Is Barbie a feminist movie?

In the society of spectacle, as famously conceptualized by Guy Debord, it's the screens that set the scene and do the talking.

Comparing Barbie to a strawberry milkshake sounds deliciously superficial. But, let's be honest, it's more like a soup. A blend of veggies, fruits, grease, and a splash of crude oil, with a hint of plastic for good measure. It’s hard to find feminism in there when Barbie doesn't really address women's issues.

And let's hear it from the maestro herself, Greta Gerwig, the director and co-writer:

• On LCI in July 2023: “Whatever you think this film is about, it's not."
• Chatting with Here & Now in July 2023: "It is very important to have an adult woman talk about all of the kind of impossible contradictions."
• And in the New York Times, July 2023: "I wanted to make something anarchic and wild and funny and cathartic."

We just entered the era of content-fluid movies. Now, let's break down this toy-sized reality:

• The "real world" in the movie? Just a day at Venice Beach. You won’t find a cashier getting called a whore in a supermarket by the lumpenproletariat.
• Workers? Nonexistent. This "real world" is pretty proletariat-free.
• Family lineage? Forget about it. No ancestral nods or heritage tales. Just Parent 1, or maybe 2 if you're lucky. The joke about the pregnant Barbie is exceedingly ambiguous... A reference to a notorious commercial failure? An allusion to the rejection of natural childbirth by the upper class?
• The film takes a sarcastic swipe at Mattel's board. But real-world Mattel’s board is almost an equal mix of genders. Showing that women can be as much of pricks as men when they have power might be too real for some.
• Mattel patting themselves on the back for diverse dolls? That shift was more about profit than principle, with varied body dolls only emerging in 2016.
• “Be Yourself” in the movie is all about customization. But in the world of standardization, even a custom model is still...well, a model.
• And the movie's big finale? Patriarchy toppled by...the use of sexual capital. The theory of sexual capital isn’t feminist or masculinist, it's neutral. Yet, when the plot has men succumbing to women's wiles as its main resolution, it’s kinda pitching the masculinist narrative. Funny, I haven’t seen that mentioned in any mainstream reviews. Greta put some bits of Alain Soral in her movie!

The takeaway? The merchant order has this knack for commercializing its own criticism. Che Guevara on a lighter or a t-shirt, anyone? What Hollywood is expecting from feminism is to sell more plastic and melt minds.