Barbie: A study on pink irony  Premium

The article talks about the movie Barbie and it’s promises to be a fun house ride into the corridors of savage satire

The very first live-action feature film based on Mattel’s iconic fashion doll is only coming out only now, in 2023, more than 60 years after the doll was launched on March 9, 1959. It is ironic that the doll that has been singularly responsible for scarring the psyche of so many was launched a day after International Women’s Day! The irony continues as the film is opening on July 21, going head-to-head with the Christopher Nolan’s very serious Oppenheimer.

There are over 40 animation films based on Barbie from Barbie in the Nutcracker (2001) to Barbie: Skipper and the Big Babysitting Adventure (2023). The live-action movie has been in development since 2009. Several actors and directors were attached to the project at different points in time including Diablo Cody, Amy Schumer, Anne Hathaway, Alethea Jones and Patty Jenkins, till the final combination of Margot Robbie starring as the blonde doll, with Greta Gerwig directing from a screenplay she wrote with Noah Baumbach.

The 39-year-old Gerwig with Academy Award nominations for her Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019) might seem a strange choice to write and direct a film on a plastic doll which has had people wax eloquent on the harm the doll has done with its stereotyping of gender roles and acceptable beauty standards. The trailers, however, reveal the delicious subversions that are in store.

The teaser tells the story of the inspiration for the doll. Ruth Handler, who created the doll, apparently noticed that while her daughter, Barbara, enjoyed giving adult roles to her dolls, the dolls in the market were all baby dolls with chubby cheeks, dimple chin, curly hair, and very fair (sigh). When she suggested a doll with an adult body, her husband Elliot, who was a co-founder of the Mattel toy company, was not convinced.

Handler, while travelling with her children in Germany, saw the Bild Lilli doll, based on a comic-strip character, Lilli. The doll was launched in 1955 in Germany and had a full wardrobe of 1950s fashion — how charming that would have been! And so Barbie, named after Handler’s daughter, inspired by Lilli, was born. Incidentally, Handler’s son is called Kenneth and Barbie’s on-off boyfriend is called Ken — psychologists can have a field day with that.

Coming back to the teaser, with its unsettling Kubrick-ian vibe from the auteur’s 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, we like all the little children playing with their baby dolls, see Robbie as a giant Barbie doll dressed in the zebra-striped one-piece swimsuit that the first Barbie sported back in 1959. The little children immediately destroy their baby dolls looking up in awe at the glamazon towering over them.

Apart from all the pink in the trailer, which apparently caused a worldwide shortage, (the manufacturers however, say the shortage was caused by supply chain issues because of COVID-19) Barbie seems to be going through an existential crisis which causes her to be expelled from Barbieland to the real world. Barbie’s arched feet have gone flat (her heels touch the ground she says in wondering horror), ensuring she does not have to walk on her signature tiptoes.