«You can date the fat Barbie»
But there's no way I'm wearing a pink T-shirt!" says Ben, shaking his head and looking at my pink-coloured strands of hair. «Mum, you're not 12!» Not that, but a bit nostalgic and sometimes less grown-up than Ben and his big brother. The fact that even he goes to «Barbie» with us is thanks to all the rain and Mattel's marketing team from plastic hell. Yes, Google sprays pink sparks when you google Ryan Gosling.
Surprisingly, their agreement was subject to only a few conditions: They don't want to watch the film in the original English - you'd have to read subtitles - and they certainly won't go to an arthouse cinema, but only to a place where a cubic metre of popcorn with a Coke in a litre refill cup costs fifteen euros. Deal.
From the very first scene, they commentate on the film like sports reporters at a football match.
We sit in the stalls on the edge, close to the exit, you never know. Me in the centre, on the left the middle-school macker, on the right the high school graduate with a milk moustache. From the very first scene, they commentate on the film like sports reporters at a football match. The 14-year-old briefly drops the «S» from the alphabet because of too much popcorn in his brand new braces. «Huh? How come girls are throwing away their baby dolls now, why do they suddenly think Barbie dolls are cooler, Mum?» «Hmm. Because little girls would rather be powerful than mummy?» I whisper in his ear.
Just like I used to. My Barbies also had hundreds of dresses, a carriage and kitchen utensils. They were always in a great mood, had perfect eyeliner, even at night, and a perfect body. No supermodel will ever reach Barbie proportions, Barbie has no children. We didn't realise at the time that she had no genitals. Ken came much later - one Ken for every five Barbies was enough.
«Wow, she just flies out of the house!» laughs son one loudly as the stereotypical Barbie in high heels and evening dress floats out of the third floor of her Barbie house. Exactly, that's how it was, I think, while my 14-year-old grumbles: «Really, really realistic! Didn't Barbie houses have lifts in the Stone Age?» I remind him that Superman, Spiderman and all the other male cinema characters can also fly. And that he should please be decent.
«But menno mum, that's totally a girl's film!» he continues to grumble, spitting out the word «girl's film» like hard popcorn in the direction of the front row. He really has no desire to let his 14-year-old ultra-cool self be infiltrated by pink plastic rubbish «just because you have childhood memories».
Oops, I think, did I really bring him up?
When the word «feminism» is mentioned, Ben's mind is finally blown. His older brother Caspar also feels he has been taken in, albeit for different reasons: In his generation, there is hardly anything more annoying than women's rights, he says, matriarchy rules almost everywhere anyway, at school, in clubs and on school trips, where girls have recently started freaking out if boys don't help with the washing up. «Even though they can do it much better.»
Oops, I think, did I really bring him up? He slaps his forehead with the flat of his hand, giggling, as the stereotypical Barbie cries over her flat feet after crash-landing from the third floor. He finds it totally illogical that shortly afterwards the female plastic doll, who was still floating, is haunted by inadmissible thoughts of death, which have no place in Barbieland: «Plastic can't die. It can only be recycled.»
Incidentally, this is the story of the film: Barbie is recycled. She makes the transition from plastic protagonist to real person with real tears and real flaws. The three of us breathe a sigh of relief when the stereotype Barbie is allowed to leave the pink Hubba Bubba bubble on neon-coloured means of transport and finally arrives in the real world. This is located - where else - on a palm-fringed beach promenade in LA. Barbie and Ken, who has simply travelled along secretly, are gawped at and laughed at. Which is funny, but sparks Ben's compassion.
He becomes even sadder when a couple of teenage girls his age, obviously hardcore feminists, question and mock the stereotype Barbie. «No real girls again!» says Ben. He doesn't know any like that from school, sailing or anywhere else. He's not in the mood anymore. «Well, I'm going to sleep now!» he grumbles, Barbie's world doesn't interest him either inside or outside the endless Mattel advert called Barbieland.
I wouldn't have minded the commercialisation of feminism, it can be glamour and glitter for all I care.
I feel a little ashamed while my sons threaten to sleep or loudly expose supposed directorial mistakes with a certain delight in spoiling the game. But how was I supposed to know that «Barbie» is not a feminist social satire? When even the German-language feuilleton is debating across the board whether the idealistic sell-out of a minority movement called feminism is okay or not - an undeserved compliment for the flat blockbuster.
I wouldn't have minded the commercialisation of feminism, I don't mind it being glamour and glitter, I'm fine with Beyoncé wearing a neon shirt with «Feministe» written on it - as long as it's for a good cause. Pop feminism is also feminism!
Ken is the star of the film.
Barbie feminism is like «the emperor's new clothes»: non-existent. Not just Barbie's deliberate use of «mansplaining» (I'll explain to Ben later), which Caspar comments on with «yes, yes, always play dumb». So this is supposed to be Barbie's strongest female weapon to prevent the (why actually?) emerging Kendom patriarchy? Women are supposed to play dumb so that men feel better about themselves? And by the way: Ken, a «beach» by profession, stupid and platinum blonde, even outdoes his female counterpart with an unbeatably stupid facial expression and perfect washboard abs. He is the star of the film.
On the way back, Caspar realises that only a few women have transported Barbie's style from the nursery into real life. Thank goodness, because he imagines women like Margot Robbie to be really stressful in a man's life. «You can also date the fat Barbie!» concludes Ben. The extent to which this satirical ploy, the token chubby girl, fulfils its purpose of denouncing social ills in the otherwise visually perfect Barbie crowd remains a mystery. In any case, you can't buy a fat Barbie in toy shops, says Ben. «She should have played the leading role once...!»
Yes, what can you do: It's a Ken's world.
