The Parallel Universe Where Barbie’s & G.I. Joe’s World Collide—Barbenheimer

First came the Barbie doll in 1959, then came the “action figure” G.I. Joe in 1963, and later there was ‘Barbenheimer’ in 2023.

However, the stereotypical Joe’s behind the scenes story has been missing from the contemporary narrative that pits fictitious Barbie against the historical ghost of Julius Oppenheimer—Barbenheimer.

G.I. Joe action figures (a.k.a. dolls) went to market towards the end of Oppenheimer’s life, during the beginnings of the Korean and Vietnam war, in a post WWII era.

From this standpoint of reality, here’s an invitation to dimension hop to a down-to-earth take, where it seems more logical to pit or compare chapters of history with each other, versus an uneven battle of the fictitious versus the historical.

More than just a pop culture marketed phenomenon, from the standpoint of film history, what I see at play within the Barbenheimer story is a glaring read on America’s cultural psychic legacy and gendered dynamics, manifested in a warped way.

America’s authority as a pop cultural power remains so highly influential that over the course of Barbenheimer’s opening weekend ( Barbie and Oppenheimer), the two films collectively racked in a global box office total of $511.2 million.

It makes me think, perhaps the Swiss founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, wasn’t completely right in his attributed statement:

“Nothing has a stronger influence on their children than the unlived lives of their parents.”

After all, his childhood did not take place in America, during the foundational era of the extended babysitter’s club known as “Toys-Distract-and-Program-Our-Kids.”

(Left) Vintage ad for Mattel’s Barbie, with a mother and daughter playing together; (Right) Vintage ad for Pepsi, with an assumed father drinking a Pepsi as his son holds a toy model of an USAF plane.

Not to shade Toy-R-Us (est. 1957). As a xennial, I too am of a generation of kiddos who learned how to shop a catalog, ideate a toys budget, and story board desires about what molded pieces of plastic merchandise or Play-Doh sets I wanted.

Marketers, perhaps even more so than parents, have a great power of teaching adults and kids how to desire material objects from an early age.

There is a quote attributed to Plato, although a direct source has not been cited, which reads:

“Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.”

Regardless of who stated this quote, what happens when a society made of the generation of Boomers and onwards are raised to desire particular things, like brands of storied dolls such as Barbies and G.I. Joes?

Well, Barbenheimer offers a synopsis of sorts.

To add another level to this, to further expand the lens of exploration, here’s a passage from Plato’s The Republic, from Socrates’ reflection within Book II:

“And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?

Later, it goes on to read:

“Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorised ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but most of those which are now in use must be discarded.”

At Play: American Plastic Role Models

Iconic scene from the 1988 film, Big, directed by Penny Marshall. Pictured left, actor Robert Loggia. Pictured right, actor Tom Hanks. The cast of the toy store scene in the background, less diverse than the animal toy propped on set of the famous toy store, FAO Schwarz.

Perhaps some of you saw the movie Big (1988), starring Tom Hanks.

The classic movie in part tells a story about how adults tend to loose themselves in their un-lived dreams and (perhaps nightmares) and have the tendency to create particular types of toys that then get marketed and sold to kids, shaping their childhood experience. The film, directed by Penny Marshall, raised the question, “What would happen if children created the toys and not the stereotypical executives up top?”

Recall that Jungian quote I mentioned earlier, about the “un-lived life the parent.”

What if beyond the notion of a parental psychic legacy there exists a cultural psychic legacy too, forged by the power of advertisement and markets — an extension of the industrial complex? After all, it tends to be adults who imbue various narratives and aesthetics into marketable doll forms, and then sells them. (Well, with the advent of the internet, kids are becoming entrepreneurs at an earlier age now, and markets are being created by different actors via the aide of platforms like Etsy).

On the timescale of civilization, dolls are not a new. Some of the earliest existence of dolls has been traced back to the 2000 B.C. era. A commonality across time is that dolls were mostly crafted to symbolize community specific social ideals.

However, during the late 1950s, a few years after hair dye entered the market and Marilyn Monroe’s natural browns where turned blonde, and later after the war draft was first televised on TV, turning young boys into men in an instant, a true global cultural shift began to occur, especially within American culture.

