What is a movie review on a hyped-up PG-13 rated bio-flick about a child’s doll doing in an opinion column in a business newspaper?
This is just an opinion of a former professor of business administration at the MBA level, whose basic liberal arts education in literature and the arts has acknowledged other perspectives in the conundrum of “Art imitating Life” or “Life imitating Art.” Mainstream and social media are already deluged with reviews and comments for and against the form and substance of the Barbie movie, and conspiracy theories abound on the grand scheme of the marketers of the product riding on the eternal gender equality issues since Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Barbie: the movie is an interesting marketing case study, as it would be dissected in an MBA class. But more than just for showing marketing strategy as it has used the art form that is the movie, it must be analyzed for its substance — which is the message the movie will convey to its audience at various levels from intuition to enlightened passion for or against the issues raised.
The Barbie movie audience is 66.2% female and 33.8% male, according to thewrap.com. It said 74.6% of viewers are under the age of 29 (Gen Z), while 16.9% are Millennials (30-39 years old) and 8.5% are Gen X (40+ years old). As of Aug. 3, 2023, Barbie has grossed $406.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $429.3 million in other countries and territories, for a worldwide total of $835.7 million, according to Barbie IMDb. It is expected to reach a $1-billion record-breaking box office success and set the record for any film that was not a sequel, remake or superhero property.
The main character in the movie is Barbie, an 11.5” molded plastic toy doll with a stylized adult female body with big pointy breasts, teeny-tiny waist, and overly long shapely legs on tiptoes (for high-heeled shoes). Barbie’s pretty smiling face crowned with comb-able long fiber-hair perfects what might be the conditioning of a child’s mind of how she should look, when she grows up.
Barbie was created by Ruth Handler in 1959, when she and her husband Elliot decided to expand their little business of making dollhouses on a contract basis. The revolutionary adult Barbie doll concept was modeled on “the German Bild Lilli doll, a risqué gag gift for men based upon a cartoon character featured in the West German newspaper Bild Zeitung, Britannica says. And the Handlers approached the toy company, Mattel, to manufacture Barbie, launched on March 9, 1959.
But marketing the sexy, adult Barbie doll was a problem for Mattel. “Mothers in a 1958 Mattel-sponsored market study before the doll’s release criticized Barbie for having ‘too much of a figure.’ Mattel circumvented this problem, however, by advertising Barbie directly to children via television. Mattel, in fact, upon sponsoring Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club program in 1955, became the first toy company to broadcast commercials to children.” Britannica adds.
Barbie-scaled peripherals, i.e., clothes, jewelry, cars, fully equipped dollhouses, cars and even backdrop/settings were advertised and sold briskly in the US and international markets (but not manufactured in the US to avoid higher labor costs, according to Britannica). In 1961, Mattel brought out the male Ken, Barbie’s ultimate “accessory” who was not really her boyfriend. Midge, Barbie’s best friend, came next, and in 1964 Barbie’s little sister, Skipper and other siblings. By 1968 Barbie had “friend” dolls of color and in 1980 Barbie herself had an African-American incarnation, and then came a Latina Barbie.
From the late 1970s through the 1980s the social issues on gender equality rose to fever-pitch, specially because of the global financial and economic crises, and the discriminatory “glass ceiling” for women in the workplace. Marketers of the Barbie doll jumped into the fray of gender discrimination issues and came up with Barbies costumed for different professions and jobs, from being a utility service person to an astronaut, a wildlife conservationist, a United Sates Air Force pilot, a news anchor and an astrophysicist. To date, Barbie has had over 200 jobs, according to today.com.
“You can be anything you want! No dream’s impossible, because you’re unstoppable,” the official music video of Barbie Magical Dream Camper chants to mesmerize Barbie fans and fans-to-be. And that’s the point of Barbie: the movie. You, every woman, can be like me, Barbie — you can be anything you want to be. Watch me!
