Barbie is a billion dollar film, that is probably the most important thing about it. No matter what, it's a huge cultural product, the opener to what will soon be a long series of movies about toys by Mattel. This certainly overshadows any of the actual content of the film, its place within an industry of advert movies. All the mocking of Mattel within the film is self-flagellation all the way to the bank. Barbie was fortunate to come about at a time when people are becoming dissatisfied with the schlop put out by Disney, but really Barbie is the Pepsi to Ant-Man’s Coke. Corporations still dominate cinema, but now it's slightly better because at least the film is good. There was also the cultural moment of ‘Barbenheimer’ that helped bring the film into consciousness. Brought about mostly due to the contrast in tones of the two films, but still the will of the culture industry wins. No one will care about Oppenheimer until the Oscars, but Barbie is sticking around. I think this is due to the political themes of the film, the attempt to tell a feminist story through the Barbie brand. Barbie almost immediately became an object of discourse, Gay Stalinists like Mattxiv were quick to tow party lines. Then you had the faux-outrage directed at Ben Shapiro, essentially the same as when he criticised WAP. Of course, Ben Shapiro’s whole brand is based on outrage and attention, the same reason Mattxiv is sure to have an opinion on every event. Barbie ceases to be an aesthetic object but merely another ground to wage culture war politics. This cuts through all parts of culture and all ideological existences, just take the backlash to anyone that played the Harry Potter game a few months ago. Personally, I only really thought anything of Barbie after the hype died down, back in July when it came out I thought it was OK but didn’t think anything else of it. I soon began to watch more serious movies around the beginning of August, so I mostly forgot about it. Now I think there is something interesting with Barbie, it's profoundly Paglian.
Barbie in the arena
The beasts of passion must be confronted, and the laws of nature understood. Conflict cannot be avoided, but perhaps it can be confined to a mental theatre. In the imperial arena. There is no law but imagination.
- Camille Paglia, No Law in the Arena
Meltdown has a place for you as a schizophrenic HIV+ transsexual chinese-latino stim-addicted LA hooker with implanted mirrorshades and a bad attitude. Blitzed on a polydrug mix of K-nova, synthetic serotonin, and female orgasm analogs, you have just iced three Turing cops with a highly cinematic 9mm automatic.
- Nick Land, Meltdown
Quite an experience to live in fear, that’s what it’s like to be a slave
- Roy Batty, Blade Runner
What actually makes Barbie a woman? So in Blade Runner, there’s a whole underclass of android beings called ‘replicants.’ The replicants resemble, literally replicate, humans in every way except they have enhanced physical capabilities but have a set death date. Usually only a few years, like 3 or 4. It's alleged they have no real memory either, at least of childhood. ‘Tell me about your mother.’ The Blade Runners, cops used to take out rogue replicants, use a test to determine whether someone is a replicant or human based on retinal reaction to questions about morality and life such as their childhood. The replicants are subordinated by being used for slave labour on off world colonies, and when they revolted they were banned from earth. Whether the replicants are human or not is the central theme of the film, and although I didn’t really like the film that much, it has still stuck with me. Towards the end, Rutger Hauer’s character Roy Batty saves Deckard’s life and says:
“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion… I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain… Time to die.”
Batty comes from outer space, having been a soldier replicant on the colonies. As such, he got to witness the wonders of the universe, the immense beauty of nature. Meanwhile, Deckard lives in the dystopian LA with towering grey skyscrapers, lack of sunlight and giant neon signs telling him to “ENJOY COKE.” In just 4 years, Batty has experienced more life than actual humans on earth. The people on earth might be humans, but they aren’t living.
