I’ll at least start by saying overall,the movie was solid. Maybe a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. 

First off, if you came into this movie and did not expect at least a certain level of feminist rhetoric, then you haven’t been paying attention to the current culture as a whole. Also I will just recommend that if you are a typical conservative guy that loves to refer to people with even a reasonable amount of empathy and emotions as “snowflakes” then you probably shouldn’t watch the movie. You will be offended, which is ironic I know. But I’ll get back to the heavy handed “women as a constant state of suffering” stuff in a little bit.

The movie was funny, with Ryan Gosling playing a lost Ken, dependent on Barbie for his sense of self worth, and Margot Robbie playing stereotypical Barbie, who starts to show cracks in her identity as such. I’m not going to sit here and go through the plot act by act but what I will do is review the broad themes and certain scenes that I found to be surprisingly thought worthy.

From the beginning of the movie the stage is set for a conversation about the current state of women in the world, feminism and its success or lack thereof, along with a myriad of other fun sensitive gender disputes. The movie did a fantastic job at highlighting the emotional and psychological struggles of the men in Barbie Land,the fictitious society where the creators have hyperbolically reversed roles for men and women.

As our main character sets foot in the real world, she starts to realize just how little Barbie has positively influenced reality. There is even a scene where she is called a fascist by a tween,something I found to be very hilarious but also deeply disturbing. It was a reminder of how in the current culture words like “fascist” and “racist” are often thrown around, usually with the issuer having little if any real idea of not only what that term means but also of the severity that it brings. Now this slur was used at the end of a rant about how Barbie has endorsed unrealistic beauty standards for women amongst many other charges.

Now on a quick side note, being called a fascist is no serious charge. Being compared to the likes of monsters like Benito Mussolini and Adolf HItler should never be taken lightly, and I think we forget that at our own peril. People like to throw around the term fascism just because in essence, the term has a weight of pure evil behind it. But what people forget is what it actually is. Fascism is a unification of the state and the economy. It is an evil belief that posits that strong arming through the violent oppression of dissent is the answer to survival and indeed flourishing. It is a creed that signals to all thugs and violent goons alike. Not to mention the usually severe racist themes which result in an ultimately nationalistic and often genocidal worldview.

Sorry to go on a tangent-and yes an article on fascism and its many misconceptions is on the way–but just from that brief definition above I think it would be very hard to accurately assign fascistic values to even just the concept of Barbie.

Now if you would like to have the conversation about how there are fascistic currents in our government, with the unholy alliance of government and the economy with things like industry regulations, forced subsidies, compulsory taxes and the like, then I’m all ears. 

The jaw-dropping rant that the key secondary character gives is my next mention. The term patriarchy is used(although it’s used probably some 30 times in the film altogether),as well as just in general every complaint in the known universe about the issues of being a woman. Now I’m not going to try and say I have some expert view or knowledge on what it means to be a woman…although I do have two sisters, a mother(duh), and even a girlfriend(woohoo!).However, I don’t think those are especially unique qualifications. What I do know is that during that rant I could certainly identify with a lot of her complaints, and not just because I have the ability to empathize or because I’ve witnessed those situations before, but more importantly.…because I’m a human being.

Yes, that’s correct people. The character’s long and heartfelt rant about being tired but feeling as if you can’t show it, about having to be someone’s lover but also be their caretaker at times, about how no one ever thanks you for all the hard work you do, about how hard it is to keep up appearances and not to just give in to the urge of quitting, those aren’t unique problems to women. Those are HUMAN problems. I’m not here to try and delegitimize her entire rant, I literally can’t imagine how hard it must’ve hit for some women in the audience. There obviously have been historical issues with women and rights in the world-let’s not even talk about the bullshit that is the abortion “issue” in America right now. 

Let’s not also act like women aren’t crushing men on college campuses,or the fact that men have higher incarceration rates, are more likely to die from suicide, more likely to flunk out of school, among many other often forgotten issues plaguing young men in society.

Still with me after that last poke-of-the-feminist-bear?

Good.

