I looked at Barbie, and you can too.
So, while Oppenheimer is a decent film that is worth watching, and worth paying to watch it in its original language and in the Lounge, Barbie doesn't deserve that much, so I limited myself to ignominiously pirating it, since… you don't think of pay for a children's movie? (unless you have children, in which case you will).
Actually, it really isn't crap. It's simply a film for children, the kind they made in Denmark in the 70s, with pre-printed morals and didactic plots. Making controversy about the alleged sexualization of the doll, for the generation that has bought Pippi Longstocking's porn suspenders in syrup, is a bit funny.
If we look at it for what it is, its banality is basically good: it's a film that talks about a doll used between 6 and 10 years old, and therefore it's perfectly fine for those aged between six and 10. . Perhaps it deals with some themes that are too strong for that age group, but if we consider that it infantilizes them, trivializes them and makes them digestible for children, let's say that it's fine.
Let's say it's Pippi Longstocking level.
And it's made for the same audience: let's not forget that it's about Barbie, that is, a commercial product, and that it's used to sell it: so it's aimed at anyone who wants to buy a Barbie doll. It is a question, as marketing says, of target.
If we look at it for what it is, it's a decent film for children, even if the commercial aspect is too strong in my opinion. I mean, it's too blatant for this movie to be an ad for a doll. Actually, two (but in the end, Ken was sold as a Barbie accessory, like the Barbie car, the Barbie camper, and the Barbie house. Ken was never a character in that universe, but only a accessory).
Being a film made by a company that sells products, the protagonists are the products. So there's a dozen different barbies, led by an alpha barbie who's the most barbie of them all. The world they live in is Barbie's world, inhabited only by Barbies, run by Barbies, and all the inhabitants do the things that Barbie dolls you find on sale do, the way Barbie dolls you find on sale do. sale. The classic Barbie set that every little girl will ask you for as a gift, over the years, complete with accessories. Including Ken.
But this is obvious: it's like in a pokemon movie: there are pokemon and people spend their lives doing things that are done with pokemon, like pokemon do, etcetera. If a film is based on a product that is bought, and is used to sell it, obviously this is the case.
After all, the thing is under everyone's eyes, so there would be no need to write it. It's not like Mattel is doing anything to hide it. Knowing that Mattel is behind the film is not uncovering a dark plot, or revealing a well-kept secret.
Let's move on to the Kens. Another Mattel product, which has one feature: girls buy it after buying a certain number of Barbies. Why'? Because in the minds of little girls, it takes a boyfriend. I don't know if you've ever seen children play when we were children and there were no computers.
None of us had the idea of buying toy soldiers, or dinosaurs, or Actarus, or Captain Harlock, or Superman, or Batman a girlfriend. Even when female counterparts existed, like wonder woman or bat-girl, they were two different series in two different universes. It's not like at some point you had Superman and his girlfriend defending the world. He takes care of it himself. In short, males see themselves as adults by themselves. Females are seen as engaged.
So, ken is needed. That being Barbie's ideal boyfriend, in the eyes of the little girl, it's nothing that a child would think about, in the sense that identifying with that asshole isn't feasible. In fact it's not that girls buy Barbies, children buy Ken, and then play together. Shit: girls buy barbies, and Ken too, unless in some monstrous family you don't give ken to your brother and barbie to your little girl.
Discovering that they will never play together, because even in the incredible case in which the boy plays with Ken, first he makes him a soldier or a warrior and goes off on his own for his adventures in the garden, leaving the girls to brush the barbie.
So, to recap, it's TWO dolls for girls: one represents barbie, and one represents the boyfriend that according to the little girl who owns barbie, the barbie deserves. The perfect boyfriend by the standards of a six to 10 year old girl.
And he's the perfect boyfriend because this is what little girls think a boyfriend is:
Ken, as a product, is a Barbie "accessory".(*)
This is the commercial standard, at least.
By anyone else's standards, the film's Ken is "a jerk." But the genius is to have him dressed like a stunt double from a gay porn movie from the 80s. Which makes it comical: in the movie, then, there's a guy who looks like a gay closeted, but all the Kens are dressed so that in the end, he's just one of many YMCA-dressed Kens.
