Barbie

Ken’s rights? Our research shows Barbie is surprisingly accurate on how ‘men’s rights activists’ are radicalised

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, July 25, 2023

The Kens however, reflecting the popularity of the dolls in the real world, play a mainly decorative role.

Key Points: 
  • The Kens however, reflecting the popularity of the dolls in the real world, play a mainly decorative role.
  • This is all to fix an error that is allowing the real world to seep into Barbie land, with symptoms such as Barbie having an existential crisis.
  • This sees him take a journey that is clearly influenced by, and pokes fun at, many aspects of contemporary anti-feminist men’s rights culture.

Barbieland and the matriarchy

    • It has been proposed that Barbieland is a matriarchy, but I would argue that their attitude to Kens is instead indifference.
    • This is not dissimilar to the grievances of some real-life men under contemporary feminism.
    • Having undertaken research on online antifeminist discourses, Ken’s journey from aggrievement to masculine “enlightenment” parallels themes we found in Men’s Rights Activist spaces.

The manosphere and MRAS

    • This includes MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists) who claim reverse discrimination and that feminism has gone too far, and Redpillers who claim to have swallowed the “red pill” to see the truth about feminism’s dominance.
    • Some of the most well known members of the manosphere are incels (involuntary celibates) a misogynistic community of self identified “beta-males” who want an end to women’s rights which prevent them from getting sex.

Ken’s grievances

    • Ken was being “friend-zoned” by Barbie, who despite being “boyfriend and girlfriend” wouldn’t let him stay over at the Dream House, because “every night is girl’s night”.
    • This is coupled with a feeling of not being special, as Ken is essentially interchangeable with any other Ken.
    • He takes patriarchy back to Barbieland and transforms it to Kendom, where the men change it to a society oriented around men and their power (and horses…).

Redpilled ken

    • This redpilled Ken is a hilarious parody of the “neomasculinity” of the pick up artist (PUA) movement, that seeks to restore a masculine-centred world.
    • Neomasculinity is about a belief in biological difference, traditional masculinity and heteronormative gender roles.

Finding the real Ken

    • But what of Just Beach Ken?
    • And what can we learn from this for preventing or managing radicalisation of this feeling of aggrievement in real men or boys?
    • Barbie encourages Ken to work out who he is outside of his relation to Barbie, and to learn being Just Ken is enough.

Life in plastic, it's fantastic? How Barbie reimagines a childhood icon through a feminist lens

Retrieved on: 
Monday, July 24, 2023

Barbie is a fabulous spectacle, offering nostalgic delights to audiences, reflexive nods for film buffs and turning a feminist lens on the world’s most famous doll.

Key Points: 
  • Barbie is a fabulous spectacle, offering nostalgic delights to audiences, reflexive nods for film buffs and turning a feminist lens on the world’s most famous doll.
  • Most excitingly, Barbie is an intersectional and liberal feminist comedy, sitting alongside mainstream successes Legally Blonde (2001) and Mean Girls (2004).

Liberal feminism

    • In contrast to radical feminism, which throws out existing systems to start afresh, liberal feminism works to effect change within systems.
    • Liberal feminists work towards gender equality through raising awareness and political action.
    • This is an industry where powerful roles are still dominated by men, and women’s and LGBTQI+ voices are often sidelined.

Strong female characters

    • Gerwig’s films have often explored how strong female characters overcome challenges on their journey to adulthood.
    • In Little Women (2019), Gerwig gives her characters greater agency than previous adaptations.
    • Jo negotiates a strong book contract, while also accepting editorial direction to choose a marketable ending of marriage – or death – for her female protagonist.

Facing the real world

    • The diverse Barbies believe they have empowered women everywhere through choice (a goal Barbie creator Ruth Handler espoused).
    • Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) advises dark thoughts have opened a portal to her owner and offers a Matrix-style choice between a pretty heel (Barbieland) and a brown Birkenstock (the Real World).
    • In the Real World (Los Angeles), Barbie and Ken experience confronting ideas.
    • Witnessing male dominance in the Real World, Ken introduces patriarchy to Barbieland, creating a bro-topia where Barbies are subservient to Kens.