Barbie is a replicant, she’s a pure simulacrum of womanhood. Originally designed as a revolt against nature, a doll that was more than a child. Girls no longer had to only play with representatives of natural destiny, that's the important part of Barbie. In the opening to the film, the giant Margot Robbie Barbie plays the role of the monolith in 2001 a space odyssey, a film I haven’t seen, so I don’t really know what the monolith means. She is this object that is designed to put an end to natural fate, childbirth. All the girls are dressed in beige and grey clothes, whilst Barbie is beauty, Barbie is glamour. The film moves on from this to of course hyperbolically suggest that this saved all women, and now they could become astronauts and lawyers without any barriers. This I think is the place of the film. There is a kernel of truth in the statement that Barbie made it that girls didn’t have to just play with child dolls, but obviously this didn’t save all women. Similarly, the film isn’t going to change the world. Art without action can’t change the world, and this is how I think the film positions itself within the world of feminist thought. Barbieland is like an over the top parody of a liberal fantasy where women are liberated by taking all the positions of power. There’s an all female supreme court, and lawyer Barbie even gives a fantasy speech about how citizens united should’ve been ruled the other way of course, in a world seemingly without corporations. The supreme court doesn't actually have anything to do. And in our real world the US Supreme Court does have women on it and no one who liked Barbie would want 8 Amy Coney Barrett on the SC. The position that the world would be better for women if women occupied the positions of power falls apart when you recognise that women historically are often as responsible for the position of the world as men. For every Ronald Reagan, there’s a Margaret Thatcher. It is very clearly not a serious statement on the wonders of matriarchal society. But what makes the Barbies women or the Kens and Allan men? Seemingly social reality, the Barbies think of themselves as women and through this they think that they have saved the women of the real world. Ken gosling when he gets to the real world also identifies with men and through this thinks patriarchy is good. Like Roy Batty’s replicant living a greater life than humans, the Barbies get to live greater lives than real women because they aren’t held back by material reality. The Barbies live in a dreamworld devoid of patriarchy. This is sort of the original criticism posed at Barbie in the real world, that it produces unrealistic beauty standards on women. Barbie is literally made out of plastic, and therefore can be sculpted like Michelangelo’s David to represent any ideal notion of beauty the creator chooses. This point is mostly laughed off in the film as the criticism is presented by a child and used as a joke when Margot Barbie says ‘I’m not pretty.’ This is part of Barbie being a revolt against nature, like David it's a creation from the eye of beauty, a drive to produce something greater than mere natural existence. Barbie is made out of a form of beauty rather than a 1:1 depiction of what women look like. Quite like a statue, Margot Barbie doesn’t have a personality, she is just this idea of Barbie. The kid even asks her if she’s a lawyer or doctor like other Barbies. Margot Barbie’s entire personality comes from Gloria/The Mother. She has thoughts of death because The Mother herself is having negative thoughts, this is how all the Barbies work. The Barbies might have a set role like ‘Doctor’ but can still be affected by the outside. This is how weird Barbie is created, her real life controller plays too hard and destroys the subjectivity of the weird Barbie. All imperfections are brought from the outside.
Barbieland is Solaris
Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless—
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye—
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave:—from out their fragrant tops
External dews come down in drops.
They weep:—from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Valley of Unrest
shame is the feeling that will restore humanity… you don’t ask questions of meaning when you’re happy
- Kris Kelvin, Solaris
Barbie’s struggle comes from outside Barbieland, the real world creeps into paradise. Gloria imports her feelings of imperfection on to Barbie in an almost videodrome-esque fantasy, Barbie’s physical being starts changing as the outside pierces Barbieland. Suddenly Barbie’s fantasy world loses its magic, her existence becomes disenchanted. Her fake shower, her fake food, her fake floating, all cease to operate as they did. In a reference to Tarantino, Barbie’s feet become a central moment of her awakening, they become flat. Utopia crumbles around her, so she must take flight to the real world. The real world effects Barbieland in the same way that the planet Solaris affects the astronauts. As a defence mechanism to the astronaut’s probings Solaris creates constructs of their memories in such a manner that they appear real. It keeps sending him copies of his dead wife and the more they impact the planet the more real she becomes. He is haunted by memories within his unconscious mind, and thus they appear no different from sense perceptions like what appears when looking out the window, both seem just as real. The real world ends up exporting its own imperfections to Barbieland the more the dolls break through paradise. Barbie and Ken enter the real world and learn that their ideas of what it's like is completely false, and this revelation is what ends up changing Barbieland. The abstract Utopia of Barbieland