In the movie, the original blonde, blue-eyed, reed-thin but big boobs Barbie doll wakes up to her usual perfect day in her perfect Barbie Land with perfect girl buddies in varied roles who are perfect personality replicas of her perfect self. One blight in Barbie Land might be the existence of not-so-perfect males led by the original Ken and Ken replicas in various attires mostly for leisure and play. Note that not one Ken is marked as a respected professional or a VIP, unlike the Barbies who display empowerment and a take-charge attitude toward what happens next. “Barbie has a great day every day. But Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him” — the introductory annotations (voiced by Helen Mirren) say it so clearly in the opening scenes.
Tickly romance is definitely out of the question for Barbie when Ken asks the loaded question, “Can I see you tonight?” “(No), it is ‘girls’ night (as every night is girls’ night),” Barbie replies flatly. And that’s when Barbie decides to cross over to the real world to test her empowerment and self-sufficiency and sadly learns about defeat and dying. And she takes to the real world with Ken in tow (she’s driving).
The tragedy for Barbie is finding the role reversal between her and Ken in the real world. Ken is awakened to the power of possession — fancy cars and mammoth vehicles like Hummers, jewelry and land, with his own “Kendom” exclusive only to male friends. His attire to match his vanity for his newfound power is a floor-length pristine white mink coat, same as that worn by Silvester Stallone in the movie Rocky. He maximizes on the “patriarchy” (male dominance) in the real world, where women serve and cater to men’s pleasures. Barbie is shocked that women willingly accept subservience and would even want to be attractive to men. Or that some women can hate or envy other women.
Ken proposes a “constitution” to take over Barbie Land. Barbie refuses. She then meets the pre-adolescent Sasha who used to play with her Barbie doll in her childhood, and Sasha’s mom Gloria, a sympathetic Mattel employee who helps whisk Barbie from the all-male Mattel executives who are chasing her to “put her back in the box” and return her to Barbie Land.
The experience with the real world has shattered Barbie’s self-confidence. “I am not good enough for anything,” she says to the spirit of Barbie Land — Ruth Handler herself, Barbie’s own creator. Gloria echoes the same, speaking as a “human”: “You can’t be the greatest, and not too great. Everything is your fault.” Her daughter Sasha, who had openly rebelled against her, at last embraces her in poignant realization and acceptance of her not-so-perfect mother’s perfect love for her.
Barbie decides to return to the real world and become human. First, she sets up an appointment with a gynecologist.
Critic Peter Debruge in Variety Magazine was candid, praising the humor “for giving permission to challenge what Barbie represents” and lauded Gosling’s physical performance, but concluded that the film is “an intellectual experience, not an emotional one, grounded largely in audience nostalgia.” The nostalgia that drew the crowds (two-thirds female, three-fourts under 29 years old) validated the winning marketing strategy for Mattel, more than rousing the passion and commitment for the protracted gender equality and nondiscrimination issues.
Katie Pickles of The Conversation observed that Barbie shows how “the matriarchy can be as bad as the patriarchy, with the Kens being the objectified and excluded sex in Barbieland.” Many reactors deplore the male-bashing that portrays a wimpy, jobless Ken in Barbieland and an arrogant and vain (but still jobless) Ken in his Kendom in the real world.
But what upset this writer the most in the Barbie movie is the gray, dreamlike opening scene (ala Stanley Kubrick in “2001”) where little girls are sitting in small chairs on a beach, quietly playing with their infant baby dolls, pretending to feed them and then gently caressing them to sleep. A towering 10-feet-high Barbie, dressed in her signature striped swimsuit, suddenly appears in their midst, grinning down on them. Instead of being frightened by the Barbie giant, the little girl’s faces grimace into crazed violence as they smash their baby dolls against the rocks. Enough of mother roles!
The dashing and splintering of the sacred primary role and duty of Woman as giver of life is too painful an exchange for independent self-determination and empowerment that some hard-core feminists might obsess for. Something is wrong somewhere.
A successful marketing strategy cannot justify a flawed message.
Amelia H. C. Ylagan is a doctor of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines.