A billion dollars grossed at, say, an average of ten dollars a ticket means that a hundred million people in the world have seen Barbie in the last three weeks. And ideological benefits must be added to the crematistic benefits. Barbie is all love. And from the vantage point of her matriarchy, she teaches Ken that he must learn to be himself, without depending on anyone’s gaze. In contrast to the oppression of patriarchy, which wears men down in their constant struggle for supremacy, while keeping them in the inopia of nail polish and tiptoeing, Barbie’s inclusive matriarchy supposes liberating take off the corset, become human and go to the gynecologist… if you decide you are a woman.
Greta Gerwig’s movie bores cows even on a summer night. His supposed comedic rants last as long as a failed artificial rocket. Of course, the laughter in the room wakes up from the drowsiness inspired by the combination of mainstream cinema and poorly developed material.
Never has such a cheap film turned out to be so profitable. Gerwig preserves the less interesting and more pragmatic side of mumblecore (the indie subgenre in which the actress, director and screenwriter started): that of not keeping up. And as for feminist engagement… it makes for a pedestrian recreation of the war of the sexes, with the shrewd perfidy attributed to women, combined with a healthy dose of toxic masculinity: we’ll beat the men by pitting them against each other! How?, easy: we seduce one and leave with the next one. That’s how identifiable pink femininity is for Gerwig: sex is power, even if it’s yawning.
And then there is the caricature of a company in turmoil, with a board of directors of men who laugh at the thanks of a childish CEO, unable to smell a commercial success in the new times. P3’s message is about feminism, and even Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie, can laugh at itself with the fat man gag. We hope, therefore, that it reaches one hundred million viewers…
Apart from this, Gerwig participates in misogynist thinking which, as the philosopher Alicia Miyares warns, always operates the same way: it defines what it is to be a woman and imposes on women to adapt to the definition.