Children, as we know, see things in a schematic way, and from only one point of view: me. The girls do the same, and the result is that the barbie is a schematic toy, where you have the doctor barbie who is a doctor and has only one doctor's dress. It's not like she has two, so she's a doctor and then she also has a dress to go out with. Doctor Barbie is a doctor and has only ONE dress, because children's minds are schematic. Ken, on the other hand, arrives(goes) with many clothes, in order to satisfy all possible fetishisms of his girlfriend. In short, if Ken gets engaged to Barbie doctor, it's not that he's having sex at a certain point: he's her patient all the time. (Wedding night? Enema! Cheer!)
I was saying, the mind of children(s) is schematic and has only one point of view: me. And that's what children do. Thus, the plot of the film has an "I", the Barbie Alpha, and sees everything from the eyes of the little girl who owns the doll. I'll give an example (which is not literal in the film)
If Barbie goes to find a job and is asked if she wants to have children, the "I" explanation says that since having children will take away her time, then the company fears it is not the number one priority. So the little girl identifies with the "I" who cannot have the job because she is a woman. Injustice! Calimero!
But if you are an adult you ALWAYS have more than one interpretation, and you could say “males are not asked why the company takes it for granted that they have bought ALL their time. If the woman can at least be a mother, paternity is denied because it is not even discussed at the interview. Authorization reset, by default. What if he wants to be present in his children's lives? It's so obvious that he doesn't have this right, that there's no question of it.
Understood what it means to have two points of view, we can say one thing: as in any film for children, damn it there are two points of view . There is an "I" and it all ends there. And that's right, because they are children.
So when they go to the real world, Barbie does everything that happens (for better or for worse, children understand these two concepts) to her doll in a little girl's fantasy story, i.e. to "me", while Ken does everything that happens to an accessory of her doll. It's not "how boys' lives work according to girls", it's simply how this Barbie accessory works, that is, this "I" accessory, in the fantastic story of this little girl playing.
Since the girl who plays with the doll, "I" experiences (sometimes fears) the (future) difficulties of being a woman, and her barbie (who by transference is the girl herself) will have to face them, with a cathartic effect. In the same way, since Ken is not "me", but only "an accessory of the barbie", ken's world is the world of males according to "me", the owner of the doll. We get jobs because we're male, and all. But this is obvious, the girl has to become an adult woman, not an adult male, it is obvious that everything is easy for them. The stories that the little girl tells when she plays are the future of the little girl herself. This is what games are for. Ken is just an accessory.
It's stupid to be scandalized, or to feel offended as a man, because Ken is not a "male", in that world he is simply a Barbie accessory. It's like Indians: who the hell ever hated Indians? But he had to be shot, and that was all. They were a cowboy accessory.
And in the end everything works as one expects it to work when in a film made to sell the barbie and all her accessories, including Ken : we talk about the adventures of Barbie and her accessories, i.e. the Kens .
And from the child's point of view, it's a correct, but especially, age-appropriate view. For little girls, a boyfriend is something that women have , it's an accessory.
They will learn later that it is a person, over time(**). But we cannot take offense at this representation. Perhaps we could discuss her outfit that looks like it came out of the YMCA video, but the way I see the world, I find it amusing. Still better than Blazer and Tie.
My opinion, therefore, is that it is a commercial film, like transformers or pokemon, made to sell gadgets, and in this case one of the best-selling gadgets in the world.
The plot is perfectly consistent with the target audience, i.e. the typical customer of barbie, i.e. girls ranging from six to 10 years old, and the plot could be one of those fantastic stories that boys and girls they create, to play.
Provided you consider it for what it is, that is a plot for girls, the plot of the film is also pleasant, in some ways enjoyable, the accessory Ken who runs around dressed like a character from some gay porn movie of the 90s it also makes us understand how naive the imagination of these little girls is, in some ways, and how comical the overall effect is. The Ken of the film seems drawn by Tom of Finland himself, and this gives him a comical effect due to the dispersion of the context.
Verdict: once seen for what it is, that is a film for girls made to sell dolls, it is enjoyable and also has quite amusing comedic implications. I wouldn't pay to see it, but it's fine with popcorn.
I know there's all the controversy in the world, but if you can't watch a children's movie without some politics in it, to me you've got a rotten head.
(*) it's a fact, ken is sold as a barbie accessory. I'm not debating it.
(**) Ok, some not.