The one film everyone needs to watch – now!

Barbiescope

If you thought Barbie was basically an exercise in expanding the verticals one product could create, you were right. If you thought a large corporation was going to self-satirize in order to endear itself to an increasingly aware public, you were right. If you thought this was a totally capitalistic exercise, you. were. right.

Barbie has been Mattel’s bread and butter for far too long, so who can blame them? I will not at all pretend to care about (or for) the kind of craftiness it takes to run a multibillion-dollar business at any level, but I do understand that all businesses, big or small, need constant perception management and increasing social currency. Getting someone like Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, Frances Ha) to write and direct a story about every girl’s best friend, Barbie, was a stroke of brilliance on part of the corporation, and Warner Bros.

Sitting here in 2023, we all recognize marketing efforts, and also appreciate a job well-done. We also have the self-awareness to recognize when something is marketed and targeted at us, and to not be too flattered by it. But when the material being marketed is what is possibly one of the most important pieces of social theory simplified for appeal and comprehension across demographics, we’re all for it.

And that is what Barbie is. It’s How the Patriarchy Ruins Everything 101.

It is not feminist agenda, although, just by the virtue of the writer and director being a woman, Greta Gerwig’s film becomes a feminist work, or at least a work with feminist concerns.

The beautiful thing about it is, nothing about Barbie paints any gender as superior or inferior; it just reminds us, gently, comedically, lovingly, that everyone needs a little bit of redirection to understand how the other feels, and because, again, the writer/director of the film is a woman, tells the experience of being a wo-man so eloquently, so precisely, that all you can do through the one hour, forty seven minutes of Barbie is not question why your laug-hing snorts turned into full-on sobs.

All our heroine, Stereotypical Barbie wants in this story, is to restore the veil between the real world and Barbieland, so things can go back to normal. To do so, she has to leave her matriarchal haven and venture into the real world, which in this case is limited mostly to Venice Beach in Los Angeles.

While centered in a country very unlike Pakistan, the film serves to remind us that it is equally terrible to have to navigate a very patriarchal world regardless of nationality.

Whether we are in Islamabad or on Venice Beach, there is an undercurrent of threatened violence towards women whenever they venture out of their homes, and in some cases, perpetually while they’re inside them too. The only way maybe, to restore order according to men, is to tie women down to stereotypes and socially acceptable roles, literally and figuratively.

That perhaps, there is no way we will ever hold the men accountable for what they do, because women, as mothers, friends, wives and girlfriends, or even as complete strangers on the street, should have conducted themselves better. This particular observation, though not new or groundbreaking in any way, hits too hard, too close, and hurts a lot more when we realize we’ve come on to over two years since Noor Mukaddam was brutally murdered by a man whose advances and affections were no longer welcomed by her. The case went to trial in October of 2021, and has only moved forward in the most superficial and useless ways so far.

There are so many times during Barbie where a character will literally tell, and not show you, what women, biological or otherwise, have to put up with every single day. This isn’t a weakness of the screenplay though, I believe everything is spelled out so clearly to make it easier for younger audiences to understand.

We do need to educate the men and boys growing into men what their responsibilities are, rather than teaching them what kind of behaviors and stations in life are acceptable for them. The very fact that Barbieland is basically a utopia for women, where the Ken are slotted into background roles and no one cares about what they do or say, is also important commentary on what the real feminist agenda is: an equal society for all.

While doing press runs for Joyland, director Sadiq Saleem had pointed out that in his film, the one main male character had less agency than the women in the story, and much less so than Biba, his trans love interest.

He was meant to do what a man does, which meant going out and winning the bread, regardless of the fact that he was completely okay staying at home and taking care of domestic responsibilities. If you have watched Joyland, you will know that this does not end well for any of the characters in the film.

“Patriarchy hurts everyone,” Sadiq had said then, and rightly so. When we place the burden of any and all expectations on any one segment of society, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

As Barbie released in theaters across Pakistan, we also learnt how the patriarchy impacts other aspects of life. A film that is at worst PG-13, Barbie was banned in Punjab for featuring “pro-LGBTQI+” content. As we go to press, the release remains pending while the Punjab government reviews the film and reexamines its dialogues.

While there is basically no overt innuendo in the film, a mention of the fact that neither Barbie nor Ken feature any genitalia in their design.

The one cuss word is bleeped and stickered out, and nothing about the storyline suggests anything other than the fact that women and feminine-presenting people are at constant disadvantage in every way, and perhaps that all the memes about men causing mass destruction rather than talking about what is making them sad are quite on-point.

“Being ‘sploded is giving up,” Kimmy Schmidt tells her former bunker-mate and fellow cult-victim Gretchen Chalker in E5S3 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, while the latter threatens to blow up the bunker of her own cult with a bomb. “It was invented by men to avoid talking about stuff.”

Women have been talking about the feminine urge to explain the feminine experience to whomever will listen for as long as there have been women. If it comes dressed in pink and with corporate sponsorship, great. If the corporation is acknowledging its own role in setting problematic standards for women, amazing. If it makes the corporation tons of billions of dollars, but allows distribution of the message far and wide, take that win, and make sure you have all the men and women and boys and girls in your life watch it.

We do need to educate the men and boys growing into men what their responsibilities are, rather than teaching them what kind of behaviors and stations in life are acceptable for them. The very fact that Barbieland is basically a utopia for women, where the Ken are slotted into background roles and no one cares about what they do or say, is also important commentary on what the real feminist agenda is: an equal society for all.