The pandemic took a sledgehammer to shared cultural experiences: live music, theatre, art galleries and cinema. Cinema seemed especially doomed. Netflix and friends had already conspired to hobble the industry, lockdown simply cast the final blow. After all, why bother with a €20 ticket and a sticky carpeted room when the latest insipid straight-to-streaming series is available from the comfort of your home? The decline of the movie theatre seemed a sad and inevitable direction of travel. But lo! A saviour. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer came together to create the cultural moment of the summer. The pair’s $235 million American box-office debut seemed to indicate something of a cinematic renaissance. And, at last, we could wave a final middle finger to the malaise and oppressive isolation of the pandemic. Back to the effervescent joy of a collective experience.
If only. Barbie’s runaway success (easily outpacing Oppenheimer’s) could have been cause for hope. Instead, the ideologically unambitious, didactic and ultimately boring film made me more trepidatious than ever about the fate of the big screen. It seemed to me that Barbie was a response to a very modern conundrum: how can you make a film that seeks to chastise its audience without alienating any of them? Or, put another way, how can you make a morality play that is universally beloved? Hint: you can’t.
The online response to Barbie has been predictably split. A conservative backlash criticises it for reducing men to bimbofied, sexually unsophisticated brutes. Meanwhile, fans adore it for its message of female empowerment, celebration of divine femininity, its oh-so-important reminder of the struggles and pain inherent to womanhood. Unfortunately, both groups are wrong. The Barbie movie is neither a sexist, anti-man romp nor an intelligent musing on a woman’s place in the 21st century. It is, instead, a cosmically confused bore that seeks to moralise, but doesn’t know how. Or, a film that feels it has to make a statement, but doesn’t really want to. The premise – that there is a Barbie world run by girl dolls and a real world marred by patriarchy – is fine but obvious. From there, it cannot decide what it is about: masculine struggle for identity in an increasingly equal society? The difficulties of female adolescence? The emotional contradictions of motherhood? Any of these things on their own may make for a perfectly sound thematic premise – if a little dated. Altogether, they make a mess.
Barbie is a film that has no point of view. The greatest bid for a big idea is that gender roles in the 21st century are, erm, complicated.
Barbie failed because of its bid to be deemed “on the right side of history” – a terribly modern demand of artistic output
Who on earth could this possibly be for? Mothers with difficult relationships with their daughters may find some of it compelling; men who feel adrift as the full thrust of the patriarchy wanes could learn from the Kens; teenage girls who are at once naive and sheltered and also cognisant of “fascism” may feel “seen”. And, at the same time as trying to appease this incoherent group, Barbie also tries to be feminist, sensitive to men, loved by everyone, critically acclaimed and beloved by Gerwig acolytes. This is the film’s spiritual flaw. By appealing to all it satisfies none.
[ Breda O’Brien: I punched Barbie in her perfect face and have no regretsOpens in new window ]
[ ‘Barbie’s mother’: German tabloid claims credit for inspiring famous dollOpens in new window ]
I do not think we can blame Gerwig for the central problem. Barbie is a direct reflection of a contemporary cultural pressure that Gerwig cannot single-handedly reverse. The film’s competing ambitions – to teach and be a smash success – mean it was always destined to fail. Because any piece of art that aims to be a didactic vehicle – to make us better people – will always alienate and upset some. It seems obvious: if Barbie wants to be beloved and popular it probably should not paint an entire sex as useless and malign. But if Barbie really wants to take on the patriarchy, then it might end up having to cast at least some of that sex as either useless or malign. Of course, Barbie has no responsibility to teach us about patriarchy. In fact, I would much rather it hadn’t.
Films are not didactic vehicles, there only to redress the ills of the universe. Barbie’s potential lay in its sugary sweetness, its chaos, its gags. It failed because of its bid to be deemed “on the right side of history” – a terribly modern demand of artistic output. When Philip Roth died, to give one example, novelist Sandra Newman declared his books on “the wrong side of Me Too”. If that is the metric by which we judge art, then it is no wonder that Gerwig was anxious to be in line with contemporary and political values. Unfortunately it was a foolish demand to try to satisfy. Gerwig can’t possibly be ideologically brave and forward-thinking while also satisfying every corner of the market. And so, we are left with Barbie. A film so obsessed with being deemed acceptable by all groups at all times that it fails to do what it is supposed to: be good.