My point is that while it’s never helpful to keep things inside till it bursts, it’s also never wise to just swing the axe for the head at the other gender. Mostly because…what’s the point? I’m sure it feels good, but for fuck’s sake we’re in this together. Trashing the other sex can always be done in a fun and helpful way, if that’s not a paradoxical idea on its face. Things that are wrong have to see the light of day in order to be successfully dealt with, but that also means going about it tactfully, as hard as that may be.

The other side of this issue that I do think was done well was the part of the movie where Ken overtakes Barbie Land and makes his own patriarchy,which he seems to think has a high correlation to horses and trucks. With an abundance of beer and over masculinized theatrics, I think it was easy to be offended-yet again-, if you were a man watching it and you didn’t wait for things to develop, or if you are the classical conservative guy that thinks wearing pink is gay-and once again-loves to call people that get offended at anything snowflakes.

The movie does highlight a very important issue that I think men are not good at either talking about or dealing with. And that is the combination of our sometimes fragile egos and then definitely our inability to speak about our emotions. 

It takes the entire film for Ken to tell Barbie how he feels and how hurt he was that he was literally dependent on her to just feel validated. Men shouldn’t have the issues that we have in saying how we feel, or in dealing with tough setbacks and problems and just taking it on the chin(that’s that ego). This problem comes from the long-standing image of the classically stoic man as the standard. Never showing emotions, and never asking for help, the man is left to appear as a mountain while on the inside burning alive with pain and frustration.

Alright now to my favorite part of the movie!

Barbie Land is back to normal, the Ken’s have sung their frustrations away and are on the path to fixing their problems in society, and the secondary character and her daughter are happy again.

Now what of Barbie?

Barbie goes with her creator, and has a beautiful discussion about where women are in the world. About how we make concepts up like patriarchy to help us feel better, and how living actually is and feels. It all comes to a head when Barbie is asked how she wants to move forward. She has no desire to go back to Barbie Land, with its perfection and never-ending sunshine. She says to the creator that she wants to go back to reality, she had a taste and she wants to live in the real world. Now this prompts the creator to remind her that ideas live forever- being represented by her life in Barbie Land- and that to live in the real world is to accept death.

To accept the beautiful thing that is life is to accept that it will all end one day.

This part was done beautifully and I’m hoping the message won’t be lost on the millions of people that saw the film, but I’m sure it will be nonetheless.

We have a lot of choices in life, that much goes without saying. However a truly fundamental choice we have is how we want to live our own lives. Do we want to waste it on superficial pursuits and activities, forever chasing a pleasure that is fleeting and actually draining?

Everyday we wake up, and choose who we want to be. Do we want to continue being the person we were yesterday? Do we want to actually start working on whatever project we’ve been toying with starting for years? Is what we’ve been doing and who we have been behaving like actually good for our own happiness and not just the motions of survival?

More often than not, I’ve had to go against the grain in order to find my values. In order to find out what really made me tick. I had to introspect and analyze my thoughts, my feelings and reasons for doing things. Barbie did the same thing. I think an individual confronted with everlasting life, then being shown the beautiful,chaotic mess that is life, and choosing life is a great message to send out into the world.

Life is a challenge, that much is an understatement. There are no prewritten rules or guidelines that are tailored to each individual. I mean there are religious and secular movements that attempt to do so, and my contempt for those should not go unmentioned, however a full treatment of the dangers of dogma will be for another time.

The other side of having agency in one’s life is that we choose our own idols. Now I know recently hero worship has come under attack, and for some good reasons. But human beings need an ideal to aim at, considering it’s a realistic one.

If we don’t pick our idols, then who will? Maybe if we don’t, a giant company like Mattel will shove the idea of some thin waisted bleach blonde bimbo down our throats and tell our little girls that that’s the body standard to achieve? And tell our little boys that that’s the girl of their dreams?

We have the power to change the world, but it starts at the level of one.

Choose life.

**Just for clarification the last sentence has nothing to do with being pro life or pro choice, I believe an individual has complete autonomy over their body and its functions. A fetus is not an individual and therefore has no rights.**