“Barbie” as Other

For Women’s History Month and dedicated to all the women writers and directors passed over during awards season.

 

                                                                               

“Biggest Opening Week-End for a Movie Directed by a Woman”

It seems as though I’ve been writing about disappearing—or more exactly, disappeared—women all my life: The exile of Hillary Clinton after the 2016 election. The “forgetting” of younger feminists of the accomplishments of the generations of their mothers and grandmothers. The relegation of our political activism and intellectual innovations to the margins of social and political history. The constant cultural inducements to shrink ourselves, to be smaller, slighter, to take up less space, both physically and intellectually.

So should I have been surprised to see it happen to Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie”?

“Barbie” had me from the opening sequence—a parody of the “dawn of Man” opening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001--in which a rejected baby doll is thrown into the air and an enormous Barbie doll circa 1959, emerges, dressed in her iconic black and white striped swimsuit. The movie had the rest of the audience too, and most of the critics. “Barbie,” wrote one, “is one of the most inventive, immaculately crafted and surprising mainstream films in recent memory – a testament to what can be achieved within even the deepest bowels of capitalism…. It’s a pink-splattered manifesto to the power of irreplaceable creative labour and imagination.”

“Barbie” is also a testament to feminism. As Gerwig has acknowledged, we inform the entire script. Who came up with the first critiques of beauty culture and the oppressiveness of “femininity”? Feminists. Who first examined masculinity as a “gender” rather than the neuter, unraced, unsexed universal subject? Feminists (female and male.) Who was responsible for the racial and body-type diversification of toys? Feminists (Black and “white”.) Who honored girl culture and girl play, showing how imaginative and subversive much of what little girls actually did with their Barbies was? Who has been capable of endless self-critique and reinvention? Feminism.

And now we had a film that incorporated all that with disarming humor and smarts. Is it possible it would continue to get the recognition it seemed to be getting that opening week-end?

You may or may not have known about that accomplishment. But I know that you’ve read—over and over and over—that “Barbie” had the biggest opening week-end for a movie directed by a woman.

Is that an accomplishment? Sure—Movies anticipated (by investors, advertisers, etc.) to be “blockbusters” are usually directed by men. But is it necessary to mention “by a woman” every time the film is discussed?

It’s not as though these discussions dive very deep into the difference it makes, in terms of themes, style, number of car chases and explosions, etc.

And: “By a woman” has the unfortunate effect of suggesting (to numb-skulls, but let’s face it there are a lot of those in America today, many in high places) that a movie directed “by a woman” is somehow inferior despite audience appreciation or the credentials of the director. (Like the Supreme Court’s attitude toward affirmative action hires. Or male competitors’ belittling of support for a female candidate for President: “They want to vote for her because she’s a woman.”)

We never see the gender of male directors noted by reviewers, even when it would be illuminating to do so. Why not?

Philosopher Simone deBeauvoir, in 1949, had an answer:

“The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality, the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common mon use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity. In the midst of an abstract discussion cussion it is vexing to hear a man say: "You think thus and so because you are a woman"; but I know that my only defense is to reply: "I think thus and so because it is true," thereby removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: `And you think the contrary because you are a man,"for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity. . . . There is an absolute human type, the masculine.”

There is an absolute human type, the masculine.

What does Beauvoir mean, exactly?

I could start with a philosophical discussion that would bore some of you and be old-hat to others of you. Instead, let me tell you a bit about the book in which she introduced the idea, and my own experience with it, when I was a teenager, looking for dirty books in my older sister’s bedroom.

Mickey was eight-and-a-half years my senior, and once she turned sixteen was granted the privilege of her own tiny bedroom. As I was going through adolescence in the second half of the 1950’s and early 60’s, her room was an exotic, sexy space to me, largely because of the book-shelf, which held titles like Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Marjorie Morningstar, Peyton Place, Lolita, Bonjour Tristesse, and—perhaps most enticing of all—The Second Sex, which I of course presumed was about sex.

This wasn’t just a hormonally fueled mistake. My sister had the hardback, but the Bantam paperback edition, issued in 1961, had a blurry but unmistakably naked woman on the front cover, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, pert breast (and even nipple) very visible, while on the back cover Beauvoir was described as “a Frenchwoman who never loses sight of the needs and desires of both sexes.” “WOMEN AND SEX” announced the frontispiece, and the book promised to deliver an “unorthodox treatment of sex and the feminine personality.”

