Dressing Up for the Barbie Movie was More Fun Than the Barbie Movie
Dressing Up for the Barbie Movie was More Fun Than the Barbie Movie
In this iteration: not a film review, as such.
Hey Matryoshkas,
Today I’m sharing with you a post of mine I originally uploaded to my Medium. I realised, however, that — being about fashion and film — it’s much more at-home here. This is not a review of the Barbie movie, though I do talk about the movie a little. Really, it’s a review of the experience of going to see the Barbie movie. The fanfare of it all.
(If you’ve read it before, I apologise.)
Without further ado!
The cinema foyer is sweltering. The queue for drinks and popcorn takes me back to the shelves I browsed in Toys“R”Us when I was little: rows of bodies clad in pink; holographic accessories winking in the light; recurring glimpses of the Barbie logo, everywhere. I am no exception to the mob, decked in a glittery, frilly blouse and a garish fuchsia midi skirt, with my nails painted a sparkly Barbie pink and a pair of sparkly pink hummingbird earrings to match. (Underneath, I’m wearing a pale pink nightie, because I couldn’t find any pink camisoles in my drawer so I figured this would have to do. My last-minute decision proves wise when the heat forces me to dart into the toilets and remove my layers; the nightie, worn over pink tights in a cinema screen where no-one’s looking at me anyway, just about passes for a slip dress. And it’s still on-theme.)
Checking everyone’s tickets is a harried Vue employee who probably isn’t being paid enough to deal with all of this. He greets us, tears the topmost edges of our tickets and lets us through, with a warning that the AC unit in the screen is broken. If we get too hot and need to leave before the film is over, he says, we can come to the front desk and he’ll refund our tickets for us, no problem. Thankfully, it doesn’t come to that — though with so many bodies packed into the screen, it’s a near thing.
I’m here with my parents, both of whom have dressed up and let me paint their nails for the occasion: my mum’s, a matching sparkly pink; my dad’s, a holographic purple, with accent pinkies in pink and blue. (His selection, and a good one.) Though we drove up together and will leave together, we won’t be watching the film together, as the dwindling number of remaining tickets left us unable to snag any seats in a trio. The last time I saw a cinema this crowded was in 2015, when I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens in its opening week. This is not Barbie’s opening week. I can hardly believe my eyes.
When I was taking film studies at A-Level, our lecturers spent a not-insignificant amount of class-time trying to convert us to the cause of Protecting Cinemas, Lest We Lose Them For Good. The most revered in this discussion were the little, independent arthouse venues, but even the multiplexes mattered. If they stopped being profitable, my teachers warned us, they would close — and then the whole buttered-popcorn, big-screen experience would be a thing of the past. As I filter in to take my lone seat for Barbie — an adult woman on my left, a little girl with her mother on my right — I can’t help thinking about how thrilled my old lecturers would be by this turnout. And I’m thrilled too, a bit. Whatever I may think of Barbie once I’ve seen it, it’s gotten people to make an occasion of going to the movies.
Two hours pass and I walk out listless, wondering what exactly I just watched. My mum meets my eye through the bustle of dolled-up strangers dispersing into the lobby — all of them sweaty, makeup running everywhere — and she looks as baffled as I feel. The prevailing mood of the crowd appears to be relief. All of us are glad to be out of the stifling screen, fanning ourselves, laughing.
Having had almost a month to think about it now, my honest opinion is that — beyond the few cheap laughs it got out of me before I could help it — there wasn’t much I enjoyed about Barbie. Even the costumes, which I had expected to adore, were pretty forgettable. Neither the gags nor the glitter made up for the gaping void where the movie’s heart should have been. Now, there are already a wealth of think-pieces dissecting the themes of the Barbie movie, and whether or not it actually makes the feminist statement it claims to. The article I’ve linked here explores the issue so fully and eloquently that I have little to add, beyond an enthusiastic, “yes, exactly!” And I don’t want to add to the noise with another article rehashing the mire of pitfalls in the film’s messaging. So I’ll leave my take at this: Ben J Pierce’s 2014 music video, Little Game, delivers a more complex analysis of gendered social development in four minutes than Barbie manages in two hours. (Go and watch it. You’ll see what I mean.)
What I found more compelling than anything that actually happened in the movie’s 1hr 54min runtime was the circus of rituals that sprang up around the movie’s cinematic release. The thematically-appropriate outfits people pulled together to see it; the double-features with Oppenheimer; the endless slew of photos where filmgoers posed in the Barbie Box. (Junji Ito’s Barbie Box portrait, taken at SDCC, was my favourite of these.) The marketing for this movie was so insidiously clever that even people who had very little interest in seeing the movie to begin with — like my dad — were sucked in by the craze. And although I remained critical of the beauty standards extolled by the Barbie franchise — though I understood that any feminist flag the movie claimed to wave was really just an advert for a version of feminism Mattel could sell me — I found myself disturbingly… enchanted. By the whole phenomenon. It’s like it cast a spell.
Despite the bland disappointment of the movie itself — and the oppressive heat of the screen — I had fun going to see Barbie at the cinema. The resurgence in popularity of the colour pink, amid a consumer landscape of increasingly inescapable greige (grey + beige), has been refreshing. And even knowing that it’s all a marketing ploy, I’ve enjoyed the novelty of the Barbie experience. It’s all felt, really, like going to a themed costume party. Who doesn’t love those?
Until next time,
Holly
The Doll House
I was disappointed with the movie as well. There was so much hype I was sure I'd love it.