Life in plastic: Barbie in the late-capitalist age
The advertising campaign for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie film has been shrouded in candy-coated mystery. In Jun. 2022, photos were released of Margot Robbie in the titular doll role, donning neon roller-blading gear alongside co-star Ryan Gosling, who plays Barbie’s companion Ken. Other photos showed Robbie in a hot pink cowboy outfit and behind the wheel of the Barbie Corvette. The photos produced speculation about the nature of the film, though its aesthetic was clear: Barbie would pay homage to every iteration of the doll’s legacy, with particular focus on her 80s-era fluorescence.
With the release of a teaser trailer in Dec. 2022 that directly riffed on the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with little girls smashing baby dolls in place of cavemen’s clubs, the film’s premise only became more elusive. Finally, on Apr. 4, 2023, an extended teaser trailer dropped, offering the most extensive glimpse into Barbie Land thus far. Brimming with sanitized color, childlike dialogue, and homages to the plastic heroine, the trailer provided even more insight into Barbie’s aesthetic, but not its plot; all in all, the campaign has honed in on the formative physical appearance of its namesake and her manicured Malibu home.
Despite centering a beacon of capitalist enterprise—a figure of pink glitter, yes, but also consumerism, beauty standards, and plastic waste—Barbie has eluded any major class-based criticism. In my view, this is a result of the film’s honesty regarding its production. Where Gerwig’s previous two films were produced by relatively indie studios with smaller budgets, Barbie will be distributed in collaboration with Warner Bros. and Mattel, boasting a budget of 100 million dollars—more than double Gerwig’s second-most expensive project, Little Women.
The fact of the matter is that we exist in a filmic wasteland: nearly every film in any given theater at any given moment in time will be a sequel, prequel, or remake. Barbie exists at the crux of consumerist reproduction and absolute originality: starring two of Hollywood’s most famous darlings and forefronting capitalism’s favorite plastic career-woman on the one hand and subscribing to the unique vision of a feminine-oriented, indie director on the other. Gerwig and her producers seem aware of this irony; from what little is yet visible from stills and trailers, the film seems to be using its enormous budget to its advantage (a budget that is, frightening, still a small fraction of what most major blockbusters are allotted), with set design that perfectly encapsulates both the childlike wonder and surreal effervescence of the Barbie franchise.
Given how rare it is for a new film to stray from franchise-based tradition, Barbie’s peculiarity stands out against the crowd of desaturated, spandex-wearing men. It has all the makings of a summer blockbuster: a mid-Jul. release date, famous leads, and an even more famous central character. But Barbie seems set on differentiating itself from the modern blockbuster through an uber-pink color palette and ostensible emphasis on more complex themes, including tradition, the pressures of femininity (and masculinity—Gosling has already faced backlash for being “too old” to play Ken), and even consumerism itself.
While the film’s partnership with Mattel likely entails that Gerwig’s screenplay cannot be too critical of the famous toy franchise, any critical departures at all are a welcome departure from the male-oriented blockbuster behemoth of the last-capitalist age.