The pink explosion arrives. There are no innocent or guilty colors. For years we have attributed the color pink to girls and blue to boys. They have been socially established clichés to mark the difference of gender (male or female, with no other alternatives). An acquaintance of mine decided to wage a war against pink. She was pregnant with a girl and she forbade any piece of that color to be given to her. She censored a color. She didn’t do it because she didn’t like her, but because of what she represented. She resigned as a symbol that she broke patriarchal stereotypes.
Now pink has become fashionable. I went to see the movie Barbie, about the doll that is the queen of this color. The people who queued at the cinema were dressed in the favorite color of Barbie, who has always lived in a pink universe. T-shirts, skirts, shorts and dresses filled the room.
The film, directed by Greta Gerwig, stars Margot Robbie, in the role of “stereotypical Barbie”, that is, the blonde Barbie of a lifetime, and Ryan Gosling in the role of Ken. The result is a comedy that mixes humor and criticism.
In Barbieland, live all the Barbie that Mattel has brought to the market. There are many ethnicities; They are perfect professionals, winners. They appear strong and empowered, but they are toys. In his parallel world, nothing is real. There is no effort, no pain, no problems. Life is a succession of days of success and fun.
In literature, the construction of parallel worlds that have nothing to do with reality is frequent. Let’s remember Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, when the protagonist escapes the norms of Victorian society by chasing a white rabbit, until she arrives in a parallel universe where everything is surreal and can be questioned. Who I am? wonders Alice. Let’s remember The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, with the real world and the Fantasy Kingdom, the magical space. The protagonist of Ende, Bastian, a child without affection and a victim of bullying, manages to cross the border to become part of two worlds. He is a hero and an anti-hero at the same time.
Barbie must also leave her comfort zone. It happens when she begins to ask questions, and when the immediacy is transformed. The shape of her feet, made to wear heels and go on tiptoes, touch the ground. It is a picture of transformation: the doll touches the real world. Then her face becomes sad and she has the first serious reflection in the entire history of barbies: she wonders about death.
The play seems skillful to me. Only people are aware of our finiteness. We know we have an expiration date and we ask ourselves questions. From the moment Barbie thinks about death, a human life begins. The road will not be easy, it will be full of questions, as the magnificent song by Billie Eilish says, composed for a very beautiful scene, which expresses a capacity to feel that is transformative.
Barbie reminds me of Carlo Collodi’s character, Pinocchio, the quintessential representative of the human maturation process. Pinocchio is a simple piece of wood at the beginning of his story. Geppetto will make a lying puppet of him. After numerous mistakes and adventures, he will transform into a real boy. In the same way, Barbie, the plastic doll with an eternal smile, will discover that she is capable of being sad, of feeling real emotions.
The film is not only a vindication of the empowered woman nor the discovery of Ken as a flat, abused character, who exists under the gaze of Barbie: Ken has no job or home. It is not just about criticizing the fake world of Mattel, which plays at creating replicas of plastic women from the offices of male executives.
The theme of the film is humanization. It claims the metamorphosis of the plastic doll without a vagina into a woman who visits a gynecologist for the first time. A woman who asks questions, expresses emotions, apologizes and amends life. Pinocchio was a tree boy who became a boy of flesh and blood. Barbie is the plastic doll that she learns to hear. What was I made for? is the question in Eilish’s song. In the movie, we find the answer.
