‘The Mattel executives were straight out of Benny Hill’
Mariel Clayton, ‘Barbie artist’
I’m a photographer interested in the juxtaposition of stereotypical perfection and hidden inner darkness. The way I’ve sometimes depicted this is through Barbie dolls engaged in murder, cannibalism and torture. So I’ve long been sceptical of the overall concept of Barbie as an image of achievable womanhood. But I had no expectations when it came to the movie. My first impression was that it was very elegantly done – and I was intrigued by the idea that, by the end, not even Barbie wants to be Barbie.
I appreciated the way the film gently caricatured Mattel and their iron-fist insistence on keeping Barbie in her box. That said, I felt the boardroom scenes could have been more depressingly realistic. In life, a platoon of men still tend to make decisions that affect women. The differentiation between Barbieland and the real world would have been heightened had the Mattel executives not just stepped in from an episode of Benny Hill.
Perhaps Mattel did not want an actual villain in the movie. Yet there could have been a better foil to Barbie’s optimistic naivete.
Still, my partner – who happens to be called Ken – and I were often crying with laughter. Especially at the Kens’ epic beach-battle dance-off. And we loved the bit about the Kens trying to explain the brilliance of The Godfather to the Barbies. My Ken did that on our first date too.
There were moments when it was a bit heavy-handed. The endless use of the word “patriarchy” started to get on my nerves even though it was used as a comic abstract – and I think the adult themes may affect its accessibility for younger children.
But it’s good if young girls and boys ask questions. Hopefully the adults who take them to see the film will be up for answering them – and for explaining you don’t need to be in a couple to find fulfilment. You can be just Barbie, or just Ken, without the box or accessories. And that is more than enough.
• Mariel Clayton’s work can be seen at The Alley of the Dolls
‘Ken’s sexuality is always questionable’
David J Mansour, Barbie collector
I’ve been an avid Barbie collector for 36 years, so I was highly anticipating the film. Afterwards, I had to process it. I lay awake and asked myself: “God, did I like that? What did I just watch?” But in the morning I thought: “You know, I really liked it!” I’m very pleased.
I loved Margot Robbie; she gave that doll heart and soul. And I loved Barbieland: seeing the dolls come alive and recognising so many pop culture references. But when it got to the buffoonish Mattel executives I was like: “The film’s losing me here.” I didn’t think they were funny and I couldn’t wait for them to be off screen.
I was born the same year Mattel started producing Ken dolls – 1961 – so I feel I have a special connection. My mom bought me Kens for birthday and Christmas presents. When I first heard Ryan Gosling had been cast, I thought: “He’s a little old.”
I like him, don’t get me wrong, he’s a great actor and really easy on the eye. But even though everyone is now raving about his performance, while I was watching the film I thought: ‘I still don’t know about him as Ken.’ And I was surprised he was portrayed as so generic; just this week Mattel brought out a Ken with a prosthetic leg. But since I saw the film, Gosling has grown on me. Now, I can’t imagine anyone else in the role.
I think teenage girls and gay men will like the film. We get that humour. And Ken’s sexuality is always questionable … But it’s weird to have your niche interest suddenly explode globally. When I started, I didn’t know any other male collectors – and hardly any female ones, unless I went to doll shows. Now, on Instagram, lots of young men have Barbie collections and they’re just going crazy. It’s fun, but it’s odd because I feel like I’m kind of on the outside looking in.
And buying Barbies is different now. You used to get them in bricks-and-mortar stores. Now it’s all online and very competitive. The dolls from the film are hard to find. When Mattel released them on their website, they sold out in about two hours. I can’t get Pink Western Barbie unless I pay three times what she was sold for when she came out last month. Now she’s $150 on eBay. I’m just waiting. Once the movie is played and done, maybe I’ll get her for what she’s worth.
• David Mansour is the author of the forthcoming book Behold the Valley of the Dolls: A Barbie History in Portraits
‘People now give me their heart instead of laughing in my face’
Rachel Evans, ‘human Barbie’
I think it’s a work of genius. It’ll go down as one of the best movies of all time. It’s exceptional. I love everything about it.
