What does "Barbie" get wrong about patriarchy?
The new “Barbie” film portrays the rise and fall of patriarchy. Since the global history of gender is my area of expertise, I have written an assessment of its empirical accuracy.
If you’ve watched it and want to reflect on real world parallels, you might enjoy my review. But if you just want to enjoy it or are yet to see it, PLEASE DO NOT READ.
WARNING: SPOILERS.
What does Barbie get right?
“Barbie” is set in an economic and political matriarchy.
Women own their homes, make the laws of the land and are culturally celebrated for their intellectual prowess. Parliaments and roads are made by women. This breeds female confidence and ambition. Women are not anxious or insecure, nor do they feel jealous of other women who rise up. Coordinated dance parties reinforce female friendships and solidarity. Since men’s generosity is practically irrelevant, she has no need for male approval. Barbie is assured and assertive. ‘He’s just Ken’.
When Ken and Barbie visit the real world, he’s delighted to see himself represented at the top, while she’s really uncomfortable (enduring male lechery).
Intersectionality is also addressed by writer and director Greta Gerwig. Ken’s lack of qualifications bar him from gaining status. He applies for three different jobs, but is repeatedly rebuffed and rejected. After all, his only skills are ‘Beach’.
Inspired by real world patriarchy yet lacking the credentials for upward mobility, Ken returns to Barbieland and overthrows matriarchy. He chucks out Barbie’s beloved wardrobe, seizes her property and institutionalises male dominance. This is a bit like “Why Nations Fail”, with Acemoglu’s more recent emphasis on “vision”.
Cultural transformation also plays a role: women are brainwashed to enjoy servitude, and all the artwork extols men’s virtues. Men call the shots, expect deference, and women are perfectly happy to kowtow.
These economic, political and cultural mechanisms are all very consistent with the available evidence.
The female solidarity portrayed in Barbieland is reminiscent of the Gulf of Guinea in earlier centuries. Igbo and Bakweri women harassed men for mistreating their wives, violating market rules or harming their crops. In 19th century Congo-Brazaville, a husband would not take even ‘an egg from her chicken coop’ without permission from his wife. Asante, Igbo and Yoruba women had independent networks. They controlled the markets, set the rules and punished wrongdoers. Banding together, women reprimanded abusive men and traversed great distances as traders. Independently wealthy women marshalled their networks, commercial acumen and linguistic skills to thrive in coastal exports.
Barbie’s dance parties may sound frivolous, but this is actually a nice example of building trust and cohesion at scale. Religious rituals, choirs and feasting are all effective mechanisms of social bonding. I myself underwent a traditional Zambian initiation ritual, through which I was welcomed into a community of women. Much like Barbieland, this was an all-night event comprising dancing, music and drinking (as well as extremely daunting physical challenges).
When members of one group monopolise positions of prestige, they are widely regarded as deserving deference. Seeing women demonstrate their equal competence in socially valued roles, Barbies all expect gender equality. She heads to a construction site expecting to find women. Spot on: see my work in Zambia and Cambodia, as well as Cecilia Ridgeway’s excellent book “Framed by Gender”.
Ken’s ideological transformation echoes research on Gulf migration. Indians who returned from Saudi Arabia were more likely to say that a man should have the final word, more tolerant of gender-based violence, more likely to blame a woman if she gets molested (compared to non-migrants peers in Kerala).
And just like ex-coal workers in West Virginia now cheering for Trump, Ken’s inability to get ahead in the real world propels him to authoritarian overthrow.
Under Ken’s patriarchy, women bring men beers and fawn at their feet. This is consistent with new research showing that women spend more time on housework in countries with very patriarchal ideologies. I also recommend Deepa Narayan’s book “Chup” on how Indian girls are socialised to stay quiet and obey.
Oppressed women may nevertheless be perfectly happy. As Marianne Bertrand observes, “there is no evidence of lower relative female well-being in high sexism countries”.
What does Barbie get wrong?
