CMV: The Barbie Movie is not Anti-Man, but Rather, Anti-Feminist
I finally watched the Barbie movie after all these years (I haven't seen Oppenheimer in its entirety yet), and I think both the defenders and critics of it completely misunderstand what the movie actually says.
I do NOT think the movie is anti-man. At all. In fact, I think the movie creates a ton of sympathy for Ken ... and completely undermines its own feminist messaging in the process.
The movie starts by establishing Barbieland as a gender-swapped patriarchy. The Barbies hold all the power, all the institutional roles, all the social respect, while the Kens are treated as accessories with no real identity or agency outside of women.
Awesome. Great setup. I actually think that’s a smart way to get the audience, particularly the male audience, to understand patriarchy by reversing it.
But then the movie completely falls apart once they enter the real world.
From Ken’s perspective, he has literally been a second-class citizen his entire life. Then he enters a world where men appear respected, powerful, taken seriously, and socially important. Of course he becomes fascinated with a world where he's ... not a second-class citizen. The movie's established groundwork makes his reaction psychologically understandable. And on the other side of it, you have Barbie feeling like what an oppressed class/group in the real world feel like, after being the privileged class her whole life. Am I supposed to feel sympathy for Barbie here?
And then it really breaks down even more after this.
If the Kens are supposed to represent women under patriarchy, why are we supposed to root against them taking power in Barbieland? If you buy the movie’s own allegory, the Kens overthrowing Barbieland is equivalent to an oppressed class revolting against an unequal system.
And then the “happy ending” is that the Barbies regain power and give the Kens a few tiny reforms and symbolic positions?
That is NOT a feminist ending. Feminism would not say women should be satisfied with a few lower court seats and symbolic representation while remaining structurally unequal. So why is that suddenly framed as satisfying when the genders are flipped?
Now, yes, this part still had a very good point to make. The Kens are given some small seats and power, but not close to equal. That's great at showing the audience how far we actually are from defeating the patriarchy. But, again, I am absolutely not rooting for the Barbies/Barbieland by this point and do not see this as a happy ending.
That’s why I don’t think the movie is anti-man, if anything, it's more pro-man because it wants me to root for the group that represents a gender-swapped patriarchy. I think it’s anti-its own feminist allegory.
The movie only works if you stop applying the allegory consistently halfway through. It wants Barbieland to be a serious patriarchy inversion when it’s making a point, but then suddenly wants you to stop taking the politics literally once the implications become uncomfortable.
Then the Mattel stuff added to the confusion and just made it feel like a big advertisement.
Change my view. What am I not seeing in this movie that a lot of other feminists loved? Is there a big thing I'm missing, or is the movie itself kinda just a somewhat shallow girl power flick for people who played with Barbies (I did like Kate McKinnon's character and a lot of those other gimmicks) that doesn't really hold up to the "Smash the Patriarchy" marketing?
EDIT: u/Fit-Order-9468 wins this thread. I could not be convinced that, in the aforementioned framework I laid out, that my takeaways were wrong or that the movie didn't just fall on its face. What this user did is explain to me that my framework of viewing the movie was actually wrong; it's both a critique of feminism in its current state and a call for better feminism (with of course some elements of a gender-swapped patriarchy, but it's not as central as I initially thought). View successfully changed!