Barbie + campervan adventure

teen thoughts, my thoughts

I’ve been in transit the past two days. I’ve been picking up a campervan from Milan and heading “up” into mountains and “back” into France. I’ve got no itinerary yet. I’ll research something later. For now I have a bed for the night and freedom and it feels light and “me”.

I’m posting this from here, in the one-cafe town of Azeglio which I found off the motorway at midnight last night. I slept in field.

I’ve got out of Paris for the summer. I’d been warned it’s unbearable to be in the city in the height of the heat and at the peak of tourist season. Also, I need nature. I shall report back from the road over the coming two weeks, with some videos and interviews with people I meet etc.

But. Other matters. I went to see Barbie during the week with my Australian friend Kylie and her daughter Rose (I had to fulfil the Barbenheimer phenomenon). I’ve been digesting since.

Here are my thoughts. I’m writing assuming most of you have a basic understanding of the movie (I mean how could you miss the commentary), or have seen it. (Warning: there are some spoilers below if you have not.):

Broadly, I felt “played”.

So, the film is clever. And perfectly calibrated. But almost too perfectly so. All edges are rounded, like it indeed emanates from the froth and bubble of Barbie Land.

There are just the right number of clever “adult” lines, and the balance of song-and-dance to cheese to political statement to nostalgia seem like they were plotted by endless scriptwriting roundtables working to sophisticated diversity lenses. Which they probably were.

I appreciated the meta nods to the irony of watching a Mattel movie that bags out Mattel. And I got sucked in by the knowing feminist tropes and very modern critiques of the patriarchy. But I felt the knowing package was spoon-fed to me. There was little room for discovery. And while I was being spoon-fed this (palatable, pre-masticated) progressiveness I was kept distracted from the fact a multi-national behemoth with a shit-ton of plastic consumables to sell me was doing the spooning.

And was stirring their Cool-Aid into the gruel while they were at it.

I walked out feeling a bit violated. Even progressive clever-think has been bought out. Is nothing sacred or my own?

The most significant plot thread is Ken’s redundancy

“Ken does beach.” And Ken is contemporary masculinity.