I snuck into Mickey’s room when she wasn’t home, quickly passing over the dense introduction, full of terms that I didn’t understand, and sought out any mention of body parts. This was pretty much what the original publisher, Alfred Knopf, had wanted, hoping to capture the same readers who were devouring Havelock Ellis, not Jean-Paul Sartre. Instead, the fact that the book was “about women” came to obscure the fact that it was also a work of enormous philosophical importance, one which showed that the “universal” concepts of existentialism needed to be revised.

And, OMG, it was not just “about women,” it was FEMINIST!! English speaking critics were appalled (although Beauvoir had yet to identify with feminism herself).) William Barrett, in Irrational Man, a bible for budding existentialists, described Beauvoir as “that woman, his [Sartre’s] friend,who wrote a book of feminine protest, The Second Sex, which is in reality the protest against being feminine.” Dwight MacDonald called the book a “deformed work” which “carries the feminist grievance too far.”

Beauvoir was seen as both irritatingly masculine and suffering from too large a dose of feminine narcissism. At the same time, the book was described as if it were her biological offspring. Time headlined its review with a birth announcement: “Weight: 2 and 3/4 lbs,” in one economical image associating the book with the bodily realm that Beauvoir describes as continually culturally projected onto women, and women’s “natural” role of child-bearer.

And so Beauvoir, that most unnatural of creatures, a woman philosopher, was put in her rightful place.

The supreme irony of all this is that this branding of The Second Sex as female (if “unnaturally” so) is a jaw-dropping example of precisely the phenomenon that Beauvoir had exposed in the book. In the introduction, she argues that within the social world, there are those who occupy the unmarked position of the “essential,” the universal, the simply human, and those who are defined and marked by their (sexual, racial, religious) difference from the norm. So, there’s “history”, and then there’s “women’s history,” and women’s history (unlike military history, for example!) is imagined as peripheral, outside history proper. There’s “Black history” and then there’s “U.S. history,” which is currently being disinfected, by DeSantis et al, of what is imagined as a dispensable and harmful “Black history” (e.g. of slavery.)

“The Other” has many faces. In developing the concept, Beauvoir contributed what is arguably the single most broadly, deeply, and enduringly significant insight of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, one that has shaped numerous scholarly conversations (about race, colonialism, heterosexism, and disability, to name a few.) The (admittedly clunky) term has even become something of a media colloquialism; once confined to academic articles and books, Morning Joe now sprinkles his diatribes with “the Other,” “Othering, “Othered” and Other ugly forms of the concept.

So that’s the biggest reason why you never see male directors identified as “male directors.” They’re just directors, the fact of their maleness irrelevant. While “Barbie,” directed by Greta Gerwig, a woman, is indelibly marked by her gender.

P.S. Check out my sister Binnie Klein’s new song, “Simone.” The song is wonderful, the singer is beautiful, and it’s about the mother of modern feminism. Congrats to Binnie,singer Sarah Fimm, and musician/producer Loudboy for this genius of a song!

“Our Little Life”

“It’s just about our little life” is a line, taken from the correspondence of Louisa May Alcott, that Greta Gerwig gives to Jo March in her movie of the classic. Alcott’s actual publisher certainly thought so, finding Little Women “boring” until his niece, having found the unfinished manuscript, excitedly asked what happens to the little women. This real-life event is one that Gerwig tweaks and imports into the movie via an original subplot in which Jo tries to persuade a hidebound male editor named Mr. Dashwood into publishing her debut novel, which tells the story of the family.

“Mr. Dashwood” is still deciding what counts and what doesn’t. “Barbie” producer Amy Pascal recounts, “Mr. Dashwood just doesn’t get it, and in some ways he stands as a symbol of other men today who stubbornly think the story isn’t for them. He plays the gatekeeper.” And as Gerwig told The New York Times when Little Women came out, that scene between Jo and Mr. Dashwood “could have been written yesterday, sitting with an executive at a studio.” Our lives are still seen as “little,” our dolls just “chunks of plastic” (as one male reviewer, Anthony Lane, described the beloved toy) to be dressed up in fantasy-outfits, our issues are just not as profound as those of young boys coming-of-age.

I’m sure that J.D. Salinger didn’t regard The Catcher in the Rye as just about the “little life” of a privileged Manhatten boy in existential crisis; the critics certainly didn’t think so. But when I was growing up, books about the challenges of growing up girl didn’t even exist, except as a specialized genre that boys wouldn’t dream of reading. Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, Little Women.

“I just can’t believe we’re still having this fucking discussion where movies by men, and about men, and for men are considered default movies. And women’s movies fall into this separate and unequal category. It’s absurd.”

(Chris Miller, director of 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie.)