Doing the imagining

    • Feminist film theory critiques the male gaze, which renders women in film as objects to be gazed upon for the pleasure of male viewers.
    • Robbie’s Barbie works to escape the role of object, both literally and through the cinematography.
    • Supported by Ruth’s ghost, Barbie expresses the desire to be not “just the idea”, but the one “doing the imagining”.
    • Much like Gerwig and Robbie, Barbie opts for the role of active changemaker, working to shift the system from within.

In Greta Gerwig’s Barbie Land, the matriarchy can be just as bad as the patriarchy

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, July 20, 2023

At last – after the hype and advance mass-merchandising – the Barbie movie is here.

Key Points: 
  • At last – after the hype and advance mass-merchandising – the Barbie movie is here.
  • Part spoof, part action fantasy, part Barbie doll virtual museum, it’s a full-blown product placement experience – but ironic as much as iconic.
  • Given Barbie first appeared in 1959 as a baby boomer’s plastic mini-mannequin, dress-up fashion doll, that’s real inter-generational reach.
  • To feminists seeking women’s liberation, Barbie symbolised a culture that objectified women, treating them quite literally as living dolls.

‘I am Kennough’

    • With Ken largely invisible in the film’s merchandising and girls-night-out launches, we’ve been set up for the surprising plot twist.
    • Gosling proceeds to own the screen and make this the Ken Movie.
    • He rejects being “just Ken” and instead acts, dances, prowls and flexes to steal the show.
    • But as the inhabitants of Barbie Land discover in the film, matriarchy can be just as damaging as patriarchy.

Rejects save the day

    • Enter Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) and Alan (Michael Cera), outcasts and rejects of Barbie Land, who want “nobody in the shadows”.
    • These are the real heroes who save the day, deprogramming the brainwashed Barbies.
    • It is one more layer of irony in a film about a doll once accused of brainwashing girls.
    • Replete with genitalia, she liberates herself from her plastic-fantastic dream world – without Ken – to live in the unruly real world.

Is the Barbie movie a bold step to reinvent and fix past wrongs or a clever ploy to tap a new market?

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, July 18, 2023

After a months-long marketing blitz, the much-hyped Barbie movie is released this week.

Key Points: 
  • After a months-long marketing blitz, the much-hyped Barbie movie is released this week.
  • From a Malibu Barbie dreamhouse listed on AirBnB, an AI tool that transforms selfies into Barbie movie posters and multiple Barbie-themed brand collaborations ranging from nail polish to roller skates, Barbie is everywhere.
  • Read more:
    In a Barbie world ... after the movie frenzy fades, how do we avoid tonnes of Barbie dolls going to landfill?

The Barbie backlash

    • Sales plummeted across 2011 to 2015 against the cultural backdrop of a rise in body positivity and backlash against a doll that represented narrow ideals and an impossible beauty standard.
    • After all, at life-size Barbie represents a body shape held by less than 1 in 100,000 real people.
    • And despite the multiple careers Barbie has held over the decades, research highlights that girls who play with Barbie believe they have fewer career options than boys.

Reinventing a long-established icon

    • This was not without criticism, with “curvy” Barbie still considered thin and dolls named in ways that drew attention foremost to their bodies.
    • From a white, well-dressed, middle-class, girl-next-door with friends of a similar ilk, Barbie has since been marketed as a symbol of diversity and inclusion.
    • A gender neutral collection called “creatable world” was added in 2019 to open up gender expression possibilities when playing with Barbies.

The latest step in Barbie’s transformation

    • Barbie the film is simply the next step in an evolution to make brand Barbie inclusive.
    • And with a rumoured film budget of $100 million, the supporting marketing machine provides a critical opportunity to reset the Barbie narrative.
    • Yet, Robbie Brenner, executive producer of Mattel Films, has explicitly stated that Gerwig’s Barbie is “not a feminist movie”.

Bed rotting: the social media trend the Victorians would love, especially writer Elizabeth Gaskell

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Social media has created a number of crazes recently under the theme of “wellness” and the latest, it seems, is “bed rotting”.