Formed not of clay nor cloth, but of plastic, dolls became mass marketed, constructing a variety of societal psychic legacies that remain at play even up till today.

It seems fitting that in a society that was raised on G.I. Joe — an American plastic idol marketed to kids and parents, representing an ideal of the “All-American Man”– would later grow into leaders and audiences that would find a historical movie about an architect of war and actors of mass destruction to be an entertaining past-time.

Equally fitting is that in a society that was raised on Barbie — an American plastic idol marketed to daughters and women, representing an ideal of the “All-American Woman”—would later grow up, turn the July of 2023 into an early Halloween, and head to the movie theaters in record mass, dressed in pink getups, to watch a film about a doll that at one point in their lives, made them feel insecure.

For transparency sake, I was one of the many people who wore something pink to go see the Barbie film during opening weekend, despite feeling insecure in my youth as a result of playing with Barbies. I loved the film and appreciated that it was honest about Barbie’s complex legacy.

For many reasons, despite being a history and science nerd, and a fan of Christopher Nolan’s fiction films, on top of having played with G.I. Joes as a kid, I do not want to watch Oppenheimer. However, I have read several pieces written on it.

Leadership’s Role in Telling Multidimensional Stories

Snapshot of some of the casts from the Barbie film and the Oppenheimer Film, from the IMDb website. (Left) A diverse cast, from a gender and racial perspective [Barbie]. (Right) A non-diverse cast, from a gender and racial perspective [Oppenheimer].

Perhaps I’m hypercritical for not wanting to watch a historical film about the creation of the most extreme machine of mass destruction. Yet, I have watched the Captain America Marvel film more times than I can count. The Tesseract was not merely a pretty blue box. But that’s fiction (inspired by history), which makes it more palatable to consume. (Perhaps that’s hypercritical justification speaking.)

As a historical film, Oppenheimer seems to be a missed opportunity to at least acknowledge the story and lives of the Hispanic people of Los Alamos New Mexico, where the film is set. Julius Oppenheimer’s story was subject to theirs and vice versa. The film team could have even pulled in some narratives of people from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan into the script and casting as well. To omit such key aspects from the core of the film, in order to free up time to tell a 3-hour historically inspired tale from a narrow lens, is not my idea of an entertaining tea party.

There are so many interconnected stories to tell. I would figure the mastermind director and writer behind the fictions Inception and Interstellar—Christopher Nolan—could figure out how to do historical justice to a multi-layered storyline. Greta Gerwig was able to create a film that addressed a complicated pop culture legacy and social history, initially based around the story of a single character.

“How could such oversight occur on Nolan’s behalf?” I wondered.

So, I looked at the dynamics of the cast, creators, and crew for both films.

A comparison between the Barbie and Oppenheimer Film

Some say that Director Greta Gerwig’s leadership and approach to film making is “w0ke.” I see that she made sure to diversify the writing team and cast, from the perspective of gender and race, you know…the stuff of best practices for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). As a result, she lead the creation of a smart and successful film.

However, not everyone, even some who may be deemed to be progress thinkers, put things like DEI front and center, into action and play. Hence, others may say Director Christopher Nolan got stuck in a subconscious gendered and uniformed state of mind when creating what is probably a technically artistic film.

Both Gerwig and Nolan directed, co-wrote, and led a curated team to tell a story of a single character/person, who has controversial and problematic storylines associated to their name.

Yet, both took drastically different approaches.

We know that Gerwig played with Barbies growing up. I can only infer that G.I. Joes were likely in Nolan’s toy box access at some point, given his involvement in the Batman and Superman franchise.

After 1967, and up until 1995, Hasbro, the makers of G.I. Joes, only had one female “action figure,” G.I. Nurse. She was brought to market a few years after Mattel debuted Registered Nurse Barbie (1961). However, G.I. Nurse was discontinued in 1967, because as a brand manager stated, Hasbro found that ‘boys didn’t want to play with a nurse.’ This touches upon the politics of gender dynamics, particularly in the realm of professions and play groups. Nearly six decades later, in this era of Barbenheimer, the world of Barbie, which includes her various professions and iterations of Kens, is pitted against a realm in which architectural engineers and actors of war dominate. It’s like two waring camps.

Whew…Barbenheimer is a loaded topic of discussion.

What’s your take?