Barbie Review:  Are men missing the point of Greta Gerwig's record-breaking film?

I think it would be wrong to suggest that I was excited to see the new Barbie movie.

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It will come as no surprise to anyone that, as male who grew up in the 90s, though Barbie was certainly a well-known name to me, the brand did not constitute a formative childhood memory. That is not to suggest that I was all Action Man and Power Rangers either. I fell neatly in the category of ‘Nerdy collector’, filling my pockets with Crazy Bones and lining glistening folders with Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards, insisting I provide every one of my mother’s household guests with a private guided tour of my complete collections.

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So, when my fiancée, giddy with the excitement that would rival a 10-year-olds first trip to Disneyland, dragged me eagerly to the cinema one rainy Sunday, I was not brimming with nostalgic excitement as she was. I could well understand the excitement, however, as she must clearly remember when I had similarly dragged her into a cinema on New Years Day, nursing a horrendous hangover and cursing her existence, to see the latest Spider-Man instalment that I was positive was going to have cameos from previous Spider-Men. I was right, of course. So, no. Excitement was not the word. I was, however, undeniably curious.

The film was already a record-breaker in its first few weeks, having broken a billion dollars in revenue in only 17 days following its release, making it the first film by a female director to reach such a milestone. But I wasn’t interested in the money – I was interested in the message.

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I had assumed it was a kid’s film – I assume, in a way, it is. But the controversy swelling online was far from the kind you might expect from Inside Out and Up. Many critics, most notably from the right, have slammed the movie for glorifying anti-male sentiments, with Ben Shapiro calling it ‘flaming garbage’ and Lauren Chen branding it as ‘insufferably woke’. A few US senators have even gone as far to suggest that the film has a pro-Chinese agenda (something about a map – don’t ask).

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It’s safe to say that though I bore absolutely no shame in handing the tickets over for 2 seats to see Barbie, I was however, very aware of being male. I had prepared myself, for some reason, to be offended. I had inwardly prepared to meet some heinous and stereotyped depictions of men that I would take umbrage with, or perhaps I would leave the film feeling thoroughly forgotten, overlooked, or even villainised. Sort of the way any woman might have felt if she watched any film released between 1950 and 2010.

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The film’s plot was nothing to write home about. Margot Robbie portrays the ‘stereotypical Barbie’, quite literally living in a Barbie world; a fictional feminist utopia where every position of power is held by a different Barbie, including members of the senate. Ken (Ryan Gosling) is one of a number of Kens desperate for Barbie’s approval and feels as though he doesn’t exist unless Barbie acknowledges him; a dynamic clearly designed to parallel the unimportance of the Ken figure, who never received the love an adoration that Barbie did. Everything seems glorious and wonderful until, at the climax of one of Barbie’s disco parties, she suffers from an unexpected wave of nihilism and suddenly screams that she’s been thinking about death. It is revealed by the sage-like ‘Weird Barbie’ (Kate McKinnon) that whoever is playing with her in the ‘real world’ is bleeding their emotions and fears into Barbie’s world, and Barbie is tasked with the quest of venturing into the real-world to right the wrong with whomever the mystery, death-fearing girl is.

 

What follows is a tongue-in-cheek, meta romp where Barbie, joined by Gosling’s Ken as a stowaway, lands in Los Angeles and encounters a male dominated society rife with sexism and misogyny, demonstrated almost immediately by the leering and catcalls she receives, shortly before being slapped on the backside by a passer-by. While Barbie is heartbroken with this reality, having believed previously that Barbie had helped change the world by helping little girls to believe they could achieve anything, Ken becomes enraptured with this male-centric paradise, quickly learning the word ‘patriarchy’ as though it was a male haven, and stealing several books on ‘Why Men Rule Everything’ and several others on horses to help boost his macho image.

 

Though the film could be happily watched and enjoyed by children of all ages, it has undeniable political undertones. It would be naïve of me to try to convince you that the film didn’t have a moral message or agenda. Ken’s obsession with the patriarchy and acquiring things that boost his masculinity is a clear critique of the incel community, particularly when he returns to Barbie land and usurps the Barbies in favour of giving Kens more power and fills Barbie land with macho images of trucks and horses. The dig at masculine insecurity is not well-hidden, but impressively done and very funny. Likewise, Barbie’s almost instantaneous encounter with misogyny is a clear reflection on how common it is for men to sexualise women in public. When I commented on how that was surprising to see in a "kid’s" film, by fiancée passionately replied with ‘But that’s exactly what it’s like.’ It’s equally jarring when Barbie storms into the HQ of Mattel, the creators of Barbie, only to find that the board of directors is entirely male, chaired by their bumbling but seemingly well-meaning CEO (Will Ferrel), who then makes a pointless but nonetheless hilarious crusade into Barbieland. They accomplish absolutely nothing, but the whole thing is rather funny.

 

The real question is, did I come away feeling “male-bashed” or villainised? Did I step out of the cinema despairing at the twilight of society and mourning the death of equality in favour of a feminist agenda? Did I understand at all where these angry conservatives were coming from?

