Nobody Likes Being Put in a Box: Six Takeaways from the BARBIE Movie

Barbie Movie director/screenwriter Greta Gerwig says, "You only get one life, so you might as well feel all the feelings."

She also said, " Everyone is always in the middle of their own opera."

Kudos to her (and her life partner and co-screenwriter Noah Baumbach) for creating a modern day opera that voices the "We can't win" feels experienced by many women (and men).

I've debriefed this film with many friends, and I'm in awe of its power to engage people of all ages and stages in eye-and-heart-opening conversation about our shared human experience.

As a writer, one of my great joys is dissecting brilliance to explore where it comes from and why it has such widespread impact.

Here are just a few reasons I think this film - and its two-minute #AmericanFerrera #monologue - have (deservedly) gone viral.

1. It's auto-fiction at its finest. Yes, that's a new word that means what you think it does. It's a new genre for a type of memoir that's half autobiography-half fiction. I don't know Greta Gerwig, yet I imagine she's faced many obstacles in her life/career. This is her lived experience and it shows in the from-the-gut emotion that feels so real because it is real.
2. There's a rhythm to the words and there's not a wasted word. Strunk and White said in their classic book Elements of Style, "Vigorous writing is concise. Every word must tell." If you read the monologue out loud, you'll find there's a musicality to it I call OraStory. Thought leaders from the beginning of humankind know there's a resonance that reaches the soul and it's born in cadence. If you listen to speeches that have changed history, (e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr's, "I have a dream,") you'll find yourself swept up in a just-right waterfall of words.
3. It's human art. A college professor told me the purpose of art is to "catalyze conversations." Think of all the movies and TV shows you've seen in the past few years. The vast majority are passive experiences that are "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" as soon as they're over. Barbie is an experiential, "Bonnie Raitt" ("Let's give 'em something to talk about," lyrics by Shirley Eikhard) work of art. We're not content to just watch it. We want to talk about it, hear other people's perspectives and swap notes on what we just witnessed.
4. It contrasts the conflicting expectations we all face. Anyone who knows me knows I believe that juxtaposition is the quickest way to make complex ideas crystal clear. This voiced soliloquy (which is defined as "the act of speaking one's thoughts out loud") articulates the push-pull many of us feel - e.g., "We always have to be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong" - but haven't been able to put into words.
5. Its intimacy is universal. Greta Gerwig says, "The more particular you make something, the more universal it becomes." Although "Gloria" is speaking for herself, she's actually speaking for many of us. Her story is our story. This is not disembodied, intellectual, neck-up, AI, rhetoric. It's an emotional outpouring of pent-up human angst about maddening double standards.
6. It reminds all of us that "We are Kenough." This film doesn't throw anyone under the bus. The compassionate message of the movie - and the penultimate line - is given to Ken. This is not just about women evolving and coming into our own. It's about all of us coming into our own and understanding that in an e.e. cummings ("To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting") society - we have more in common than we do in conflict.

I have only scratched the surface of the surprising breadth and depth of this movie's impact.

If you google #BarbieMovie, you'll find hundreds of fascinatingly diverse perspectives. It's like a mini-Rorschach test.

Have you seen the film? Love to hear your takeaways...

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P.S. Major props to everyone involved with this movie for creating a "masterpeace" that's prompted such thought-provoking discussions.

Talking about what matters, respectfully and proactively, is one of the goals of my Talking on Eggshells book. You have masterfully shown that it's possible to agree and disagree - and agree to disagree.