It’s existentialism *and* it’s feminism: Barbie as a quest for wholeness
A philosopher recently wrote a post arguing that Barbie is an existentialist movie, “and not just” a feminist movie. Characters go from not existing to existing, and he finds that much more interesting than the question of whether the Barbies or the Kens are in charge. I see the themes of existentialism and feminism as deeply intertwined here, and I assert that the message of the movie is that existence comes from wholeness.
There are three characters in Barbie who go through a transformation: Barbie, Ken, and Gloria. Each goes from incompleteness to wholeness, and, as a result, each becomes real.
Two of these stories are straightforward; the third is subtle to the point of missing its mark. I compare the structure of the three stories, then look for clues in the movie for what could have made the subtle one clearer.
Barbie’s journey is archetypal, central, and arguably the least interesting. Hers is the Pinocchio story, minus the love of a parental figure: She starts as a doll and becomes a real human being. I’ll come back to Barbie.
Next is Ken. Much has been written about Ken.
Ken starts off the movie as a symbol of the feminine experience — a diminished sidekick, not quite a love interest, a half-rejected boyfriend with no relevance of his own. “It’s Barbie and Ken,” he laments. “There is no just Ken.” It’s hard not to hear echoes in this of every wife who ever lived.
Ken’s brief adventure in the real world flips the script for him, at least temporarily. When he discovers patriarchy, Ken becomes a goofy but archetypal incel: If you don’t love me, I’ll steal your house and subjugate all your friends! Ha! Take that!
And it works, in a way, for a while. He gets to be a man and create a man’s world. But he soon discovers that power isn’t everything. He still wants to be loved.
Ken is the star and subject of the movie’s one classic musical production number, I’m Just Ken, a song about existence and being seen. During an interlude of the song, Ken and his co-Kens are hit with sparkle dust, which reminds them that they too are magic dolls in the world of Barbie. They get to matter without a female gaze — and without being oppressors.
The Kens lose the war but gain existence. Barbie recognizes Ken’s dignity and individuality and apologizes for taking him for granted. “Ken is me!” he discovers.
Not a sidekick, not an oppressor, but a self. He gets to be “Kenough.”
Ken’s story follows a classic feminist trope, which all three heroes’ journeys imitate: Gap — pendulum swing — integration — wholeness — existence.
Next is Gloria. Gloria’s life is dull and filled with disappointment. She has artistic talent and designs creative Barbies in her spare time, but she’s stuck working as a receptionist in the Mattel Executive Suite. No one even looks at her drawings except a fellow low-level employee from another floor. In her personal life, she’s rejected by her pre-teen daughter Sasha, whose cynicism and acid tongue leave no tolerance for motherly affection. Life looks a little bleak for Gloria.
In comes Barbie. Barbie needs Gloria for two things: First, she needs Gloria to stop giving her irrepressible thoughts of death through her drawings. Second, Gloria provides Barbie’s getaway car when Mattel executives try to put — and trap — Barbie in a literal box.
Gloria, in turn, needs something from Barbie: something that can best be described as a sense of aliveness. Gloria has been playing with and drawing Barbie dolls lately in hopes of finding a bit of the sparkle, adventure, and meaning missing from her life. When she gets the opportunity to go to actual Barbie Land, she knows she’s in for a lot of sparkle and adventure.
What’s unexpected is how much meaning she gains from the experience. Gloria comes to know herself as a hero when she is asked to take a critical role in a revolution to liberate Barbie Land from the patriarchy. Without Gloria’s skill as a Tactician and Counter-Propagandist, the Barbies never could have won the war.
Gloria applies her newfound importance to negotiations with her real-world boss when she pitches the idea of Ordinary Barbie. His assent allows her to bring a bit of sparkle back home with her, as well as validation for her wisdom. Now, there’s no indication that she will be paid for her idea or promoted to a design position of any sort, but the recognition is affirming.
Like Ken, Gloria’s journey to wholeness earns the respect of the person who had rejected her — in this case, her daughter Sasha. Her despair is gone, and her self-expression shines through. She returns to the Real World as a new woman — one who can’t so easily be ignored.
Gap — pendulum swing — integration — wholeness — existence.
Now for Barbie. Barbie becomes a Real Girl. Why is this not interesting to me?
