Deconstruction is something that we have been doing in music, plastic-arts, and performing arts since the 19th century. A turning point was in 1912 in Paris, the cradle of art for the modern world, with L'Après-midi d'un faune (EN: Afternoon of a Faun), where the most basic element of ballet, which is to use three dimensions, was broken down by Vaslav Nijinski to expose an erotic fantasy in two dimensions. The play ended with boos, and critics and newspapers then trashed the famous ballet artist. But days later, the greatest bastion of Parisian art, Auguste Rodin came to Nijinski's defense and fundamentally changed the trend of art in the world.
Deconstructing Barbie was a great idea. It could not have been made into a feature film with the vision of the animations that are currently shown on TV of that character; that would have been a successful FLOP. Historically, deconstructions have advanced culture and knowledge to break through stereotypes and entrenched structures. The Canterbury Tales (1484) is a satire on the stories of the saints; Don Quixote (1615) is a deconstruction of the adventures of the knights who had dominated medieval literature for 200 years; in the 19th Century, the Impressionists deconstructed Neoclassicism paintings like Degas or Van Gogh…more recently still, the animated feature film Shrek deconstructed the fairy tale stories of princesses and princes. But from the idea to the fact, there is a gap: Greta Gerwig's version did not deconstruct Barbie, she built a feminist fantasy of reality through an emblematic 60-year-old doll.
What a pity!
A fantasy with no backbone
It is not worth reviewing the countless details of the script and direction where the rules are arbitrarily broken to accommodate the feminist's construction stressed theme behind the plot. It is worth mentioning Woody Allen in remembering: “if it bends, it's funny; if it breaks it is not”. BARBIE is the out-of-the-box fantasy of a feminist trying to make comedy out of a subject she doesn't yet understand or delve into in true depth. Comedy is something serious, only people with a deep knowledge of the reality they mock do it well, so they know where the tensest point is to bend the story without breaking it.
There are plenty of good ideas in the film, but without context and a clear vision of what the problem is, it becomes noise, as happens throughout the film. For example, a line that could have been comical, framed in a deconstructive context, is “I am a man without power, does that make me a woman?”; but in the end it is the icing on a melted and rotten ice cream that ends up breaking a smeared caricature.
The feminist “standard” speech, does it have a glorious moment?
The turning point where the resolution of the plot is supposed to begin, several situations occur which, not only is it not funny, but bares no clue to what the crucial situation of women is.
This is how the 3rd act begins, with Gloria, the owner of the Stereotypical Barbie, making a grand monologue:
"It is literally impossible to be a woman (…) we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.
You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can't ask for money because that's crass. You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean. You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas. You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people (…) You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.
But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.
It's too hard! It's too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.
Are we really going to accept that this neurotic representation of what it is to be a woman is caused by the Patriarchy of men and their dominance over history and culture? I agree that there is still discrimination, but there is discrimination against many different people because of numerous reasons... that will never go away. But it is not systemic, it is done by people who are ignorant and live in self-deception.
Please, move onward already!
Culture, not always, but deep down is a structure that tends towards tyranny. It constricts us and tells us who we are, it pushes us and pushes us, over and over again to the edge of a precipice... seeking our confession: I am not enough. Our way out of this is to discover who we are and, with our own wings, take flight over the precipice. Men and women experience this existential crisis, not just women.
Existentially, how does it happen? Through the ideals we admire, whether in people or life experiences. I see Elon Musk, the accomplishments that he has achieved at 52 years old, and I am ashamed. My daughter admires influencers with a hundred thousand likes on each video; in the face of these, she is lacking. Ideals judge us, and we always fall short of them; but they also drive us, teaching us who we aspire to become and recognizing where we are at; because without that starting point, there is no growth or transformation.
If women assumed limiting “cultural ideals”, proposed as "brainwashing" in the film, of a supposed millennial Patriarchy… in reality it was already “trashed” in the 60s and 70s. By the 80s it was clear in society that we could not judge women as we were doing. Of course, there was more than one slowpoke back then or even now, everything doesn't happen all at once... laws have existed for decades that protect discrimination on the grounds of religion, sex, and race. Now it is the responsibility of women to stop carrying that baggage and not continue pressing with arguments from the past. Remember, what you resist, persists. Women are then putting pressure on themselves. Act as many are doing and make your life into whatever you aim at; that's what the ideals that culture instilled in you were there for... to go beyond them.
This fantasy is not real
Myths and stories are sometimes more real than reality itself. In order to create them into stories, films and novels, the author needs to decant and distill the story to its essentials and then embody it in a character that gives it life; that is when they inspire us and make us deepen our sense of what we call real.
However, you do not necessarily use the very circumstances of what it represents; just as Hamlet deals with the tragedy of the human being facing the circumstances of life or Snow White the difficulties of a young girl's puberty pushing her into the realm of womanhood. Barbie gets lost in the explicit without discerning what is in the background, she flaps around like a fish in a boat, being pulled out of the water by the fisherman.
If Barbie is the fantasy of a feminist woman, trying to reflect on why she is where she is, and what is the way forward for women today... it made me think, what is the fantasy that reveals who men are and what is the obstacle that we need to overcome? Immediately the film Fight Club (1999) by director David Fincher came to mind. Men need to resolve the issue of violence and aggression in order to become an adult, there is no other way; and his biggest rival is himself.
We cannot watch the Barbie movie and be bothered by the interpretation of the Kens that appear in Barbie’s fantasy, as if the comedy were proposing the complex, stark and profound reality of men and women... it is a fantasy of a feminist woman, her men are effeminate, conceited, disconnected and uprooted from absolutely everything except Barbie; These “women” want their men idolizing them so that they can take revenge by rejecting them, for everything that men have done to women in history.
To conclude, the point of men devoid of masculinity in the film, I share the reflection of Jonathan Cahn, a YouTuber with a very sharp and spiritual vision of reality: “imagine a film aimed at children that represented women as inferior creatures, useless and wicked that had to be conquered and boys or men had to be separated from them.” What would be the impact of that statement? How much fire would pour from the feminist sky?
The heroic strategy
Finally, Barbie's "heroic" strategy to resolve the conflict created by Ken by transforming Barbieland into Kendom (Patriarch society), is to use deception, seduction and induce jealousy to promote animosity between the Kens. It says very little about the Barbie and the fantasy the film proposes. Wow, Barbie in the end is the Femme Fatal, which paradoxically is the justification for “the oppression of the patriarchy in order to prevent them from controlling the world”.
I believe that men and women are very different and thank God for that. But perhaps men and women are also more equal than we think, we are both our biggest obstacle, and it is necessary to resolve and integrate the opposites in us in order to grow. Taking responsibility for where we are is the starting point for both, without victimizing or holding others accountable for our life. The differences lie in what hinders us in each sex; I sense that for women it is very different than for men, and the Barbie film did nothing to help us discover it. Indeed our culture is possessed by a feminist spirit and we need to bring it to a new point of balance.
I see that feminist girls and boys have their fantasy, but do we really believe that this "comedy" can be taken seriously?
With sadness I say goodbye to Barbie, I would have liked to have seen a deconstructed vision breaking down beauty and perfection ideals in women; it would have given us a different understanding about women and men.
Honestly, it's a missed opportunity.
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