Barbie overthrows patriarchy through awareness-raising, inciting male jealousy and then taking back both economic and political control.
America Ferrara reverses patriarchal brainwashing by telling the Barbies all about sexist unfairness. Hearing her speech, they snap out of it.
This is very fitting for two reasons.
Ferrara’s parents are Honduran. It’s not ‘white saviour Barbie’. This resonates with the real world, where the largest feminist protests are in Latin America.
Gender sensitisation is often presumed to be effective; it’s incorporated into donor-funded programmes as the default element on gender.
Is gender sensitisation effective?
No, especially if delivered in Ferrara’s preachy style. The brainwashed Barbies were given no opportunity to critically reflect on their own experiences nor realise wider support for gender equality. So even if they did become privately critical, they might still anticipate disapproval and thus self-censure.
How do I know this?
Well, I spent a year studying the effectiveness of gender sensitisation.
Open conversations - where men and women reflect on their experiences, support each other and realise wider dissent - are really important. Massive rallies can be equally powerful, especially if widely shared on social media - see my post on ‘Reverse Dominance Coalitions’.
Can triggering sexual jealousy destroy the brotherhood?
The Barbies ignite men’s sexual jealousy, cause men to fight against each other, and then reclaim their homes.
In actually existing patriarchies, this would never work.
Possessive men would just beat Barbies to a pulp. A woman is at highest risk of violence from a man she has jilted. Kens would then leverage their institutional dominance to exonerate all such criminality. In Russia and China (both governed by men), wife-beating is not a criminal offence.
Greta Gerwig’s vision of patriarchy is far too benign. It underestimates violent patriarchal backlash. In Midyat, a young Kurdish woman told me that her cousin eloped with a man. She was then killed - by her brother, who was tasked to restore family honour.
If men feel entitled to deference, they may react aggressively to insufficient subservience. A young Hijab-wearing woman in Istanbul refused her husband’s request to make a cup of tea. So he thrashed her with his fists. Bloodied and bruised she ran to her sister’s house, but ultimately returned to him.
Patriarchy is extremely resilient. While you may well enjoy “Barbie” as a bit of fun, the road to gender equality is a lot more difficult.
But how exactly were the Barbies brainwashed? It wasn’t shown at all. If they were smart enough to be presidents and doctors, how could they fall so easily to the Kens? That part of the movie made no sense.
You only highlight extremes as far as real world
examples. The beginning of the film Barbieland was a hyperbolic metaphor for western society in present day. Women dismissing men, their roles as mothers, nurturers in pursuit of absolute control. The dance party, from my perspective was a reflection of the instagramable party lifestyle that’s an unfortunate trend. More so when you account for women and men thinking this is appropriate after having kids, their 20s/college.
This was clearly evident in Barbie’s treatment of Ken, stating she was done with him and she didn’t want him there after the event was over.
The movie was entertaining and I did enjoy it. Everyone has their own life experience in the face of “norms”. The “real world” was obviously satirical. I didn’t see this movie as woke until perhaps the closing act, but it’s not necessarily woke depending on the viewer’s interpretation. The Barbie’s sought to reestablish exactly what existed before. They didn’t learn anything at all. Two wrongs don’t make a right and treat people as you want to be treated. I was hoping this theme would emerge. But instead Barbieland reverted to a world where Ken’s were irrelevant. Even if Ryan Gosling’s Ken became somewhat the villain of the film, he was written so the viewer could see that behind all his “patriarchy” all he really wanted was to have purpose and that purpose was to be loved and valued by Barbie.. This was displayed when Barbie feigned wanting to be his girlfriend. This could have been explored more and that concept does ring true for most men. I think we saw some of that with the ”Black” Ken and the Doctor Barbie. How she instinctively went to him and they embraced and looked happy. It came across as two people that loved one another and that’s all that mattered. Not patriarchy or matriarchy. Barbie did have the most character development. , but it was more or less self centered. She was self aware enough to apologize for marginalizing Ken and eventually he was mature enough to except that apology and become self aware as well but just barely.