There are reasons why it ought to be. She’s likable, she embarks on a hero’s journey, she looks at life From Both Sides Now, and she can’t go back to plastic after acknowledging the existence of death and patriarchy. She chooses the complex fleshiness of mortality — and of having a vagina — over the utopian repetition of a Great Day Every Day. It should be interesting. But somehow, it’s not.
Unlike Ken and Gloria, the underlying reasons for Barbie’s transformation are poorly developed, leaving an unsatisfying believability gap. We can see how she became complexified, but not really why she was dissatisfied enough to choose change.
Yes, a lot happened when she went on a quest to prevent cellulite by rooting out the source of her irrepressible thoughts of death. She became disillusioned when she learned that her role as a symbol did not have the effect on real-life women that she had always thought. She suffered capitalist patriarchal callousness in the real world and naïve incel patriarchy in the Kendom colonization of her home. She found out what it was like to experience negative emotions, bad circumstances, and pain — and she saw that she could live through it. In the process, she found sisterhood and solidarity with Gloria, the woman who had literally drawn those thoughts into existence.
It’s completely clear and plausible that Barbie came out of that experience a different doll — and maybe even more than a doll. I get it; that’s great… But there’s still something missing.
What’s missing is Barbie’s gap. Ken and Gloria start the movie dissatisfied; Barbie starts the movie very, very happy. We viewers know she’s incomplete, but she does not.
What is the shift that has her not just grab her happy ending when it is offered to her? “You can have your home back, and your homeland back, and not oppress your Kens so much, and just have a happy plastic life again!” It’s what Dorothy chooses, so why not Barbie?
The answer isn’t explicit in the movie, but it may lie in two scenes that explore the theme of imperfection. Unfortunately, neither scene makes its point as clearly as it might.
The first scene is early in her time in the real world, when Barbie is in a bus shelter. She sees a slightly eccentric older woman reading a newspaper and is struck by her beauty. This scene made me cry; I was touched by the depth of human connection between the two and by Barbie’s capacity to appreciate womanhood in all its forms.
Now I’m starting to wonder if there wasn’t something else going on in this scene as well. Perhaps Barbie is struck, as she is in a much later scene, by the richness that is humanity. Could it be that she has realized that beauty is deeper when roughly carved from natural materials than when perfectly molded from plastic?
If so, that insight could have been on her mind when Sasha advocated for Barbie to have an ending of her own. It could be one reason Barbie said she wasn’t sure she could go back to the way things were before.
It’s a beautiful thought — and supported by some interviews with the director — but if that was the intention of the scene, it was not made clear, and there was no follow-up to tie it to Barbie’s later decision to become human.
Barbie’s second encounter with imperfection is in herself. After escaping malevolent Mattel executives, losing her home, and seeing her fellow Barbies brainwashed; her makeup has faded and her hair has lost some curl. She says, “I’m not pretty anymore.”
This line is the lead-up to Gloria’s famous speech about the double-bind expectations placed on women, but on its own it falls flat, because the actor playing Barbie still looks perfect. No hairs are out of place, there are no smudges in her makeup (and she’s still wearing makeup), her clothes are not the slightest touch askew, and, like most female movie stars, she’s still blessed with the top 1% of genetic good looks.
Given all that, it’s hard to tell if Barbie has accepted any degree of imperfection, even after Gloria’s monologue. If Barbie had — if the scene had depicted an actual change in appearance — would that help explain why she felt the urge to become human?
Possibly. It could be hard to go back to keeping up appearances once you realize you don’t have to. It’s clear that late-movie Barbie is more mature and complex than early-movie Barbie. If Barbie is also now okay with looking dramatically less glamorous — if she understood Gloria’s message that perfection is a trap — it could be hard for her to move back into a plastic Dream House.
It’s clear by the end of the movie that Barbie is aware that the world is not perfect — neither the Real World nor Barbie Land. What is not clear, at least until she is shown scenes of life by her creator, is whether she is aware that being imperfect has advantages.
I want to believe in a story where Barbie spent time in the Real World; integrated the good, bad, and ugly of reality into her view of life; saw that she was too complex to be a doll anymore; and realized, inside this new sense of wholeness, that it was time to become real.
Wholeness, after all, is existence.
With a few small tweaks to the direction and plot, Barbie could have been that story.