collapses when brought into contact with reality, like in Solaris, where the epistemological tenets of logical positivism are brought into disrepute with contact from beyond consciousness. Really, billions should watch Solaris instead. Barbieland utopia was also built on tumultuous ground, as the Kens took over with relative ease. Barbie autocracy was simply the case, it was just reality, not based on anything. When the Barbies overthrow the Kens, it's due to Gloria and Margot Barbie convincing them that there is greater meaning than being a slave to Ken. It requires active participation in reality to ground the structure of society, it moves from abstract utopia to the material world. Even the Kenocracy is only based on subjective principles. Ken Gosling wants recognition from Margot Barbie and that’s why he forms patriarchy to try to get back at her, it is also how the Barbies are able to overthrow the Kendom. They use the Kens’ lack of subjectivity to distract them long enough to prevent the removal of the constitution. The Kens seemingly don’t get played with, they have no connection to the outside world, they’re just Ken. Barbie is everything because Barbie can be anything, whilst the Kens are defined in relation to Barbie. Margot Barbie and Ken Gosling have their own struggles for identity but whilst Margot Barbie is forced to face the unreality of her fantasies Ken Gosling reverts to the fantasies as a defence mechanism, he doesn’t want to give up on the idea that Barbie loves him. Fantasy is a safe realm for him. It’s the dark side of desire, ‘why do men fight for their servitude as if it were their salvation.’ Deleuze and Guattari ask, and the answer is because of the manner in which desire manifests within the subject. Ken’s desire for Barbie’s love is the cause and downfall of the Kendom. Ken Gosling's “rivalry” with Ken Liu tears apart the Kendom because like pre-revolution Barbieland, the Kendom is also not based on any real principle it just is, a fantastical reaction to the lack of personal recognition from Margot Barbie. If there’s any real meaning to this, it's that the grounding of feminism must be real material principles rather than more performative based lifestyle changes. The Barbie’s are awoken by Gloria’s big speech and literally being reprogrammed by having her look directly into their eyes, in this part we become the Barbies, and telling them they are living the wrong life. Like how in Salo bystanders are as important as active participants in barbarism, The Barbies choosing to live under Kenocracy because it's easier are chastised and told they don’t want this life. Gerwig isn’t a fool, unsurprisingly, this is as close as she could probably get to active political messaging in a film backed by a massive corporation. If there’s a point to Mark Fisher, it's that kernel’s of political truth can break through culture industry products. Barbie occasionally lets slip some radical ideas, but of course only ideas. Like the dolls, the film won’t change the world on its own.
Unsurprisingly, Gay Stalinists like Mattxiv and the red guards at Impact celebrate the film as a triumph of the culture industry regardless of any content within the film. It seemingly doesn’t matter what the film says, just that it made Warner Bros more money than the deathly hallows part 2 because Hari Nef has minimal screen time. Bernstein’s politics are completely vibe based when it comes to culture – average so-called activist – Barbie is good because it made more money than a J.K Rowling property and has a trans actress in it. This is the other side of Barbie, what makes it not like Solaris, its identity within the culture industry as the ‘progressive’ film that allows for the domination of ‘culture’ by the same corporations. Barbie is dragged down by its place in culture war politics, either it's woke and bad or an epic win for the culture industry. Mattxiv becomes indistinguishable from the same conservatives he often laments for getting worked up over Bud Light and similar issues, as he gets to epically own J.K Rowling with Barbie’s profits. Thankfully, no one has decried Solaris as woke. The culture industry cuts through all forms of life, and identity is re-affirmed through culture industry alignments like being pro or anti Barbie. For nerds in gaming, a similar situation would be pronouns and Starfield. Culture war, at least when it comes to art, is the demand that all art is subservient to party lines. Whether that’s on the left or the right, both groups want party lines upheld like not being woke for the right or not being problematic for liberals. All art becomes filtered through this. This sometimes has very funny consequences such as a principal in Florida losing her job because students were shown photos of ‘David’ by Michelangelo and there were complaints that it was ‘Pornographic.’ A conservative Christian school that thinks western art is too inappropriate for 11-12 yr olds. The Culture Industry cuts through all aesthetic value and reproduces it as politics on the level of the subject.
Barbie as Sexual Personae
Are you a leftist who likes to have their tits out? Do you like to flick off pro-lifers?”
- Chrissy Chlapecka
Of the great sexual personae I have seen in my lifetime, Philadelphia prostitutes rank very high. They are fearless and aggressive, waving down businessmen in sedans or bringing traffic to a halt as they jaw with taxi drivers. They rule the street. “Pagan goddess!” I want to call out, as I sidle reverently by. Not only are these women not victims, they are amongst the strongest and most formidable women on the planet. They exist in the harshest reality, but they laugh and bring beauty out of it. For me, they are heroines of outlaw individualism.
