Barbie: The Goddess Returns
Love it or hate it, Barbie is a cultural moment, a phenomenon. I hope our future selves will look back on it as a turning point. While some await the return of Jesus or aliens, I await the return of the goddess, the greatest power on earth for at least tens of thousands of years. Like Indian goddess Kali, the destroyer of worlds, She wakes from her slumber to toss aside the petty jealous male gods who usurped her power.
See, it’s literally the only time there’s been an actual conversation about patriarchy in a film or series. Sure, sometimes the p-word is mentioned in passing, or the theme is explored, but not explicitly. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen a matriarchy depicted onscreen. Well, except for Wonder Woman, but then there there were no men in that world.
And yet, the manosphere (note: #notallmen, refers to anti-women men) has its boxers in a bunch, literally burning Barbie dolls and counting the number of times the word “patriarchy” is mentioned with barf-in-my-mouth emojis. As if we talk about it all the time. And yet we never really do. It gets tossed around, but it’s never taught in school or seriously discussed.
Conservatives act like no one knows what it is. Um, I do. There’s a new book about the origins of patriarchy in the 4th millennium BCE; get it here!
Patriarchy is an institution based on hierarchies of birth, not merit, where some people have more power, opportunity and respect than others. It harms men as well as women, and is perpetuated by women as well as men. The original split was between men and women, and later it was extended to hierarchies of class and ethnicity.
For long periods of time, peaceful egalitarian societies existed where property passed from mother to daughter. Then there was a seismic shift in human existence starting around 3500 BC in which men took over the world. It sounds dramatic. It really was. But most people don’t even know about it, and most academics avoid talking about it. Then, in the last few years, the story has resurfaced, because the new field of genetics is telling this story of our origins.
Spoilers from here on.
Ok here’s a quick synopsis for those who don’t plan to see it, but are reading this because they want to understand the cultural conversation. Barbieland is a matriarchy where women have all the power. The Kens just hang out on the beach. They were created to be accessories for the Barbies in the real world, so they don’t have real jobs or roles, and the Barbies aren’t that into them. Then Barbie has an existential crisis that begins her coming-of-age quest to the real world to find the girl who is playing with her whose emotions are bleeding over into her fantasy land. Ken tags along. In the real world Barbie is objectified and shocked that men are in charge, while Ken feels important for the first time. He goes back to Barbieland and turns it into a patriarchy where the Barbies are brainwashed into being beer-bearing bimbos. Barbie returns with a human mother and daughter pair and realize that the mother’s talking about how hard it is to be a woman in patriarchy wakes the brainwashed Barbies out of their trance. The Barbies trick the Kens into fighting each other by stoking their jealousy, and in the battle they forget to go to vote on the referendum to give all the power to. the Kens. Barbieland is restored, except they decide to give power to the Kens. But Barbie meets her creator and asks her to send her back to the real world, so she can be a real woman and get a vagina.
The Barbie movie gets it right — patriarchy had to do with the horse. The small band of primitive nomads who took over the female-centered civilizations and became overlords over them did it by domesticating the horse. That’s how this virus of violence, war, and oppression spread so quickly around the world. And because peaceful societies are sitting ducks. As America Ferrera says in the film, about why it was so easy for Barbieland to fall to patriarchy: “They have no immunity to it, like smallpox in the Americas.”
Like Barbieland, egalitarian societies easily transformed to patriarchy with contact. When Spanish and English invaders refused to deal with female leaders in Africa and the Americas, the locals quickly learned to treat women with disrespect. When Ken saw patriarchy in the real world, he quickly transformed into an Andrew Tate-like gym-bro.
I believe that Barbie was a smash hit while so many woke movies flopped because at some level, people understand that patriarchy is real, and feminism is still necessary. Of course, there are other reasons: Barbie is a famous toy, and audiences crave something colorful after all the dark, ominous and gritty rehash sequels. But Barbie is clever and works as an allegory. It’s a coming-of-age story that gives homage to classics like the Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, Toy Story, the Truman Show, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and the Matrix (witness the men in black agents and the cubicle chase scene). The sets, design, acting and pacing are epic.
Conservative criticism is all trickling down from a pathetic, unhinged 45-minute rant from Ben Shapiro where he burns dolls. He’s extremely triggered, so blinded by his ideology that women should be subservient that he loses his ability to follow the plot. He lost a lot of credibility with this bad-faith review. His “critique” centers around the idea that it’s supposed to be for kids. It’s not. It’s PG-13. It’s not harmful for kids, but it’s made for adults. He’s shocked that they actually use the word “vagina”, but I’m not. Vaginas are appropriate for kids. Kids have them. They came out of them.
