The nominations for this year’s Oscars have been announced. On Sunday, March 11th, the 96th presentation of the most prestigious film award will be held at the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Nominated films, actors, directors, screenwriters and other film artists do not deviate excessively from what was expected. This text tries to defend the meaning of one of the nominated films, while analyzing several possible layers of its interpretation. It is dedicated to Barbie.
Barbie is not the best of the nominated films nor is that claimed in any part of the text. However, it is certainly one of the most discussed among the nominated films. It attracted the attention of a diverse audience of different ages, interests, and attitudes. For some, Barbie is a story about the empowerment and liberation of women, a manifesto about the necessity of throwing off the shackles of patriarchy. For others, it is only a moderately entertaining and shallow comedy, suitable for a rainy Friday night, and yet for others, it is a travesty of modern wokeism, through which gender ideology is being promoted. The film, in fact, is none of the above – even if it is all of the above at the same time.
How to solve this paradox? It is necessary to separately analyze the meaning layers of the film, in parallel with the criticisms of the film itself. Many film critics believe that Barbie is an infantile film intended exclusively for a part of the female audience. It was followed by an unprecedented marketing and media campaign. Because of the large amount of money invested, it had to be nominated for an Oscar. However, it is primarily a bad film with no real chances for an Oscar in important categories. This is how we could summarize the theses presented by the renowned Croatian film critic Dean Sinovčić in the Newsnight N1 television show broadcast on January 24th. Of course, Sinovčić is not alone in such criticism. Probably encouraged by the similar views of some of his internationally recognized colleagues, he decided to be the loudest among those who criticize Barbie in Croatia. And indeed, Barbie seems to radiate a shallow infantility. Isn’t then Sinovčić right about it? Yes, but... most good films exist on several levels. And while the first level is the one visible to everyone, the levels hidden from the more discerning public eye are the ones that make the film (the same applies to books) a high-quality or a low-quality one. In that sense, Barbie is no different from other quality films. We could say, transferring Strauss’s vocabulary to the world of film, that Barbie exists simultaneously on an exoteric and an esoteric level.
But what is hidden in Barbie that would be worthy of the interpretation of a political scientist? It has already been written that the film is childish and sometimes funny in a stupid way. Let’s remember the scene where Barbie and Ken leave Barbieland to come to the real world. It is the first layer, visible to everyone. But if we peel off that layer, we reach another level of meaning. This level is presented in the media, either positively or negatively, as a great subversion of the movie Barbie. It is an ingenious struggle, led through the film medium, against the patriarchy that exists in our society. It is an ode to liberal feminism and a declaration of contemporary identity politics aiming at the protection of all minorities. And while one side is delighted with this “subversion”, the other side is horrified by its hidden doctrine that propagates the LGBT ideology. That aspect is very present in the film. Only, it is not hidden and it is not, in fact, subversive at all. If film critics managed to spot that aspect, as a perfectly hidden “Easter egg”, then it was certainly not well hidden. If we analyze the film in a little more detail, we will notice that director Greta Gerwig’s intention was precisely that this aspect should not be hidden at all.
Gerwig, however, experienced strong criticism from the economic Left. According to that criticism, the film did not adequately deal with gender inequality through the economic prism of contemporary social stratification. It thus served as a means for capitalists (Warner Bros and Mattel) for further exploitation by marketing their own products. However, it would be hypocritical if Gerwig launched a va banque attack on those who, with their millions, made it possible for her to make the film at all and earn a fabulous amount herself. It would be like that scene from Zombieland where Woody Harrelson wipes away his tears with dollar bills. Gerwig chose a drastically different approach. She decided to hide behind what her patrons could support. Nominal feminism and nominal concern for minority rights are, at least in the US, very popular and boost the profits of already rich corporations. However, she decided to bury the real, almost heretical doctrine deeper. In those depths of Barbieland hides a view of the world that is much darker than it is presented. There is nothing pink in Barbie.
There are links to other films such as obvious references to The Truman Show or to some literary classics (the allusion to the sequence with madeleines from Proust’s Swann’s Way stands out), which give the film an additional intellectual impulse. However, such homage is not related to the deep meaning of the movie Barbie. To understand this deep meaning, we must start from the scene just before the very end. Everyone is together, the villains have come to their senses, things will change for the better, everything is perfect suddenly. But that contains the real tragedy of this film or, even better, the real tragedy of the world in which we live. The victory at the end of the day is taken by the “repulsive corporate bosses”. The promises they make are classic buying peace. Namely, these “repulsive bosses” realized that if they expanded the range of Barbie dolls in terms of diversity, they would make more money than with the previous range of dolls. The new range is more inclusive and diverse – and more profitable. That scene shows us that changes happen if those who can implement them have a financial interest in them.
In the film, Gerwig demonstrates the structured chaos of life, telling us that “our” choices, in fact, in the vast majority of cases, are not ours at all. We are often just pawns of the processes that take place around us beyond our control. We are the dolls that big girls and boys play with. And that’s why this is not a film about women’s empowerment, a film in which the shackles of patriarchy are spectacularly removed, or a film in which women are instilled with the idea that they can be whatever they want or whatever they choose. Although at the end of the film the main character “chooses” to live the life of a real woman, and not an ordinary doll, Gerwig seems to be laughing in our faces with that scene. But it’s not the Joker’s deranged laughter, but the sad laugh of self-realization. It is impossible to escape from the doll. Although Barbie becomes a “real” woman at the end of the film, it is inevitable to wonder if she still remains a doll. Previously, she was an idea, an idol for generations of girls, a doll to play with. But only when she decided to be a woman of flesh and blood, she becomes a doll in the dark fullness of the content of that term. Is such an incomplete choice that we have because we are human better, or would it be better if we existed only as ideas? Gerwig doesn’t actually answer that. But the answer is self-explanatory. Ideas, whatever they are, cannot exist without people. We are not able to get out of our own skin. We are “condemned” to the “beauty” of the chaos of life.
The film that is under attack from all sides earned as many as 8 nominations for the Oscars, but the public’s attention was taken by the nominations that were absent: Margot Robbie was not nominated for Best Actress, and Greta Gerwig was not nominated for Best Director. Isn’t it a bit ironic that a film that puts women in the foreground and that, at least on one level, talks about women’s rights and women’s subordination to men, cannot accommodate nominations for the women most deserving of the film’s success, but instead the most exposed man of the movie gets the honor (Ryan Gosling for Best Supporting Actor)?
The film itself deserved to receive only one nomination: that of Greta Gerwig for Best Director, but that nomination was not possible. Namely, if the members of the Academy understood the film on its more superficial levels, they could not even find a reason to present Gerwig with a nomination. And if by any chance they saw the hidden meaning of the film, only then could they not nominate Gerwig, because such a doctrine is opposed to everything that the Academy has been representing for decades. The show must go on. Gerwig is aware of this, so the absence of a nomination will not hurt her too much. However, in contrast to the transient significance of film awards, the films themselves are those that attain immortality, and Gerwig seems to have succeeded in this.