- Camille Paglia, No Law in the Arena
In her essay ‘No Law in the Arena’ Camille Paglia writes of her experience seeing prostitutes walking through the street in the morning:
Often over the past decade, as I arrive at 8 A.M. at my classroom building on South Broad Street in Centre City, I have been stunned to encounter a working whore sashaying cheerfully along in full brazen regalia - red-leather bolero jacket and bulging halter, white-leather or lavender suede thigh-high boots, black-spangle or gold lamé micro-miniskirt with no underwear and bear buttocks. White, Black, or Latina, she dominates the street for two blocks in every direction. You can see the stir, as people hurrying to work break step, turn, or furtively stare, Working-class men brashly hail her in humorous admiration; middle-class men are startled, embarrassed, but fascinated; middle-class women, uneasily clutching their attaché cases, are frozen, blank, hostile.
- Camille Paglia, No Law in the Arena
Barbie isn’t a woman but a sexual personae. A kind of being formed through beauty and sexuality. Of course, the film actually takes the opposite position to this, or tries to. When Barbie and Ken land in LA in their ridiculous neon spandex they both get objectified and ogled, but Ken likes it whilst Barbie feels uncomfortable. This is partly due to the different nature of the staring, towards Ken beyond the gay couple it's mostly non-sexual almost admiration at his daring, whilst with Barbie it is sexual. Barbie even gets assaulted. Unlike the prostitute who dresses in such a manner in order to advertise her profession, Barbie and Ken wear that because they think it's normal. The prostitute is advertising, whilst Barbie doesn’t want people to stare. However, Barbie’s sexual personae is used to overcome the Kens. They use Ken's desire for recognition as a weakness and the power they end up having over them to end Kenocracy. Barbie is an unashamed celebration of feminine beauty and the power of sexuality. One time some loser on discord tried to claim the Barbie film would be (it hadn’t come out yet) sexist because it was pink (male heartstopper fan btw). This is a ridiculous Stalinist position that women should only be grey and technical, no celebration of feminine beauty allowed! A position echoed by the teen girl when she calls Margot Barbie a fascist for crimes like creating unrealistic beauty standards. As opposed of course to the realism of men in art like St Sebastian or Hercules or Ryan Gosling as Ken. I think the film is mocking this position, as it's given through an absurd situation of a teen girl giving a long explanation of the last 50yrs of critical feminist theory. In the film, the girl eventually comes around to Barbie anyway. On the other hand, I don’t think the film is trying to reclaim Barbie as some grand progressive figure for feminist movements, it's more that Barbie is the groundwork to tell a story about the struggle of women in patriarchal society, partly I believe this due to it being live-action. Barbie ceases to be a doll as she’s represented through real women rather than an animated doll.
Barbie is like a modern day Nefertiti. Paglia identifies an ‘early triumph of Apollonian imagery’ with the bust of Nefertiti.1 A work of art that serves as a complete representation of feminine beauty but also the reduction of a subject to a representation. ‘Visually, she has been reduced to her essence.’2 Nefertiti has only a head, the rest of the body is missing. It's an abstraction of being used to create a work that is dedicated to an idea of feminine beauty. Paglia contrasts this with the Venus Of Willendorf which has no face but only a body, it lacks any real identity because according to her art has not yet found its meaning of beauty.3 These two are individual representatives of the Apollonian and Chthonian (Paglia mostly uses this instead of the more common ‘Dionysian’). Barbie is a combination of the two forces. She is both an object and person. Barbie rises above natural destiny through her lack of any aesthetic flaws like a statue of antiquity; she is designed to be a pure representative of beauty beyond natural existence. Barbie the doll is without imperfections. Barbie the doll emerged in 1959 actually predating the big revolts of the 1960s against nature. Barbie the doll was doing it first, as she was the first doll to say that women don’t have to be mothers. The film also joins in the anti-nature revolt as it is highly stylised to the point that it has cultivated its own aesthetic. It ironically builds its own authentic identity out of the plastic aesthetic of Barbieland by separating itself from other films. After the ugliness of the MCU, a celebration of beauty is a welcome change. Margot Barbie herself actually revolts against her own nature by choosing human life rather than Barbie life. Barbie’s sexual personae is living life as a work of art and the use of beauty to overpower those around you. Barbie represents the exact persona that Paglia identifies with the working prostitutes around her. She mentions one time in the Netherlands where ‘the men shopping in the street cluster together to bolster their confidence; most are awkward, uncertain, abashed.’4 There is sexual power in divine feminity, and the Barbies exploit this to the max.
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (New York: Vintage Books), p.66
ibid., p.69
ibid., p.54
Camille Paglia, Vamps and Tramps (UK: Viking), p.60