Shapiro desperately picks apart the plot as if it isn’t a campy romp in a fantasy land. He takes it deadly seriously because it debunks his patriarchal lies. He reads female empowerment as “man hating,” making it explicitly clear that MRAs equate all female empowerment with hating men. As a YouTuber named Vaush says in his line-by-line debunking of Shapiro’s video, Shapiro is incapable of critiquing the movie because that would require him to reflect on his biases; it’s the most unabashedly feminist thing to come out of Hollywood and therefore the ultimate threat to conservatism, which is primarily about hating women and making men feel like the victims.
But most of the audience seemed to be teenage girls, and this is such a key demographic in the world. They drive cultural trends. They’re at a critical age where they go from being confident, to insecure and at risk for mental illness. Patriarchy-deniers like Jordan Peterson imply this has to do with some inherent quality of teenage females. The anthropologist Margaret Mead disproved this, showing that teenage girls are perfectly happy in non-patriarchal cultures. It has to do with girls’ dawning realization as they come of age that they’re second class citizens valued mainly for their bodies. So this movie, the first to actually talk about the reality of patriarchy, could change things!
Driving home from the movie, the sunset sky was a Barbie shade of pink that looked unreal, and I felt a tiny glimmer of hope for the future for the first time in a while. The war against women, this backlash against feminism, has really bummed me out.
That’s not to say there’s not a war against men too. We are all under attack. But not from feminists. And that’s not to say feminism hasn’t been infiltrated as all human rights movements have been. Perhaps the feminist movement received CIA support because it benefits government taxes to have two households instead of one. Perhaps there is an agenda toward depopulation.
But was this movie in on it? The biggest criticism I have was the lack of inclusivity toward motherhood. The pregnant doll was mocked. The official story is that it was discontinued out of fear it would encourage teen pregnancy. Anyway, Barbie is supposed to represent a young, pre-mother stage of life. And, to be fair, the America Ferrara character says at one point, “Maybe you just want to be a mom. And that’s fine.” But still. I didn’t like the way the pregnant doll was treated.
But of course, the biggest criticism, that has conservatives frothing at the mouth, is the depiction of men in the film as all stupid and bad. If I’d been in charge, I would have created more male heroes and allies, if only to forestall this backlash. But mainly, the snowflake men complaining are (deliberately?) missing the point: it’s social commentary. It’s portraying Stereotypical Ken in a toxic masculine light to make a point. It’s exaggerated to be noticed and to be funny. Because no matter how many times Mens’ Rights Activists whine that the conversation about “toxic masculinity” means that all masculinity is toxic, that’s basically like saying “bad food” means the same thing as “food”.
Pointing out systemic and cultural sexism through satire is not the same thing as systemic and cultural sexism. Full stop.
Anyways, the Barbies act clueless and silly like the Kens. They’re dolls. Did the conservatives crowing about how men were portrayed not notice that? Also, the Allan character is not portrayed as stupid or evil. Oh, what, the conservatives don’t like Allan because he is what they call a “beta male”? It’s patriarchy that divides men into alpha and beta. Before patriarchy, we were all just people. Allan wants to escape Kendom, the new patriarchal dystopia, because he’s getting bullied; he understands that in patriarchy, men are oppressed too — all but the top dog.
The butthurt people whining about the movie, most of whom admit to not even having seen it, complain that the Barbies are mean to the Kens. They aren’t mean, but definitely dismissive, and I for one would not have made it this way. But again: IT’S TO MAKE A POINT. Men were dismissive toward women in classic films as they often are in real life. And … Barbie is actually pretty nice to Ken. He’s pathetic and clingy, which isn’t attractive, and tends to make people run away from you, but she’s still kind. She worries and runs over to him when he gets hurt, and tells him he’s brave. Ken is just mad she doesn’t return his affection.
The movie reminds us that in a normal, non-patriarchal situation where women aren’t dependent on men, men need women more than the other way around, for a simple reason: men have a higher sex drive than women. And … boobies. This is the deep truth we all know and what the patriarchy is trying to make us forget.
And the Kens aren’t all bad. They get ice cream for each other. Allan, as I said, is a good guy, and a hero who fights bad guys. And at least Ken has a story arc of his own; that’s more than you can say for female characters in the majority of films out there, depicted as vapid love interests. Male-speaking characters outnumbered their female counterparts 63 percent to 37 percent in the 100 highest-grossing domestic films of 2022.
The whole point, which I guess the haters missed, is that Ken was created to be an accessory for Barbie. This is a mirror image of how Eve was created to be a helpmate for Adam. When Ken takes over and gets his revenge, he says: “It’s not so great when you’re the accessory. It is NOT fun, is it.”