It’s finally made me feel validated. Some people have said the creation of Barbie didn’t help feminism. I think it did, but it’s just feminism batting your eyelashes rather than burning your bra.
The misconception was that you couldn’t be a human Barbie, as I am, because she’s a toy who’s flat and plastic and not multifaceted. Yet Margot Robbie brought that character to life and showed how she could be human.
In the past, I’ve had to explain the history of Barbie and how I relate to her personality; that that’s why I dress like her and why I’ve spent 18 years changing my facial aesthetics. People used to ridicule me and give me dirty looks on the train. They’d look at me and smirk. Now I don’t need to justify myself, and I feel an abundance of pure love.
The movie did that for me, and it’s such a gift. People smile and approach me. Men say: “Hi Barbie!” Young girls tell me my dress is beautiful. I was going up the escalator in a shopping centre and a woman looked at me in awe. I just smiled and waved and her face lit up. To connect with people’s hearts has always been my dream, and people are now giving me their heart instead of laughing in my face. It’s been overwhelming and profound.
Other people now treat me with respect, too: press and producers as well as the public. I don’t know if it’s going to mean I can give up the day job. I work in a Mayfair fashion boutique as well as being a real-life Barbie; I juggle both. I’ve always had different careers, just like Barbie!
I’ve seen the film twice now and I cried both times.
When I saw the film on Saturday, I was sobbing. I was like: “Oh, I shouldn’t cry that hard because my makeup is gonna look wrecked.” But it was just so beautiful.
‘There was clearly a diversity checklist at work’
Jian Yang, owner of 12,000 Barbies
I thought the film would be bad, because Barbie has never really had a narrative. She’s always been something on to which little girls could project personalities and dreams, accents and cultural beliefs. So for me, as someone who lives in Singapore, my Barbie would take off her shoes at the dream house. And she wouldn’t sound American; she would sound like my aunt. I think the Barbie brand has always allowed this flexibility, so giving her an actual voice seemed risky.
But I really enjoyed it! The most approachable bits especially: the dance-offs, the choreographed blowout party, the fashion. And I thought the mother/daughter relationship was well-drawn. My niece is nine; when they pull away from you – “Don’t hug me anymore!” – you feel that hurt in your soul.
Greta Gerwig had done her research. She was cognisant of the collector audience. I loved seeing the discontinued dolls: pregnant Midge, Skipper with the growing boobs, gay Ken, sugar daddy Ken.
I liked the preachiness less. Singapore has always been a multiracial society; it’s one of the world’s most racially harmonious countries. So having to listen to how a foreign culture has to deal with segregation and acceptance – it was a bit much. There was clearly a diversity checklist at work. And I thought it was quite sexist that it made all the men really dumb. To empower one gender, I don’t think you need to disempower the other.
It was partly Ryan Gosling’s fault the men came across as really stupid, because he chose to play him that way. They should have allowed the Kens to also be more diverse. In fact there are a range of sizes within Ken dolls, but that was not represented in the film. Except for Allen, they were all perfectly symmetrical six-pack bodybuilders who didn’t know how to run their own kingdom.
Mattel have basically created a two-hour ad, that reinforces all the branding they’ve been attempting since 2000. And I think they’ve done it well, because it is an ad everyone wants to see. Everyone is obsessed with the brand at the moment, and the most fashionable thing to wear is the Barbie logo. But in three weeks it will be last season’s fashion. What worries me is that when everyone stops wearing it and I continue, will I just look like last season’s news?
I don’t think it’s going to lead to sustained interest in the brand. It’s momentary nostalgia, after which Barbie will still be just that thing in a box in your attic.
