an obvious feature length advertisement for a toy no different than the Transformer and Lego films.
Not long ago I took my mom to a Monster Truck event. As the Promotions Director at several local radio stations, once in a while I get tickets to things and, since neither of us had ever been to a Monster Truck rally, we thought it would be fun. It was not. It was so uninspiring, I fell asleep.
The merch, though. So much overpriced crap to buy. It became apparent after fifteen minutes of the afternoon that the sole purpose of this particular event was to sell merch. T-shirts, branded mugs, miniature monster trucks, branded tracks, DVDs.
Enter Greta Gerwig and Mattel.
If there is a kind of earnestness that once would have precluded a director from “selling out,” it is the same earnestness that now precludes them from thinking about that notion at all. (What is Barbie but a superhero in heels, older than Spider-Man and Iron Man?) Instead of aiming for a product you might grade on a curve as “relatively thoughtful, for a Barbie movie,” Gerwig devoted herself to threading a needle slimmer than the eyelashes painted on the doll’s face. The movie is a celebration of Barbie and a subterranean apologia for Barbie. It is a giant corporate undertaking and a strange, funny personal project. It is a jubilant, mercilessly effective polymer-and-pink extravaganza whose guiding star turns out to be Gerwig’s own sincerity. “Things can be both/and,” she said. “I’m doing the thing and subverting the thing.”
With respect, Gerwig should be commended for the attempt but she's wrong. An artist can do the thing (create a film designed primarily for marketing a toy to be sold setting the stage for many more films with the same agenda) or subvert the fundamental idea of the thing (create a film designed to upend the toy's appeal as artistic criticism) but not both.
Unless your film (or song or TV show or book) actively convinces people not to buy the product, you’re not subverting the thing, you’re just doing the thing with the societally approved tone of fake subversion no different from The Care Bears Movie or Battleship. As Paskin writes, the film “speaks directly to women, mothers in particular, about the impossibility of perfection…” But why? “…so we can feel great about buying perfect Barbies for our babies.”
Mattel has been trying to use film to sell Barbie Dolls and all of her accessories since 1987 with over thirty offerings (including Barbie Fairytopia: Mermaidia, Barbie in Princess Power, and Barbie & Her Sisters in A Puppy Chase) and this faux-subversive film is just one more marketing attempt to make the 110-lb, big-tittied, vision of the perfect woman relevant to a body-positive, girlpower crowd.
This is not to suggest Gerwig is insincere in her approach and her inclusion of Nicola Coughlan, Ritu Arya, America Ferrera, Hari Nef, and Issa Rae as multiple Barbies and Kingsley Ben-Adir, John Cena, Simu Liu, and Ncuti Gatwa as muliple Kens suggests a more inclusive version of the idea of the Barbie ecosystem. Admirable, perhaps even necessary but until Mattel starts cranking out black, Asian, transgender Barbies and Kens for sale, it's an empty gesture. When Mattel starts selling a more inclusive line then Gerwig's film is just a launching video for new product.
If Gerwig truly wanted to subvert the Barbie image then she'd have the star Barbie use sex as power, get a degree in Gender Studies, and get quasi-political tattoos. A genuinely subversive Barbie would lecture everyone about her trauma and behave like Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (with a great gag about how the fork under the table can't bust through her plastic thigh).
Corporations are not your friends. They do not represent your interests. Subversive marketing is just marketing, and woke capitalism and anti-woke capitalism are both just capitalism. The corporation doesn't care who buys the merch as long as it gets bought. The Monster Trucks and the dolls are the show but the goal is that lovely green stuff at the end of the shareholder rainbow.
I hope Gerwig's Barbie will be entertaining and thoughtful but there is no doubt that it exists for one purpose and one purpose only—
“…so we can feel great about buying perfect Barbies for our babies.”
How’s that for timing. It’s almost like Mattel knew when they financed the film…
