Hijacking Barbie
Like watching a slo-mo’d visual of an impending car crash, I stood mesmerized. Ryan Gosling, donned in a fuschia rhinestone-bedazzled suit, sang and danced across the 2024 Oscar Awards stage. Bro’d up by scores of black tuxed, cowboy-hatted Kens, Gosling belted out the Grammy and Oscar nominated song “I’m just Ken” from the movie Barbie. If you missed this saccharine
extravaganza, here’s the link.
How did the blockbuster movie of 2023, written by a woman, starring a woman, about feminism and women, get co-opted by men at the preeminent film industry event?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I loooovve me some Ryan Gosling. Who doesn’t?? Furthermore, I really love, and also like, men. This Suzy doll’s accessories include a passel of boy children, plus a husband, and several male friends and allies.
Quick movie summary: Barbie and friends inhabit a utopian land where women retain all the power, wealth and status. Barbies are doctors, the President, and trash collectors. Ken, a supporting character, is known for his good looks and the nebulous activity of “beach.” Plus his unrequited love for Barbie.
As the story unfolds, Barbie experiences an existential crisis, Ken discovers and embraces the real-world patriarchy, and a male/female power struggle ensues. The Kens take over Barbie land, but are eventually thwarted, with the help of ally Ken-doll one-off Alan, portrayed my Michael Cera. The Barbies regain power and the Kens’ emotions and value are acknowledged. All is transcendent in the world. Except that Barbie makes it kindly clear, she wants only friendship with Ken.
The positive messages of the Barbie movie: women’s empowerment, reimagined masculinity, equality of the sexes…all roundly obliterated by the negation of writer/director Greta Gerwig’s and co-producer/star Margot Robbie’s contributions. Though the film garnered eight Oscar nominations, Gerwig and Robbie were made invisible by the Academy, receiving zero personal nominations.
While Oppenheimer cleaned up at the Oscars, Barbie took home the gold and the silver at the box office. Reigning as the highest grossing movie of 2023, Barbie exceeded Oppenheimer sales by more than 50%. Another box office best: Barbie is the now the 14th highest grossing movie of all time.
After a malapropos guitar solo by Slash of Guns and Roses, Gosling stepped back into the audience for a sing-along with Oscar nominee America Ferrera, Gerwig, and Robbie. It was painful to witness these globally accomplished women clamoring for their moment in the spotlight, like high school cheerleaders kowtowing to the football jocks.
At the song’s crescendo, the instantly recognizable Mattel/Barbie script, flashed “Ken” in neon pink overhead. The word “Barbie,” the de facto raison d’etre for this whole song and dance, glaringly absent from the entire performance.
Alas, the reliable trope of Hollywood male dominance shone proudly in the hot pink spotlight at the Oscars.
Was it putting Ken in the “friend zone” that lit the fuse for this “Kenergy” backlash? Or was the counterblast a sardonic reaction to Gerwig’s illumination of the persistent male dominance of society’s power structures? Though pleased with their skim of the box office take, the “girls” are forced back into the box.
The patriarchy is both alive and well for Barbie and IRL. Yet profitably or iconically, Ken will never equal Barbie.
I hate it here in these patriarchal institutions. Nice writing.