Barbie, and the Absence of Christie
How glaring, especially for today
Warning: In this article, I will be spoiling Barbie. If you have not seen the movie yet and don’t want to be spoiled, please save this article for later. But if you have seen it, or just don’t care, read away!
So, Barbie was a delightful watch. I really enjoyed the film for its unserious nature and a sweet, emotional core that worked for the character arc ‘Stereotypical Barbie’ (Margot Robbie) goes through. Barbie’s debut on the big screen was a strong one, but there were some drawbacks to the film that kept it from being absolutely spectacular in my eyes, one being the lack of Barbie canon characters we get to see in the film.
According to the film’s universe, all Barbie doll ‘essences’ (?) live in Barbieland (the film does not explain the logic of its world really, but that’s more for the sequel to tackle. This first film just vibed with the zaniness of it all, which I was totally there for). You have the ‘Barbies’ as their own group, then you have the Kens, and it seems the same would go for the other characters like Midge, Skipper, Kelly, etc. (But not Allan, sadly).
But we really don’t see any other characters other than Allan, pregnant Midge from the controversial Happy Family line, and just as questionable Growing Up Skipper, both characters that served the purpose of telling a ‘haha weird Barbie product’ joke, a running gag in the film that engaged some of the juiciest Barbie trivia there is. We don’t see Kelly, Raquel, Teresa, and most glaring of all, Christie.
Another drawback of the film was that its diversity and inclusion, which were projected to be very sincere and groundbreaking, didn’t really do the work fans thought it was going to do. If anything, its representation was rather standard and stagnant. Save for some Latinae representation vis a vis America Ferrera (love her!) and Ariana Greenblatt, and some representation of folks with disabilities (though they were relegated to one or two scenes max) it was severely lacking in the visuality of dark-skinned Black women.
And yes, Issa Rae is there and plays ‘President Barbie,’ in fact. We love some reparative rhetoric, and it was a powerful piece of representation. But, Rae is barely in the film herself and is the only dark-skinned woman present. And thus a huge opening was made for the character of Christie to make her big-screen debut as well. But alas, her moment in the limelight existed as a bit of extra trivia during the ending credits.
Christie hit toy store shelves in 1968 with the Talking Christie doll. Her conceptualization began at the suggestion of Black women assembly line workers at Mattel, the toy company that owns the Barbie brand. Preceding Christie was the Francie doll, which wasn’t a Barbie-branded doll per se, but the Black version of another doll by the same name. I posit Francie was issued as more of a test run before Christie was released since she’s treated as a flagship doll and Francie is more or less forgotten these days. But both were marketed as friends of Barbie.
Like many Barbie characters, Christie has seen many iterations throughout the years. She was discontinued in 2005. This wasn’t surprising to learn since Barbie’s friends tend to be switched out by Mattel to make room for newer characters. But she does have a fabulous 55th Anniversary Doll that I just adore! So Christie is not forgotten necessarily.
But for a cultural event as big as a Barbie movie being a summer blockbuster, and given our current social climate when it comes to representation and how important it truly is, it was disappointing to not see at least a cameo of her character in the film. She’s a part of Barbie’s OG squad and a doll that really revolutionized the game when it came to the representation for Black girls through play.
And especially in a year when Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid came out, where singer Halle Bailey plays the character of Ariel, it feels like a hugely missed opportunity to continue to pour into the spirits of Black girls in a society that actively tries to marginalize and devalue them still.
Now, something that I’ve been thinking about with this is avoiding the ‘Black best friend’ trope in TV and film. If Greta Gerwig was conscious of that trope, and decided that including Christie at this time could easily feed into that trope, then I commend her.
It is crucial to be culturally literate when it comes to harmful stereotypes and how they show up in media, and how those stereotypes help exacerbate debilitating notions about a particular person or group of people. So if it was intentional to not add Christie for fear that she could easily be rendered as the ‘Black best friend,’ then I’m not too upset with that.
But, at the same time, a Barbie movie is possible where President Barbie and Christie can exist as two full, actualized characters that are both friends of Barbie and their own selves. There are many ways to avoid that trope, which is why there need to be more Black writers in major films and TV series.
Barbie has gone through many changes, for better and for worse. In recent memory, the brand has been extremely conscious of its efforts to be diverse and inclusive. The current dolls best reflect the evolution in ideals, yet the film does not entirely. Colorism is still rampant across media, and it affects Black women the most.
When only one kind of Black woman is regularly depicted, and in a flattering light at that, the rest of us aren’t as willingly seen in that same light, and receive worst treatment because of it (During the ending credits, they spotlighted more Black Barbies with darker complexions. Why the ending credits and not throughout the film?)
So some work needs to be done for the sequel. I really hope we get to see more Barbie characters in the next film, especially Christie, the honorary first ‘Black Barbie.’