‘We didn’t get what was so funny’
Seven-year-old Barbie fans Romy, Penny and Ivy
[Tim Jonze writes:] Romy, Penny and Ivy are looking forward to the Barbie movie. Their fandom ranges in fervour: Penny says she has so many Barbies that she’s lost count, whereas Ivy thinks she has one doll “but I’ve lost all of its clothes”. Romy is looking forward to hearing Aqua’s Barbie Girl, which is alarming as I have no idea if it’s even in the film. In fact, I’m rather worried they’re going to be disappointed: they’re expecting a bright-pink, wholesome kid’s film about Barbie’s adventures in Barbieland, but my film editor warns me that it’s actually a feminist satire in which Barbie is preoccupied by thoughts of death. Still, it’s definitely pink.
We sit down to watch. All three girls seem fascinated by Barbie’s daily routine – the heart-shaped french toast and walking about on tiptoes – but as the film progresses they seem less engaged with the meta jokes about capitalism and patriarchy. There are signs of restlessness towards the end but nobody asks to leave, which is good as I’m rather enjoying it.
So girls, did you like that?
All: “Yes!!!”
Really?
Romy: “I liked it when Ken and the boys were doing funny dances.”
Ivy: “I liked the beginning when Barbie was getting dressed.”
Romy: “I wish my feet were the same shape as Barbie’s … then I’d be tallest in the class.”
So you weren’t … bored?
All: “Noooo!”
Romy: “It was fun the whole way through. Although, sometimes everyone was laughing and we didn’t know why.”
Penny: “We didn’t get what was so funny. Also they kept saying these words that I didn’t even know – they were so weird!”
Romy: “It was tricky to understand them all.”
What did you think the film was about?
Romy: “Just be yourself.”
Penny: “Yeah, find yourself.”
Ivy: “Wear fluff!”
Wear fluff? That’s the meaning of the Barbie movie?
Ivy: “Wear fluff if you want to. But if you don’t want to then don’t wear it.”
Penny: “Yeah!”
Romy: “Don’t let people stop you from wearing what you want to wear.”
Were there any bits you didn’t like?
Penny: “Barbie was always crying.”
Romy: “Yeah, why was she crying all the time?”
Penny: “Also Ken said ‘dude’ too much. It was all ‘dude’ and ‘horses’.
How many stars would you give it?
Penny: “Five stars!”
Ivy: “I was going to say five stars but it wasn’t as good as Mamma Mia! or Grease so I’ll give it three stars.”
Romy: “Four stars. I knocked a star off because Barbie was always crying.”
‘Its gender politics are baffling’
Laura Snapes, Guardian deputy music editor / Greta Gerwig stan
There has been persistent criticism that Barbie is just an advert to get us to buy stuff. No shit: it’s a film about a toy doll. Also, all blockbusters are adverts now. That said, I can’t figure out what exactly I’d be compelled to cop after seeing this odd, muddled film. Even Barbie quits being Barbie in it, swapping her idealised life for a more complex reality.
Although I’m not the demographic for Barbie merch, I am a paid-up Greta Gerwig fan (I wouldn’t hand over £19 to see many other films on opening night in central London), and I was surprised and disappointed by how incoherent the film was. The tonal mismatch was jarring: parts were extremely funny and frantic, which came to feel completely at odds with Barbie’s baseless existential crisis, and the dreary mother-daughter storyline (which was, again, oddly bad, given Gerwig made her name as a director with a film about that dynamic). The detail and individual gags were brilliant but the overall narrative was so existential as to become meaningless. And the blurry boundary between Barbieland and the real world was neither underpinned by dream logic nor logic-logic.
Its politics were also baffling. The diverse casting stood in uneasy contrast to the film’s dogged heterosexuality (bar a little innuendo about the Kens and Allan) and the gender essentialism. The idea that Ken is “just beach” is very funny, but I felt conflicted about the film’s unproductive attitude of, basically, “lol, men”. Even the idea of a man playing his guitar “at” a woman feels straight out of 2010s tumblr feminism. America Ferrera’s Gone Girl-style speech was equally dated, and the idea that women can just talk their way out of patriarchy, as the Barbies do to overthrow the Kendom, made me want to slide off my seat. I might worry about what kids would take from it, if I thought kids would be able to sit through it at all.
Even though I strongly disliked Barbies as a kid I was ready to love this. The strength of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling’s performances kept me invested. But I didn’t buy it.
