Image: Canva.
If Barbie Movie has been pinkwashing your newsfeed of late, it’s doing it for all the right reasons.
I recently watched it and honestly, it is extremely ‘higher grade’ (a phrase us millennials will understand), which made it so incredible.
It was nothing like I was expecting. And by that, I mean it was not vapid and one-dimensional, with light thoughts and scenes enough to make you feel like an adult female with a body type gone wrong, representing what the doll had come to signify over the last decade or so.
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In fact, it was quite the opposite. With ‘higher grade’ jokes, sarcastic social commentary and cryptic references to false feminising and hyperfeminism, it was a brilliant tribute to a doll initially intended to liberate little girls.
With very complex societal themes, the movie takes a sober look at one of the most popular toys in history, exploring what she represented to the baby boomer, GenX and the millennial, as well as the Gen Z.
To the boomer, she was a symbol of liberation. A break away from the conventional role of a woman as mother to a child and towards a more inspirational aspiration, like that of unapologetically beautiful woman, uncensored and unoppressed.
To the GenX and millennial, she was the champion of female entry into male-dominate career fields. Through marine biologist Barbie, astronaut Barbie and professional jockey Barbie, girls were finding inspiration to venture out into unconventional career options.
To the GenZ, she was one of the main causes of body image issues in young woman. Despite the various types of Barbies introduced over the decades to represent the various types of women out there, GenZers reported Barbie’s body type still presented unrealistic expectations for women’s bodies and misogynistic undertones.
As such, Barbie started losing her credibility, and by 2015, Mattel reported a staggering drop in sales (by how much, we don’t really know and can’t really say as we don’t expect realistic figures from the makers of Barbie), but it was enough to see the Barbie era was reaching its death very fast.
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Taking into account all of the above, it was then Greta Gerwig picked up the discarded toy and created a masterpiece to inspire and poke fun at all generations that experienced the wonder of Barbie.
She achieves this by adopting a strong offensive approach, basing the plot around the Barbie GenZs found most offensive of all: Super blond, super skinny, super flawless and perfect Stereotypical Barbie (excellently portrayed by Margot Robbie).
Then, by combining a seriously witty script with clever references that resonate exclusively with Barbie’s devoted fan base of GenX, millennials, and boomers, a true masterpiece comes to life
Here are some of those ‘higher grade’ references we know you probably got.
The music used in the opening scene where girls of the 50s discovered a new concept of doll to play with is from the movie The Space Odessey. Earlier generation will remember a very similar scene in the Kubrick classic with an ape. In the Space Odessey, the scene represents the evolution of mankind. Gerwig uses it to represent the evolution of ‘womankind’.
It’s a play on the Jeremy Bearimy theory from the Netflix series The Good Place. The JeremyBearimy theory presents one of the most perplexing concepts to grasp. It suggests that while time on Earth follows a straightforward linear path, things in the afterlife or an alternative universe occur differently.
Events there don’t happen in sync with those on Earth; instead, afterlife time loops back and doubles around, forming a shape resembling the name “Jeremy Bearimy” written in cursive English.
Gerwig uses this to illustrate how the occurrences in Barbieland are not in the same timeframe as the real world (hence the crossover between America Ferrara’s character Gloria’s memories being mistaken for her daughters.)
Also, and this is about to make your mind explode, the ‘i’ in Jeremy Bearimy has a dot. And this dot represents a unique point on the timeline that encompasses Tuesdays, July, and the occasional time moment where nothing never occurs. The dot on the ‘i’ in Barbieland is where Barbie’s dreamhouse is situated, which is fairly unaffected and every day is exactly the same as the next (i.e. the best day ever) but this all changes with Barbie’s thoughts of death.
Gerwig uses Stephan King’s classic The Shining to explain how Barbie is experiencing Gloria’s memories.
In yet another Stanley Kubrick production, one of the characters, Grady, warns another character, Jack, his son Danny has a special gift — the “Shine,” which in Stephen King’s universe is a form of psychic ability which allows people to communicate with others using the mind, and gives people the ability to see things that have happened in the past, or will happen in the future.
So when Gloria’s daughter Sasha asks her mother if she is ‘shining’, this is what she is referring to.
No one could miss the Matrix reference when Weird Barbie offers Stereotypical Barbie a choice between the stiletto and the sandal. It was a brilliant signifier that Barbie was about to enter the realm of ‘truth.’
This was possibly my favourite reference. When Barbies under a hypnotic state, imposed by Ken’s new patriarchy movement, one of the Barbies share how she was inexplicably invested in the Zack Snyder cut of the Justice League”.
Justice League, also under the Warners Bros’ belt, saw a really ridiculous social media campaign emanating from fans who were demanding the release of the movie. The campaign exposed the toxic behaviours that come with male-inclined hobbies and interests. Something that was also a major consequence in the instituting of The Ken-dom.
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