Key Points: 
  • Social media has created a number of crazes recently under the theme of “wellness” and the latest, it seems, is “bed rotting”.
  • In fact, well before TikTok and Instagram, the Victorians were already turning the concept of languishing in bed into a fine art.
  • An expert in the uncanny explains Lucky girl syndrome: the potential dark side of TikTok’s extreme positive thinking trend

Good for the soul

    • This emphasises just how transgressive it is for a woman simply to do nothing and go nowhere.
    • Yet in describing these trends in grim terms, social media has somehow romanticised the idea.
    • This romanticising is similar to perspective taken by 19th century artists of the “bed rotting” women of their era.
    • Being in bed is literally good for the soul.

Making a statement

    • Parts of her 1855 novel North and South embody the thoughts and feelings behind the trend.
    • Two women bed-rot in North and South: mill-worker Bessy and the middle-class mother of protagonist Margaret Hale.
    • Bessy’s retreat to bed, enforced by the physical damage of employment, turns her into something almost saintly.
    • What is noticeable about all of these examples, modern and Victorian, is that it focuses on the woman alone in her bed.
    • Bed rotting is presented as a personal, private act of self-care, but it’s actually quite a public statement – as Gaskell presented Bessy’s death as a statement against industrial exploitation.

In a Barbie world ... after the movie frenzy fades, how do we avoid tonnes of Barbie dolls going to landfill?

Retrieved on: 
Monday, July 17, 2023

It made headlines around the world when the much-hyped Barbie movie contributed to a world shortage of fluorescent pink paint.

Key Points: 
  • It made headlines around the world when the much-hyped Barbie movie contributed to a world shortage of fluorescent pink paint.
  • Think of the fad for Baby Yoda dolls after the first season of The Mandalorian in 2020.
  • Toys are the most plastic-intensive consumer goods in the world, according to a 2014 United Nations Environment Program report.

The toll of the dolls

    • Before the US-China trade war, half the world’s toys were manufactured in Dongguan, a city in China.
    • That included one in three Barbie dolls.
    • Every 182 gram doll caused about 660 grams of carbon emissions, including plastic production, manufacture and transport.
    • By my calculations, emissions on average across all these types of toys are about 4.5 kilograms per kilogram of toys.

The role for toymakers and governments

    • Toy manufacturers can – and should – use low carbon materials and supply chains, and focus on making toys easily dissembled.
    • To their credit, some toymakers have cut back on plastic in their packaging, given packaging immediately becomes waste.
    • Governments can set up effective recovery and recycling systems able to handle toys.
    • While gaming produces e-waste streams, it is also a likely cause of the longer-term fall in popularity of plastic toys.

What should we do?

    • For starters, we can avoid cheap and nasty toys which are likely to break very quickly.
    • Look for secondhand toys.
    • Read more:
      How to find the most sustainable and long-lasting children's toys

More than mumblecore and bigger than Barbie – who is Greta Gerwig?

Retrieved on: 
Friday, July 14, 2023

With the new Barbie movie, Greta Gerwig is joining an elite class female filmmakers.

Key Points: 
  • With the new Barbie movie, Greta Gerwig is joining an elite class female filmmakers.
  • Alongside Ava DuVernay, Patty Jenkins and Kathryn Bigelow, Gerwig is one of only a few women to direct a live-action film with a budget of US$100 million.
  • She is known for her dedication to telling women’s stories with heart and humour, and an intimate “indie” style of film-making.

Mumblecore

    • Due to the improvisational nature of mumblecore films, the cast often shares writing credit, taking an active role in constructing dialogue, character and story.
    • Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha (2002) is generally considered to be the first mumblecore film.
    • We can see the influence of mumblecore in TV shows like Girls (2012-2017), Broad City (2014-2019) and High Maintenance (2016-2020).

Indie darling

    • After her mumblecore success, Gerwig began working as an actor with more established indie writer-directors, such as Woody Allen in To Rome with Love (2012), Whit Stillman in Damsels in Distress (2011), and Rebecca Miller in Maggie’s Plan (2015).
    • Gerwig quickly established herself as a quirky leading lady who The New York Times’ film critic, A.O.
    • Scott, describes as “more goose than swan … big-boned and a little slouchy, indifferent to the imperatives of gracefulness”.
    • In recent years, Gerwig has moved increasingly behind the camera, starting with her directorial debut, Lady Bird (2017).