Thank you Chris, Simone herself couldn’t have said it better. And judging from the box-office takes (although not the critical reception) of both Gerwig’s earlier movie Little Women and the wonderful Are You Listening, God? It’s Me, Margaret, that’s how prospective viewers have seen any films that are advertised, in one way or another (Little Women in its very title) as being “about girls” or “about women.” Both films were critically applauded. But boys, guys, and fathers weren’t going—and neither were many women, finding stories of girls growing up to be too “narrow.” As Elaine Cho says of Little Women: “Even though it takes place during the Civil War, we are hardly touched by outside events other than a few scenes with Marmee.” Didn’t hear that kind of complaint about Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, not to mention the dozens of fictional film about boyhood (Stand By Me, What’s Up, Gilbert Grape, and many, many others, including acknowledged classics like The 400 Blows).

It’s not surprising, then, as Time reported recently, that until BARBIE “only 33% of the top 100 grossing films in 2022 featured female protagonists… and many of those movies slotted into the sorts of genres that typically cater to men: The Woman King is a historical action epic that happens to star women; Everything Everywhere All at Once is a multiversal movie stuffed with fight scenes that happens to center a mother and daughter; Scream 6 is a sequel to a classic horror flick.”

Why did “Barbie” make so much money at the box office? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that despite her white bread beginnings, the doll has been welcomed by so many different demographics, who used their imaginations to make her theirs. But maybe, also, it’s because “centering” the perspective of girls and women is less of a “specialty” market than Hollywood has imagined.

Barbie, like The Second Sex is not “just” a book “about women,” is not “just” about “girl culture.” Few books and films about girls and women are—because girls and women live in a world with boys and men, and a system based on gender difference touches us all, even (perhaps especially) those who reject it. The genius of Barbie was to recognize this—it’s why so many men (especially younger men) are surprised to find out how much they enjoy it—and to make it a central part of the plot. It’s not so much a film about Barbie, but a film about gender and its discontents—some serious, some hilarious, many both.

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For my review of “Barbie,” fresh from opening week-end see:

Greta Gerwig and Girl Culture, Part 1

The Awards Season Puts “Barbie” in the Corner.

When it was announced that Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” and Gerwig’s “Barbie” were scheduled to open the same week-end in July, Universal Pictures was concerned that audiences would flock to Warner Brothers’ “Barbie” instead of their somber, artsy biopic. Instead, aided by Twitter memes and Etsy products, the competition proved instead to be a hugely successful instance of counter-programming, with “Barbie” coat-tails pulling people into what Richard Brody has described as “a History Channel movie With Fancy Editing.”

Both films proved to be mega-money-makers that brought COVID-habituated audiences back into theatres. And when they were first reviewed, it seemed as though “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” were going to be equal favorites in the Oscars horse-race, too. Both, with a few exceptions, were critically praised. If anything, the reviews of “Barbie” had the edge on “Oppenheimer,” in part because of the surprise factor, especially among male viewers, who went in begrudging and skeptical and often came out smiling, dazed and seduced. By feminism!! Quite an achievement.

As the months went on, however, something changed. Did the heavily underlined profundities of “Oppenheimer” make “Barbie” start to seem like a confection? Could the whimsy of “Do you ever think about dying” compete against “And now I am become Death” (repeated twice in “Oppenheimer, “ once as an erotic stimulant for Oppenheimer’s lover Jean Tatlock, and then again, you know when.) How could the whimsical last line of “Barbie”—“I’m here to see my gynecologist!”—possibly win over the drama of the final scene in “Oppenheimer,” with Oppenheimer recalling to Einstein how they’d “worried that we’d start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world”

“What of it?” Says Einstein. Oppenheimer: “I believe we did.”

Nolan made sure that audiences would get the dramatic foretelling of it. His script directions (in which Oppenheimer’s lines are written in first-person): Einstein pales, turns….Close in on my staring eyes as I visualize the EXPANDING NUCLEAR ARSENALS OF THE WORLD….When I can take it no longer, I jam my eyes closed and we—Cut to black.) [Caps are Nolan’s][3]

Perhaps you can tell that I’m not a fan of “Oppenheimer.”[4]But I was an outlier. When awards season began, a cascade of honors were lavished on “Oppenheimer” while the far more enjoyable, less pretentious, and more innovative “Barbie” was ignored.

