Breaking the Barbie Mold: Greta Gerwig’s Empowering Take on the Iconic Doll

2023-07-07 01:00:16

An actress plays Barbie on screen. Thirty, twenty, maybe even ten years ago, this sentence would have conveyed a completely different imagination than today. We would have immediately had the image of a blonde, thin actress, simpering on the screen the attitudes of the doll manufactured by the giant Mattel since 1959. The film would have been a pure marketing product entirely intended to encourage spectators to buy a plastic figurine when leaving the cinema. As for the interpreter of the famous doll, she would have been mocked, reduced to her plasticized bimbo character, quickly forgotten, if not by the worshipers of nanars who would have devoted a small cult to her. The famous injunction ” be beautiful and stop talking “ would have been everywhere, on screen and in life. All this is pure speculation, since the few attempts at adaptation to the cinema have never succeeded.

It will therefore have been necessary to wait until this summer of 2023 for the very first Barbie film to be released. And this inaugural cuvée has nothing of a piquette. Already because it is directed by Greta Gerwig, filmmaker and actress adored by moviegoers, director of Lady Bird and Daughters of Doctor March, two critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated films. The latter co-wrote the screenplay with Noah Baumbach, her husband, himself an acclaimed filmmaker (Frances HaMarriage Story…), who tagged him as the new Woody Allen.

Ce Barbie-there is, with the adventures of Indiana Jones, released at the end of June, a new part of Mission impossible (in theaters July 12) and Oppenheimer, by Christopher Nolan, expected on July 19, one of the flagship films of the summer. It follows the heroine and Ken, driven out of the marvelous world of Barbieland, like Adam and Eve from paradise, who discover real life.

On the screen, it is regarding patriarchy, the refusal to submit to the standards of classic beauty, the right of women not to wear high heels and the ridicule of men who, with contracted abdominals, overplay their virility. Everything is pink, very flashy. Irony is everywhere, the obvious second degree. “If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you.” claims one of the trailers.

Of the character, the interpreter of the title role, the Australian Margot Robbie, has the physique: thin, blonde, perfect plastic. But, at 33, she is anything but a Kleenex comedian. She is even one of the most prominent and best paid actresses in Hollywood, whose salary for this film is estimated at 12.5 million dollars (11.5 million euros).

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