A director

    • Gerwig was nominated for writing and directing, making her only the fifth woman to be nominated for the best director award.
    • Perhaps owing to her career as a writer and actor, Lady Bird catapulted Gerwig onto many “directors to watch” lists.
    • Lady Bird also established Gerwig’s investment in femininity, women’s culture and the lives of young women, which are historically devalued.
    • Given her track record of honouring femininity, intimacy, domesticity and women’s culture, I think Barbie is in safe hands with Gerwig.

More than mumblecore and bigger than Barbie - who is Greta Gerwig?

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, July 13, 2023

With the new Barbie movie, Greta Gerwig is joining an elite class female filmmakers.

Key Points: 
  • With the new Barbie movie, Greta Gerwig is joining an elite class female filmmakers.
  • Alongside Ava DuVernay, Patty Jenkins and Kathryn Bigelow, Gerwig is one of only a few women to direct a live-action film with a budget of US$100 million.
  • She is known for her dedication to telling women’s stories with heart and humour, and an intimate “indie” style of film-making.

Mumblecore

    • Due to the improvisational nature of mumblecore films, the cast often shares writing credit, taking an active role in constructing dialogue, character and story.
    • Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha (2002) is generally considered to be the first mumblecore film.
    • We can see the influence of mumblecore in TV shows like Girls (2012-2017), Broad City (2014-2019) and High Maintenance (2016-2020).

Indie darling

    • After her mumblecore success, Gerwig began working as an actor with more established indie writer-directors, such as Woody Allen in To Rome with Love (2012), Whit Stillman in Damsels in Distress (2011), and Rebecca Miller in Maggie’s Plan (2015).
    • Gerwig quickly established herself as a quirky leading lady who The New York Times’ film critic, A.O.
    • Scott, describes as “more goose than swan … big-boned and a little slouchy, indifferent to the imperatives of gracefulness”.
    • In recent years, Gerwig has moved increasingly behind the camera, starting with her directorial debut, Lady Bird (2017).

A director

    • Gerwig was nominated for writing and directing, making her only the fifth woman to be nominated for the best director award.
    • Perhaps owing to her career as a writer and actor, Lady Bird catapulted Gerwig onto many “directors to watch” lists.
    • Lady Bird also established Gerwig’s investment in femininity, women’s culture and the lives of young women, which are historically devalued.
    • Given her track record of honouring femininity, intimacy, domesticity and women’s culture, I think Barbie is in safe hands with Gerwig.

IT'S A BARBIE WORLD! LIVE THE BEST DAY EVER AT W MEXICO CITY WITH THIS EXPERIENCE

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, July 11, 2023

, which will be available until August 20th on the first floor of the hotel.

Key Points: 
  • , which will be available until August 20th on the first floor of the hotel.
  • This space features an installation that looks taken from the movie set and is perfect for enjoying food and photo-ops.
  • The Barbie diner is an immersed pink experience, ideal for both family and friends.
  • "It's a Barbie World" is not only a dining experience, but also a magical event for the whole family.

Hi BARBIE, Come On, Let's Go…Play Candy Crush®! BARBIE® and Candy Crush Saga Team Up for the Ultimate Pink-tastic Partnership, Creating a One-of-a-Kind Fantasy World for Players

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, July 11, 2023

NEW YORK, July 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Candy Crush Saga announced its newest (and pinkest) partnership with the most anticipated movie of the summer, BARBIE. On July 13, 2023, just days before the film hits theaters on the 21st, the brand will launch in-game BARBIE experiences that feature exclusive content accessible only to Candy Crush Saga players. Sweeeet.

Key Points: 
  • NEW YORK, July 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Candy Crush Saga announced its newest (and pinkest) partnership with the most anticipated movie of the summer, BARBIE.
  • On July 13, 2023, just days before the film hits theaters on the 21st, the brand will launch in-game BARBIE experiences that feature exclusive content accessible only to Candy Crush Saga players.
  • Ahead of the movie's release on July 21, BARBIE fans and Candy Crush players alike will also embark on a fantastical road trip with Barbie, Tiffi and other iconic Candy Crush Saga friends.
  • BARBIE's journey to the Candy Kingdom will be available for Candy Crush players from July 13th - 23rd as part of Candy Crush Saga's Nostalgia Season, which runs July 3rd - August 31st, and features a full summer of road trips that allow Candy Crush Saga players new experiences as Tiffi drives around the Kingdom.