Well, not exactly ignored. Rather, put in her place, bit by bit. First, the male-dominated group who decide on the nominations for the Academy Awards in writing ruled that Gerwig and Baumbach’s screenplay belonged in the “adapted” (rather than “original”) category because the movie “was based on a previously existing character” It was the first time a doll was deemed “a previously existing character.” The only other adapted screenplay involving a doll—“Toy Story 3”—wasn’t actually based on any toy itself, but on previous Toy Story movies. Year after year the “adapted screenplay” category has (appropriately) been dominated by movies based on plays, novels, and memoirs. “Barbie” was only the third time a “previously existing character” from pop culture was included in this category (the others were The Joker and Wolverine), while numerous “previously existing characters” and events from history—Gandhi, The Titanic, Patton, Chariots of Fire, Milk, The King’s Speech—not only made it to “Original Screenplay” but won. They were about serious people, of course, not a girl’s toy.

Gerwig was passed over entirely in the directing category, whose members, both male and female, are likely to have been to film school, where they may have learned to worship the auteurs—overwhelmingly male and many French and Scandinavian—both in the history of film and of more recent generations. These folks are likely to fancy themselves more serious than the average Academy member about the “craft” of directing, more easily dazzled by both technical innovation and more “profound” ideas, and suspicious of “popular” tastes. Alongside Yorgos Lanthimos’s ostentatiously inventive “Poor Things,” Justine Triet’s brilliant “Anatomy of a Fall” (“international” appeal,) Martin Scorcese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie” probably seemed like fluff.

Then there were the Golden Globes, where “Barbie failed to win best comedy or musical but walked away with the cheesy, newly-invented award for cinematic box office achievement, a consolation prize for being popular and making money.” In this category, “Barbie” competed against “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “John Wick,” “Mission Impossible”, “Spider Man,” “SuperMario Brothers” and the Taylor Swift movie. (And “Oppenheimer,” to give the category a smidgeon of gravitas.)

The Golden Globes really ticked me off, and I shot off a furious Facebook rant, full of angry shouts (in social media land, that would be CAPITAL LETTERS):

Sure looks like they created a special new category just so they could give an award to “Barbie” and shower the REAL awards on the guys.

(“Barbie” did get “best song” for “What Was I Made For?” The answer, clearly, is “to look pretty and entertain little girls while the boys make bombs.”)

The SAG awards managed to disappear “Barbie” completely. Those awards are just for acting, so the most coveted award given was for a film was “Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture.” Accepting the award for “Oppenheimer” was Emily Blunt in a red dress surrounded by 10 dark-suited men, most of whom I didn’t even recognize as having even been in the movie, let alone constitute an “ensemble.” “Barbie’s” rather more diverse cast? You’ll find them in the shoebox on the top shelf of your daughter’s closet.

By Oscar night, I had very little hope for “Barbie.” Putting Gerwig’s screenplay in the “adapted” category and up against “American Fiction,” “Oppenheimer,” and “The Zone of Interest”—all of which deal with social themes likely to be recognized as significant by a male-dominated group of writers—didn’t bode well. (“American Fiction” took the award.) Gerwig had been cut out of the Directing category. And despite some last-minute speculation about “Poor Things,” “Oppenheimer” was still highly favored for Best Picture—and did win.

For some outlier perspectives on “Oppenheimer,” see:

Perspectives on “Oppenheimer”: A Collaborative Work By Susan Bordo and Stephen Faulk

One Last Thing:

Anthony Lane, who I mentioned earlier, snidely and condescendingly described “Barbie” as “melding a feminist colloquium with a plug for a chunk of plastic” He criticized Gerwig for writing the film with feminist intellectuals of her ilk in mind rather the little girls who love playing with the doll. But had Lane actually talked to some little girls instead of mocking their culture, he’d know they are more savvy and instinctively “political” than Lane gives them credit for. He obviously doesn’t know, for example, that Weird Barbie [Kate McKinnon] with her chopped up hair and drawn-on face isn’t an invention of Gerwig, but what little girls actually do to their Barbies a lot of the time, in addition to arranging lots of Barbie-on-Barbie sex.

The “plug” reference is especially irritating. Sure, Mattel produced the movie and are selling zillions of dolls from it. But Has Anthony Lane ever been in “Toys R Us”? The unusual thing is not how many Barbie dolls this movie will sell, but that, unlike “Braveheart” and other cinema celebrations of macho that have had tons of merchandise tie-ins, it’s never been held against them. Could the offense given by a “chunk of plastic” be because Barbie is a little girl’s toy? Not a Superman or Marvel action figure. Not a Batmobile. Not a science kit that lets kids blow up shit to their heart’s content. Not a mini-Mel Gibson with dreds and a plastic spear.

And hey—do you remember who won the award for Best Direction the year of “Braveheart”? It was Mel Gibson—for “Braveheart.”