I have yet to see the Barbie movie but Lucy has seen it. To be honest, I have my reservations about the film because of the extraordinary hype. But it is a chick flick and my gal pals have convinced me to see it. Lucy, having seen it, has some very interesting insight to share:
While the movie clearly stars Barbie, it has nothing to do Barbie as THE over-the-top doll sensation of the 60s and 70s when our kids were growing up.
It is about America in 2023. It is a tale of men, boardrooms, power -who has it and who doesn’t, mothers and daughters, and snarky teens.
It is funny, sentimental, insanely campy, not always hitting the mark, but among my friends, there were plenty tears and laughs. And I give Margot Robbie credit and she deserves more than she gets, as she makes a doll on the adventure of a lifetime seem real.
Feminist journalist Susan Faludi, author of “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women”, went to see the “Barbie” film with New York Times Contributing Editor, Jessica Bennett.
Bennett wrote
“I was interested in Ms. Faludi’s perspective because her interests seemed to track with the complexity at the heart of the “Barbie” movie. Last year, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, she wrote an essay bemoaning how feminists had made a Faustian bargain with popular culture. “
Faludi opined that Feminism has “taken its eyes off the ball” as women wore “Smash the Patriarchy” T-shirts while the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was being gutted and the Supreme Court was being packed.
If you do not agree with Bennett and Faludi that women’s rights have taken a massive hit in the last five years, this movie is not for you.
Lucy goes on to say that a giant salute must go to writer and director, Greta Gerwig, who had a vision and took what might have been another “Little Mermaid” sort of Disneyesque story line and made it the biggest grossing movie of the year and the largest ever for a woman director. And to Mattel as well who, inexplicitly, allowed themselves to be the brunt of several jokes and risked their reputation as a leader in the toy industry.
Should you stay or should you go? I say go!
Ciao.
Lucy and Claudia