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Entirely not.

 

First of all, as I have already suggested, the film was hilarious. The self-aware aspects were a little bit laboured at times, particularly in Helen Mirren’s narration, but there were some honest, good-natured laugh-out-loud moments. It’s hard to imagine that these desperate critics were so offended by the feminist agenda that they temporarily forgot to laugh when Barbie suddenly becomes afraid of her mortality, or when the builder-Kens try to build a wall to stop Barbie escaping, but Ken’s friend Alan points out that they will be able to escape so long as the Ken’s don’t realise they have to build the wall out instead of just up, and it cuts to a horde of Ken’s building a single pillar of bricks directly into the sky. Yes, there is the occasional sickly-sweet cameo or "woke" reference that’s a little bit ‘meh’, but I can’t help but feel that the sole purpose of any film is entertainment. I was absolutely entertained. What more to people want from a film?

 

 

It also looks incredible. The sets (according to my fiancée) are almost entirely accurate, scaled up replicas of genuine Barbie products, from the houses to the cars and aeroplanes, even down to the mugs and plastic food. The transitions from Barbie’s world to the real world consists of cardboard, picture-book style journeys, where cardboard cut-out rockets blast Ken and Barbie across a 2D world straight out of Little Big Planet, and help give the sense of a picture-perfect universe, vastly contrasting with the slightly seedy environment of the real Venice Beach.

 

The performances are brilliant too. Robbie’s Barbie is suitably twee at the beginning of the film but manages to find enough helplessness towards the end to generate some real pathos. Gosling is not only hilarious as Ken, but also helps to generate a good deal of pity as well, despite (arguably) being the films antagonist. Some other cast members stand out, in particular Michael Cera’s gormless but loveable ‘Alan’, Ken’s friend who didn’t sell well as a toy, America Ferrera as the ex-Barbie fan turned exhausted mother. Although her story gets a little lost in the furore of Ken’s coup d’etat, her relationship with her daughter is heartwarming and relatable. Not to mention half the cast of Netflix’s Sex Education have notable roles as well.

 

So, as a film, I cannot help but rate it highly. It was funny, imaginative, well-performed. What more do I require from a trip to the cinema? But in terms of its moral undertones, I can’t help but feel that whoever thinks the message of this film is anti-male has clearly misunderstood the point of it entirely. Some critics have taken issue with the ending, which I won’t spoil here, but have essentially argued that it subtly hints at the idea that men should take a backseat and allow women to take control. It’s obvious that this is not what is being suggested. If anything, the message behind Barbie is, in my view, the most important message to help men I have seen in any film before. And it focuses on the character of Ken.

 

I mentioned there were echoes of the incel community that were alluded to in Ken’s character. For those that don’t know, incels (short for “involuntarily celibate”) are men who hate women because, according to them, it’s the women’s fault that no one sleeps with them. Now, these men are obviously an extreme example of male misogyny, but I believe that some form of these thought patterns exist in many men, and is reflected in Ken’s character. Ken believes that his worth and value are entirely dictated by Barbie’s attention. Essentially, unless Barbie is looking at him, he’s worthless. Naturally, when Ken stumbles into a male-dominated world where men are encouraged to be high-achievers and women are expected to want them, Ken is delighted. He embeds himself in the patriarchy because he is celebrated and made to feel special there. What’s brilliant about Gosling’s portrayal is that Ken does not seem like a bad guy. In fact, there isn’t a single moment, even when Gosling is sucked into patriarchal thought patterns, that we don’t feel the sting of sympathy when we watch him smile weakly, or flash his abs. He’s trying to feel important to someone.

 

Such is the pressure of patriarchy on men. Only at the end, when Barbie assures Ken that he needs to learn who he is, does Ken realise that his confidence needs to come in self-discovery, rather than the affections of other people. So many young men out there are struggling to come to terms with who they are in an increasingly challenging world. It’s unsurprising that so many are falling into Andrew Tate’s deftly-spun web of objectifying women, because it’s easier to hear that ‘women are the problem’ than look hard in the mirror. I think the most valuable lesson that most critics of Barbie seem to be missing, is that a veneer of forced masculinity will shatter your self-esteem, rather than build it. As Margot Robbie states in one interview, the most ideal example of a man in Barbie is the character of Alan. He’s shy, a little awkward perhaps, but he’s helpful, kind, really good at martial arts for some reason (which we discover when he takes on a horde of Kens but doesn’t boast about it afterwards) and most importantly, he does not feel the need to conform to the Kens’ forced masculinity. He’s just Alan. And there’s only one Alan.

 

So, the key takeaways from a trip to see Barbie as a man: Don’t be ashamed, wear pink, don’t slap a girl’s arse (unless she’s said she’s cool with it), and, most importantly, don’t allow anyone’s idea of masculinity to rob you of what it means to be you.

 

In a world of Kens, be an Alan.