'Black Barbie' Proves That Representation Is Relative — And Sometimes Unproductive

Like last year's "Barbie," a new documentary raises questions about whether seeing yourself reflected in commercialized art serves you or a corporation.

In many ways, the release of “Black Barbie: A Documentary” was inevitable. Months after “Barbie” hit theaters and melted the minds of white feminists everywhere, an examination of the actually groundbreaking path of the single Black doll at the periphery of that movie seems marginally necessary.

That’s partly because pop culture has been in a yearslong “representation” phase in which, for example, a film that rightfully asserts the existence of Blackness in a stereotypically white space like Barbie’s is sometimes considered essential for that alone. But is “Black Barbie” good? It occasionally feels like that should be less important than what it’s about.

From writer-director Lagueria Davis, “Black Barbie” tells the doll’s origin story, in part through the testimonies of the Black women who helped bring her to fruition. One of those women is the filmmaker’s own aunt: Beulah Mae Mitchell, who in 1955 was one of the first and only Black employees at Mattel hired as a toy tester.

This affectionate and personal spirit is an undercurrent of the documentary, in which Davis is also a character. Through voice-over narration, she tells the audience that she’s anti-doll or, perhaps more accurately, a Barbie skeptic who is initially unable to see why so many people, particularly Black women like her aunt, would still today be captivated by a toy.

Most of “Black Barbie” — the whole first hour of its 90 minutes, to be exact — illuminates that through a long-gestating narrative around representation. Prior to 1980, all Barbies were white. It wasn’t until Mattel hired its first Black designer — Kitty Black Perkins, who is interviewed in the documentary — in 1978 that the reality of a Black Barbie was seriously considered.