Barbie: compassion done wrong
Although I am very late to the discussions related to the Barbie movie, I would like to add my two cents, as I have yet failed to see anyone discussing the issues that I am about to explore.
Apart from all the feminism and patriarchy, what really stood out to me was the misandry in Barbie Land. To be more specific, how the misandry in a matriarch society looked starkly different from the misogyny in a patriarchal society.
The Kens were treated as insignificant in BarbieLand. The only notable characteristic about the Kens were their title as lifeguards even which the purpose was to provide service for the Barbies. The entirety of their life revolving around the Barbies inevitably brewed animosity within the Kens which led to the tyranny.
The tone of the movie seems to suggest that Barbieland is the opposite of the real world where the Kens are treated as badly as women are in our patriarchal society, which is simply not the case. I am not sure whether the discrimination that the Kens face can be considered misandry and seems trivial when compared to the intensity in which misogyny affects women in our day-to-day life. The most obvious difference would be the lack of fear in going about their daily life, whereas this becomes an immediate issue when Barbie enters the real world.
It is arguable that it would be difficult to present misandry to be too complex in a 2 hour movie but to equate the intensity of the two oppressions is frustrating.
In the end, the Barbies manage to ‘defeat’ patriarchy in BarbieLand and proceed to abolish matriarchy as the Barbie’s show compassion for the Ken’s internal struggles as their roles and importance are so limited. Although it is a heartfelt moment in the movie, I fail to feel the same compassion for the great struggles that the Kens go through in BarbieLand when they are effectively on a weighting scale with the other side being the struggles that women have to endure.
I wonder when would women receive the same compassion from men in the real world, like the compassion that the Barbies offered the Kens where we constantly have to reiterate the negative impacts that patriarchy have on men as well just to convince them to listen.
