Barbie

Release Date: July 21st, 2023

Director: Greta Gerwig | MPAA Rating: PG-13 | LeavittLens Rating: 8/10

It’s an utter cultural phenomenon. It’s an internet sensation, filling social media threads everywhere with memes upon memes. It’s the dynamite to a consumeristic gold mine. It’s immediately (and expectedly) become weaponized for culture warring – both in seemingly unaware and on-brand hypocrisy that ironically reinforces and bolsters the text of the film and its critiques, and in “but-it-isn’t-enough” reviews calling it just a further reinforcement of the very dynamics it critiques. And in just its first 18 days at the box office, it’s a worldwide, billion-dollar blockbuster, the first of its kind to have been directed by a woman. It’s Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie, a clever, comedic, satirical take on all sorts of wide-ranging topics, from American capitalism to male and female roles, corporate hierarchies to mother-daughter relationships.

And in many ways, Barbie is precisely what one might expect from Hollywood in 2023: an adaptation of a previously existing intellectual property backed by brilliant marketing, overseen by a megacorporation, and designed to sell toys and open theme parks. Yet what separates the film from the largely unoriginal and often stale monocultural consumerism of contemporary cinema is what it packs underneath its glossy pink packaging: a rich, self-aware, prophetic tale that proves to be one of the richest theological and sociological messages put to film in recent years.

That’s not by accident, either. In interviews before the film was released, Gerwig was candid about the movie’s biblical inspirations. “Barbie was invented first,” she said in an interview with Vogue back in May, and “Ken was invented after Barbie, to burnish Barbie’s position in our eyes and in the world. That kind of creation myth is the opposite of the creation myth in Genesis.” Greta is citing the oft-articulated stance that Adam was created first and is therefore the principal human form, while Eve was created second as a subsidiary or supplement to Adam, her identity intrinsically dependent upon him. It’s noteworthy here that this patriarchal interpretation of Genesis 1-2 that Greta cites (and has likely experienced and heard articulated in religious spaces) is actually precisely the opposite of what a multitude of scholars have concluded the narrative is really getting at. As it turns out, mutuality between the sexes, one of the ultimate concluding points of the film, is actually what is depicted in Genesis 1-2, making Gerwig’s movie in many ways an affirmation, not a rebuttal, of the biblical story. (Quick note: if you’ve also had patriarchy reinforced by Christian religious institutions, in harmful ways or otherwise, and are interested in accessible tools to help with healing from or correcting this sort of egregious interpretive error, I’ve included a list of resources at the end of this review). Nevertheless, Gerwig’s initial critique is understandable given the painful experience of so many women in Christian religious spaces, and her theological goals are obvious from the outset. Even star Margot Robbie doubled down on the biblical connections, pointing out that one pivotal scene–when Barbie sits down with her creator, Ruth Handler (played by Rhea Perlman)–is meant to mirror Michelangelo’s famous painting “Creation of Adam,” citing that “Greta snuck that in there.” These robust and millennia-old spiritual musings serve as a consistent narrative springboard for the witty and technically precise achievements of the film.

It opens with a brief homage to Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, replacing the Darwinian image-making with a more “Matellian” one. In an ancient age of toys, girls were only ever given baby dolls to play with, reinforcing the notion that femininity is exclusively linked to motherhood. Then suddenly, as if from the heavens, these girls are introduced to a curvy adult female doll, donning a swimsuit and sunglasses, and empowering them to the important reminder that being a woman isn’t always and only about being a mother. This groundbreaking achievement produced what narrator Helen Mirren calls a solution to the problem of equal rights, where Barbie’s multi-faceted iterations served as inspiration for women in the real world to take on far more than motherhood. “At least,” she says, “that’s what the Barbie’s think.”

Cut to Barbieland, an idyllic and immaculately conceived paradise akin to the Garden of Eden, where the Barbies live as empowered women and where the men, the Kens (led by Ryan Gosling‘s perfectly chiseled example), live in the position that patriarchy assigns women: as adjacent beings with identities entirely dependent upon their female counterparts. Gerwig and her team do an excellent job of realizing Barbieland for the filmgoer – the set and costume design reinforce both the plastic and polished nature of the world, all the while still bringing to life the imaginative power of dollhouse play. It’s not long, though, before things go awry. Soon Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) begins to experience fractures in her perfect paradise, cleverly rendered in humorous ways. She notices she has a bit of morning breath upon waking up; her breakfast toast is burned; her feet fall from their usual elevated, high-heel position; and so forth. Upon confessing these faults to her fellow Barbies, Stereotypical Barbie is prompted to approach the sage of the community, Weird Barbie (played hilariously by Kate McKinnon). She quickly learns the truth behind Barbieland: each Barbie has an assigned human in the real world who plays with them, and when their assigned human goes through something sad or difficult, their pain is manifested in their Barbieland Barbie. Given a Matrix-esque choice between the high-heeled naivete of her current life and the Birkenstock-clad real world, Barbie opts for the latter, adventuring to L.A. (with Gosling’s Ken stowing away) in order to find her assigned human and make her joyful again.

