finally, I watched the movie of the season and I have one (1) thought on my otherwise empty head:

the little dialectic of barbieland becoming invaded by the idea of patriarchy and then barbies collectively organizing to abolish it happens all inside the little make-believe world of barbieland that the movie itself acknowledges is a reality constructed through children playing. in this regard, kens aren’t really the patriarchy, they’re a pretend version of patriarchy. barbies and kens can be easily interpreted as children imitating concepts they themselves do not understand that thoroughly. gosling’s ken himself acknowledges that he wasn’t really commited to any ideology in particular. he liked the aesthetics of patriarchy (he liked the horses!). so the movie can be read as brutally cynical, right? because it doesn’t really do the same thing the matrix does (even when it’s directly alluded): the matrix, a make-believe world becomes an important battlefield because it ties directly into the machines’ source of energy (if people aren’t convinced by the simulation, which can be read as capitalist ideology, then machines won’t be able to keep humans captive in order to drain them). on barbie, the importance of barbieland is never really stressed beyond the implication that it changes mattel’s toyline, which the execs do not want because of a vague commitment to, uh, preserving the essence of barbie? what. so by the same token that only allows barbie to be president of barbieland, barbie can only abolish patriarchy in barbieland. by the way, will ferrel sucks. but the ken number rules and is kino. that is all.

  • operacion_ogro [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I think you’re giving it a little too much credit with this interpretation. I saw Barbieland as an allegory for our world, except one in which gender roles are reversed. In Barbieland, men (Kens) are marginalized, while women (Barbies) rule, where it’s the opposite in Humanland. Barbie is upset that the human world isn’t like Barbieland, and fights really hard to restore Barbieland to the status quo, which is actually fucked, because since Barbieland is an allegory for Humanland, then the moral of the story is that we’re not allowed to actually change the world, and the best we can hope for is for the patriarchy to throw a few more crumbs to the oppressed. Even under its corporate advertising surface, it’s a deeply liberal movie that can’t imagine life outside of a neoliberal democracy.

    Also if we’re being really ungenerous to the movie, then the ending could be interpreted as transphobic, because Barbie’s wish to become a real girl is only granted in the form of having a vagina