So the Barbies didn’t pay the Kens much attention, but they weren’t enslaved, like the Barbies were after the patriarchal coup. And this is realistic, since in non-patriarchal societies, men are treated well, unlike women in patriarchies. At the end, Barbie apologizes to Ken for taking him for granted, but he never apologizes for stealing and trashing her house or for not helping her when she’s kidnapped.
So the conservatives screeching that the Kendom coup is a righteous slave-revolt are utterly missing the point and the irony. The way the men are treated in Barbieland is to show men what patriarchy has been like for women. And the filmmakers are clearly showing that the Barbieland matriarchy is NOT a utopia. I guess the haters are ignoring this point: President Barbie says “I don’t think things should go back to the way they were. No barbie or ken should be living in the shadows.”
So we’re told that over time, Kens will get as much power and influence in Barbieland as women have in our world. Happy ending, right? Or is it? Is our world equal enough? If conservatives don’t support women’s right to full equality, isn’t that the height of hypocrisy?
Yes, the way Barbie is treated like an object in the real world is clearly exaggerated in this day and age. But it needs to be to make a point. The conservatives’ reaction proves the point that patriarchy is alive and well today. The fundamentalist Christians point to their silly book to show that women should serve men. They speak of their God as “Lord and Master”, slaveholding terms.
So which is it? Are women no longer oppressed (and if so, when did it end??), or are women meant to serve men? Ben Shapiro careens wildly between both positions, sometimes pretending patriarchy is an absurd concept because everything is equal now — Look! A female director! — and sometimes clearly claiming patriarchy is right and natural, it’s good for women to be subservient.
Patriarchy has boxed in women, symbolized by the toy box they are trying to put Barbie into. The Mattel CEO says, “Get in the box you Jezebel! What, you can’t say ‘Jezebel’ now?!?”
This movie is leading to a lot of breakups, as women realize that their partners aren’t actually supportive of female empowerment.
Another criticism that Ben Shapiro gives is that Barbie’s existential crisis is never resolved. At the end, she still doesn’t know what she wants. Shapiro wants her to resolve it the same way he does: blind obedience to a made-up god, and having kids. If you can’t figure out the meaning of life, have kids and hope they do.
But there may be no answers to the meaning of life. Barbie doesn’t have the answer, and that’s okay. She chooses the real world, with all its messiness and faults, because the real is better than plastic, not because she prefers patriarchy. Maybe at a collective level, we chose patriarchy for our evolution and growth. Barbie apologizes to Ken because now that she knows how it feels to be oppressed, she has empathy for him. If only the manosphere could be so self-aware. Imagine a collective cultural acknowledgment of how patriarchy has treated women, and what women have contributed to culture .. and have it actually taught in school!
At the end we meet Barbie’s creator, the creator goddess. She was the one in the kitchen scene that was referenced the Oracle in The Matrix – which is a reference to the oracles of antiquity who were from matriarchal societies. The goddess has returned! One blog out there compares Barbie to Inanna, the ancient goddess who was still the most popular deity in the Middle East even thousands of years after Yahweh took over and started murdering her followers. Both Barbie and Inanna descend to the underworld to learn about death.
This is hardly a theme aimed at kids. The main audience is Gen X women like me, with nostalgia for the iconic toy from their childhoods, and their teenage daughters, like the human mother and daughter in the movie. The movie makes fun of the daughter as a mean, cynical social justice warrior who rolls her eyes when her mom sings along to the song “Closer I am to Fine.”
I almost cried when I heard this song .. it’s the Gen X woman anthem from the 90s, a halcyon age when women actually mattered. Back then a book changed our world – The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler. It was a cultural moment. We learned that women were at the center of inventing civilization, and that war and oppression hadn’t always been the story. God used to be a woman.
We felt hopeful, certain our daughters would be even more confident, free, and equal than us. After all, we had so many freedoms and rights our mothers didn’t have, like to buy a house or have our own credit cards. But this goddess movement was put down with a backlash, as the pendulum inevitably swings back. Now when you see mother and daughter pairs, the mother’s the one wearing the Birkenstocks (the symbol for taking the red pill of feminism in the movie) while the daughter is wearing high heels, fishnets, and looking uncomfortable in her skin. The left’s sexualizing of young girls with violent porn feels as repressive as the just-say-no, modesty psy-op of the right wing. And, I’ve been warning for nine years that the cruel, shaming cancel culture movement on the left would cause a rise in right wing ideology, causing women and minorities to lose the rights and acceptance they had fought so hard for.