Expecting to enter a society where women are empowered, Barbie and Ken are instead quickly exposed, an homage again to the realization of nakedness in the Fall of Genesis 3. Barbie experiences the objectifying male gaze for the first time, while Ken stumbles upon what he initially feels are the joys of patriarchy. This two-pronged venture into the real world actually helps the film through its middle act, Barbie’s journey serving as the emotional entree topped by Ken’s perfectly comedic awakening. Their misadventures ultimately lead them to Gloria (America Ferrera) and her daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who both are attempting to navigate the difficult world as women, one with a bit more hope and the other with bitter cynicism. Meanwhile, Ken takes the news of patriarchy straight back to Barbieland, which he promptly transforms into a “Kendom,” instituting scathingly accurate and silly staples of patriarchy like mansplaining, using over-the-top Creed-esque vocals in their musical numbers, and a perpetual obsession with horses (amongst a multitude of other more sinister symptoms). The Garden has been infiltrated by the original sin of patriarchy, and something needs to be done to solve it.

The third act–which primarily follows Stereotypical Barbie, Gloria, and Sasha as they seek to resolve the brokenness of Barbieland and the real world–is perhaps the movie’s strongest point, particularly as a reprieve from a plot that gets a bit lost in its own contrived and absurdist renderings of the real world. It is in this portion that Gerwig’s screenplay (written in conjunction with her brilliant filmmaking partner, Noah Baumbach) shines forth, a staple of every one of her films. We get a brilliant monologue from Gloria that perfectly articulates the catch-22 experience of so many women in the world, and we are re-invited to explore some of the theological ideas that sparked the story in the first place. Barbie and Ken are forced to reckon with their own identities on the other side of their falls from respective patriarchy and matriarchy, longing for healing in all of the mess and turmoil of naivete (in Barbie) or downright abuse (in Ken).

And it’s here the film seems to be exploring, knowingly or unknowingly, a question that Christian theologians have been exploring for millennia: what if the fall into sin or brokenness, as tragic as it may have been, could actually produce a deeper and more fuller humanity on the other side of it? What if the bad could lead us into a deeper good? The Latin term to describe this notion is felix culpa, which means “fortunate fall,” and it captures the stunningly subversive heart of Christianity: that even the brokenness of poor choices can be transformed into a collection of fortunate scars, reminders that push humanity more into a glorious redemption that transcends even what existed before the Fall. The book of Revelation depicts this sort of new reality as the “New Heavens and the New Earth,” something that Jesus himself inaugurated through his own entry into, death to, and resurrection over the woundedness of the world. As the great 5th century theologian Augustine put it, “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.”

In fact, that is precisely where things land in the powerful conclusion. Barbie has an emotional conversation with her Creator, face to face with the one whose identity is intrinsically wrapped up her own. She is given the choice to live in her own fantasy world, ignorant of and indifferent to the suffering she now knows and empathizes with, or to become truly human in order to serve as a vehicle that redeems and restores the people and world around her, a bridge that is fully Barbie and yet a fully real, embodied human. After a montage of the joys and pains of human life, filled by real home videos from the cast and crew of the movie, Barbie chooses the latter; that is, she chooses what God in Jesus chose, according to the Christian tradition. She chooses incarnation, dignifying the messiness of all human life by entering into it. And while the film doesn’t seem to posit a framework of how this conclusion really leads to healing or life (it ends abruptly with a hilarious but unfinal line), it certainly seems to chart a path towards redemption and restoration that is dignifying to all people, men and women, and all parts of their human condition, broken and messy as it may be.

Read from a surface-level, Barbie is a cinematic achievement of practical filmmaking, comedic dialogue in an era where that may be more difficult than ever, perfect musical notes, and memorable central performances. It is, in many ways, why we go to the movies. But Gerwig and company seem insistent on the fact that the movie is much more than just some popcorn fun. They seem insistent on the fact that it is packed with profundity about the human condition, profundity that is in dialogue with millennia of spiritual wisdom and truth. Far more than its pretty plastic package, Barbie serves as a spiritual parable for our time, enough–or KENough–to warrant deep reflection in each of our own hearts and minds.

*Further Resources on the bible’s affirmation of mutuality and refutation of patriarchy*

1. The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How The Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, by Beth Allison Barr
2. The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood: How God’s Word Consistently Affirms Gender Equality, by Philip B. Payne
3. Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church, by Nijay Gupta
4. Ordained Women in the Early Church: A Documentary History, edited by Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek
5. Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Theological, Cultural, and Practical Perspectives, by Ronald Pierce
6. Jim Singleton’s teaching, visible at this video link
7. Manuscript of N.T. Wright’s lecture on different New Testament passages

Please know that I am also available as a source to listen, process, and help answer any other questions on this front. Feel free to reach out at clint.springpeople@gmail.com!