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Barbie: Did We Watch the Same Film?
It was inevitably going to be smeared as ‘anti-man’. But I wasn’t aware this was also meant to be the film to finally emancipate women everywhere.
I was so ready for Barbenheimer. I had a little pink waistcoat to go with my outfit and a wholly unrelated ensemble in my bag for Oppenheimer. My partner and I were among a handful of moviegoers in the theatre for Barbie at 11am. After an hour and a half of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling giving it their all in a hilarious yet heartfelt film, I felt my heart sink. It’s like I could hear the furious typing before I was even sat at my laptop. I also knew that Oppenheimer would not receive nearly the same scrutiny as Barbie. The next day, I saw two types of critiques of Barbie. One was totally predictable and the other was disheartening.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie follows the iconic doll’s quest to return to normality after she finds her life taking an extremely un-Barbie turn. Thoughts of death, cold showers, and her heels touching the ground are just a few symptoms of a Barbie’s world spinning out of control. Much like the Mattel franchise, Barbie can be whoever she wants: there’s a President Barbie, a Nobel-Prize-for-Literature-winning Barbie, and just Barbie Barbie (Margot Robbie). The Kens can only be described as…