This movie speaks to that younger generation of girls coming of age now who feel it in their bones that patriarchy is alive and well — just better hidden, as they say in the movie — but they’re being gaslighted that everything is now fine because the left gives lip service to girl power and replaces a few male characters with women. This is the first movie in a long time to speak to women and girls; a social movement just for us. The mother/daughter relationship is especially fraught with conflict, because women are set against each other in patriarchies; unified, we prevent dominance hierarchies as do female bonobo chimps. So women are set against women, mother against daughter with the “cognitive dissonance of being a woman in the patriarchy,” as they say in the film. But it’s the personal truth coming through in feminist theory that wakes the Barbies from their brainwashing. Just as in real life, women hearing their real hidden history wakes us up from our slumber. (So read the real history of civilization in the book Before War!)
In real life, how easy was it to brainwash women to accept their inferiority when patriarchy began? Maybe women were the ones pushing hard for it, like certain women today. Maybe in some places it took only a generation to brainwash the women such that force wasn’t needed to enslave them. But we know that in some places, women fought back for thousands of years, both as actual warriors like the Amazons (who we now know were real) or with sex strikes like in Ancient Greece.
Ryan Gosling as Ken is pure comic genius on how to convey toxic masculinity with his body language. While the MRAs pretend not to know what TM is, we all know perfectly well — which is why the exaggerated, campy version in this movie is so funny. We’re just supposed to shut up about toxic masculinity, even though it’s male violence, crime and war that’s killing the world (not all men, of course, sigh, but pretty much all violence.) It’s not cool to be feminist anymore, since the backlash.
But everything goes in cycles. I pray this movie will kick off a new cycle of real feminism — not the infiltrated kind like so called “5th wave feminism” which says that women should go back to the home and let men run society. Sure, “trad wives”, if you want to be stay-at-home mothers, no one is stopping you — that’s a beautiful choice. I caution you to have some income on the side in case that doesn’t work out, but I celebrate your freedom to have that life. 5th wave feminists would deprive women of that right. So let’s reclaim the word “feminist.” We can be pink and girly and be feminist, or wear Carhaart overalls, we can have lots of babies or none at all. What matters is that we all have a choice. That’s what feminism is saying. It’s been demonized as man-hating, so it’s time to reclaim it.
So here are my feminist takes on my favorite one-liners in the film:
“I want to be part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that’s made. I want to do the imagining. I don’t want to be the idea.” Women don’t always want to be the model, the ineffable muse, seen through a male gaze. We also want to be the artist, the one behind the camera.
“Either you’re brainwashed or you’re weird and ugly, there is no in between.” If we don’t perform femininity, put on makeup and sexy clothes (but not too sexy), and act submissive and nice, then we’re cast as hideous harpies by people like Ben Shapiro.
“We were only fighting because we didn’t know who we were.” Men can stop fighting, raping, and killing when they heal and realize they are enough. Patriarchal brainwashing has deprived them of their full humanity and empathy, to keep them fighting for the profits of their masters.
There are four basic kinds of anti-feminists who hate this movie:
1. Fundamentalist Christians, whose position is that men are meant to be dominant and women are for baby-making, because their book from the most brutal and primitive era of humanity says so.
2. MRA polarity-coach tech/gym bros, who, like Shapiro, sometimes act like things are equal now and other times take the contradictory position that men are meant to rule.
3. Some in the conspiracy community who have unfortunately bought into the right-wing’s attempt to associate feminism with the most problematic, infiltrated tenets of the woke left.
4. Women who: a. Feel ambivalent about their decision to have children, b. Have sons and have bought into the “oh but the poor mens” psy-op for their sake, their empathy weaponized, or c. Feel insecure about their ability to be independent. It’s this last group of women who have always perpetuated patriarchy along with the Christian pearl-clutching morality set. As the brainwashed Barbies say: it’s nice to not have to make decisions. This is the privilege women get in patriarchy.
I wanted to glance around me to see how the teen girls were receiving this, but that would have been creepy. Will this movie send a message that a movie aimed at females can do this well, if it’s smart and self-critical of the patriarchal-corporate-media-entertainment complex? For example, the board of Mattel are all male in the movie … more or less the case in real life.
I guess the conservatives burning dolls who haven’t even seen it didn’t hear that that at the end Barbie apologizes to Ken and they decide that Kens should be slowly given power. The Barbies also see the error of their ways in terms of ostracizing Weird Barbie, the smart shaman witch lady. I guess conservatives aren’t just mad that men are marginalized in the movie; they won’t be happy until men are rule the world again like in Kendom “Land of the free and the men”. Sorry guys (and gals). We’re not going back into the box. The Goddess is coming back and she’s mad.