Belated thoughts on 'Barbie,' occasioned by Oscar nods
Plus: Tina Fey, an intriguing political ad, and more
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here are this week’s five items for you.
1. A take I haven’t written elsewhere
Belated thoughts on Barbie, occasioned by Oscar nods
I did not see Barbie in theaters this past summer. I watched it the way I watch most movies and TV these days: on my phone, folding laundry. I mention this to acknowledge, up front, that I realize I didn’t have the ~*~experience~*~ of Barbie so many people loved and which its makers likely intended. Maybe, if I’d had that experience, my response to Barbie would be different, though I tend to think not.
Anyway, Barbie got Oscar nominations yesterday, so it’s buzzy again, and I figured this was the time, if ever, to share my take. I did not love Barbie. I didn’t dislike it, per se—there were some funny bits, and the two female leads are very pleasant. But I did not love it because I was disappointed. After all the takes, all the thinkpieces, all the odes to America Ferrara’s Big Feminist Speech, I just thought there would be … more.
I know, I know, it’s a movie about a hot plastic doll. But it was sold as having more, and a lot of people, including writers whose cultural criticism I appreciate, like Alissa Wilkinson (then at Vox) and Hannah Anderson for CT, wrote articles which suggested to me that sales pitch was true.
Most of my discontent with Barbie centers on two parts: the speech and the story’s handling of men.
Some of the speech is true, at least for many women much of the time. There’s a reason it was widely applauded, after all. It might even have been radical had it not dropped 60 years after The Feminine Mystique and the extensive debates over women’s roles of the latter half of the 20th century.
I’m aware of the fan theory that the speech was not really for grown women, who generally already understand the ironies and difficulties of womanhood, but for girls and men who haven’t heard this stuff before. Maybe so, though I’m doubtful that any girl old enough to see this film and any man willing to actually listen to it is really unaware of these basic, decades-old feminist ideas.
Beyond that, though, parts of the speech are simply not universally reflective of the female experience in contemporary America, though the spiel is presented as exactly such a unifying manifesto.
Were Ferrara ranting about the mental load of household management and how rarely its distribution is equal across sexes, I’d be right there with her. (N.b. this is not a commentary about my husband, who is extremely responsible.) Instead she says things like this, which is the climax of the speech: “I’m just so tired watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.”
Does every single other woman do this? I can’t think of any of my female friends, colleagues, or family—across demographic differences—whom I’d describe as behaving like this on a routine basis. Well, maybe one, at her job. But nowhere near a majority. I don’t behave like this. Do I want people to like me? Yeah, but in, like, a normal human way. Not particularly because I’m a woman. And certainly not as a top priority, at the expense of other goods and virtues, as the speech describes.
I don’t even think Barbie director Greta Gerwig could possibly live like this—after all, her job has something in common with mine: It involves making controversial public statements. If she were constantly contorting herself to make people like her, she could not make movies like Barbie.
That brings me to a second problem with the speech, which is how much of it is not specifically female. Take this:
It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong. […] You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people.
You know where you can find something a lot like this? In
’s You Are Not Your Own or ’s Self-Made, an intellectual history with overwhelmingly male subjects. The expressions of the pressure Ferrara describes can follow gendered patterns, yes. But the pressure itself and the feelings of inadequacy, striving, and anxiety it can produce are not unique to women.On the subject of men, Barbie seemed to want to have something to say. Men were not the main focus, of course, but there was supposed to be something there. There was the precipice of something, I’ll concede, but there was not something.
The precipice was this: Liberated women in theory can be and do anything they want, but in practice we often have responsibility without power, which sucks. Men may have more power and options, but without real purpose or responsibility, they feel empty and inadequate. (Ken’s job is “beach,” and he responds to learning about patriarchy by grasping at power, but because no purpose or responsibility to others comes with it, he has a real King Midas time.)
Now an interesting conclusion might have been something like: We need to rethink masculinity like we did (albeit imperfectly and with many unintended consequences) for femininity in the women’s liberation movement. Or maybe an exploration of power vs. responsibility. Or, if there’s not room in the movie for all this, keep the focus more narrowly on women and don’t comment on men at all.
Instead the ending for Ken was the adoption of superficial Instagram self-affirmation that is female-coded in real life and therefore ostensibly novel as a denouement for a male character. It wasn’t enough.
2. What I'm reading this week
The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross, by Brian Zahnd. Reviewing for CT, ideally for release day on February 6.
3. A recommendation
This New York Times interview with Tina Fey (unlocked link) about the new version of Mean Girls. I’m not really interested in the movie, but I am perpetually interested in Fey (thanks to 30 Rock) and her barely suppressed bristling at rapidly changing social norms. This exchange 👀
4. Recent work
The Biden team is wary of a regional Mideast war. So why are U.S. troops still in harm’s way? | Defense Priorities (newsletter)
5. Miscellaneous
Thought this was a very interesting political ad—not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it. Some aspects I appreciate, but I don’t think cultivating distrust in well-established and generally credible (if imperfect) information-gathering methods will move us closer to “normal.”
My super-feminist wife wasn’t all that impressed by Barbie. My friend who was raised in western Kansas? She and her sisters sobbed through much of it. I think it was aimed at them, not folks who deeply consider these things all the time.
I enjoyed the speech, BUT we also watched the movie with our 20 year old son and he was not impressed. Infact it made for good dinner table discussion on what it means to be a man! As an Indian women, I have never felt emasuclated by the men in my life ever. I am sorry for those who have struggled but I am so sick of the generalization of women's feelings and putting men down in order to lift women up!