On paper, you wouldn’t think that a movie like Barbie and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein would have anything in common. But then you think about it for two seconds and you can kind of see it.
Frankenstein is a beautiful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s work but del Toro’s take on the Creature, played incredibly by Jacob Elordi, reminded me of a very important aspect of Barbie. Without spoiling too much (for a movie based on a book that has been out for over 200 years), a lot of the Creature’s arc within the film is figuring out what his purpose is.
Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) creates life to prove he can but what is the purpose of said life? That’s what the Creature is trying to navigate throughout Frankenstein and as I was thinking about Elordi’s performance on my train ride home, I had my playlist on shuffle. There, on the Q train, I was confronted with my feelings as “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish began to play.
The song, which always makes me feel every emotion I’ve ever pent up, played and I realized that Barbie’s (Margot Robbie) journey to understand herself and her purpose in Barbieland is almost identical to that of the Creature’s journey in Frankenstein.
Barbie is going through a crisis when we meet her in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. She is questioning her life and why she does what she does and her entire character arc is all about learning how to be a human and let herself feel. Which, when you breakdown Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, that’s kind of what the Creature is going through. One might say, the two characters are one in the same.
“I don’t know how to feel but I wanna try”
Barbie was created by a woman named Ruth Handler. Handler has been, for years, criticized for making Barbie out to be the “ideal” woman. She’s tall, thin, white, and blonde. In a way, her creation is kind of what Victor is doing when he creates the Creature. In del Toro’s take on Frankenstein, Isaac’s Victor says something about wanting the Creature to be tall because it was easier for him and the science of it all. But when you think about the “ideal” man, many bring up height first.
At its core, both of these stories are about finding humanity in things that are deemed “unhuman.” Both Barbie and the Creature are designed to have the look and feel of a human without the emotions behind it and I do love that both of these stories are about these “things” finding their own version of what being a human means to them.
All I am saying is that if someone showed Barbie to the Creature, I do think that he would find a way to relate to Barbie. They’re just two beings trying to figure out what it means to be alive and I think that’s kind of beautiful. You know he’d listen to “What I Was Made For?” and think of Victor!
(featured image: Warner Bros./Netflix)
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