Here's why I took a pass on the Barbie movie

I didn’t see the Barbie movie. I didn’t particularly want to.

You may assume it’s because I’m a white male with a fragile ego who’s threatened by powerful women.

Let me disabuse you of that notion.

My mother survived polio, then earned her degree at UCLA and went to work at Douglas Aircraft—despite being 90% paralyzed on her right side. My wife is surviving Stage 4 cancer while continuing to work full time and pursue a career as an author. She does what she wants when she wants, and she didn’t particularly want to see the Barbie movie. But she did go with a friend who asked her… then came back saying I hadn’t missed anything.

No, I have not seen the movie. I trust my wife’s opinions about it because, in the vast majority of cases, we share similar tastes. (If she had wanted me to see it with her, I would have in a heartbeat.) But because I haven’t seen it, I’m not qualified to discuss the merits of the film itself. What I will discuss here is the Barbie phenomenon and the controversy surrounding the movie.

As a young kid, I didn’t much like Barbie—or Ken. They seemed like (literally) plastic people: superficial and idealized versions of the “popular kids” at school who were not at all like me. I didn’t want to be like them, either. There were plenty of Barbies and Kens in my class growing up about 15 miles from Malibu as the crow flies. It was a hangout for surfers and uber-rich types. Translation: the “in” crowd. That’s what Barbie represented to me, and, as a loner and something of an outcast, I wanted nothing to do with it. I’d never be Ken and didn’t want to be..

Barbie and Ken always seemed to me like a role model for shallow, entitled, rich kids. Now she’s supposed to be a feminist icon? Hmmm. Lest we forget, Barbie’s absurd “physique” has been the basis for body shaming, anorexia, and a host of insecurities for girls who wanted to be just like her but couldn’t measure up. How could they, short of plastic surgery? And even then…

A Barbie movie? Didn’t they already do that with Mean Girls?

SENDING A MESSAGE

I’m not sure exactly how, but this iconic Mattel toy became the basis of a movie about empowering women and exposing the evils of the patriarchy. I should point out here that I think it’s excessively stupid that self-limiting that our society is run, by and large, by old white males. I don’t think old white males are intrinsically bad (I’m getting there myself), but I don’t believe concentrating power in the hands of any single group is ever a good thing. It corrupts, and I don’t like corruption.

Still, I don’t need to see a movie to learn any of this.

The truth is, I’ve never cared for movies that were (or feel like they were) created expressly to “send a message.” For one thing, I don’t like being preached at, whether I’m in the choir or outside the church. I don’t care if you’re talking about global warming, the Bible, or UFOlogy. I enjoy movies that are thought-provoking: They don’t spoon-feed you a particular point of view; they invite you to think for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Secondly, I believe that the purpose of any good movie is to tell a story; any message it conveys should flow naturally from the characters and the plot, not be forced on the audience in some heavy-handed way to persuade or shame them. If you want to educate me, make a documentary (I love them). If you want to entertain me, don’t try to educate me instead.

OVERLOOKED?

I haven’t seen the Barbie movie, so I don’t know that it does any of that, but the reactions of many people to the Academy Award nominations it received—and didn’t receive—strongly suggest that it is. Specifically, a lot of people are up in arms that Margot Robbie (in the title role) wasn’t nominated for Best Actress and Greta Gerwig for Best Director, while Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as Ken.

The movie did get a Best Picture nomination, but the fact that two women in key roles were overlooked for major nominations while a man did get nominated has a lot of people up in arms.

Let’s look at this more closely. Margot Robbie wasn’t nominated, but she wasn’t nominated for her iconic portrayal of Harley Quinn in any of three DC films, either. The Academy isn’t personally against her, though: It has nominated her for an Oscar on three other occasions. And, let’s fact it, it’s not as though the Academy is going to be giving a man the award for Best Actress. A woman is going to win. Guaranteed.

Then there’s the Best Director category. The winners in 2021 and 2022 were both women, but historically, only three women have won in this category. This year, just one of the five nominees was a woman, and it wasn’t Gerwig. But it isn’t as though Gerwig has been shunned by the Academy: Three of her films (including Barbie) have earned Best Picture nominations over the years, and she’s earned nominations before for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay (both for Lady Bird).

She’s also up for a Best Adapted Screenplay award with Noah Baubach this year for… Barbie.

It could be argued that this award isn’t as prestigious as the Best Director Award, but similarly, Best Supporting Actor isn’t as big a deal as Best Actress. So comparing Gosling’s nomination in the lesser category with Robbie’s purported snub in the latter is something of an apples-to-oranges comparison.

THE heart OF THE ISSUE

The people who are up in arms about Gerwig and Robbie being overlooked in this year’s nominations weren’t bothered when Robbie didn’t get nominated (for example) for her portrayal of Harley Quinn. This year, they’re not speaking out on behalf of either woman personally—or even about women’s historical lack of representation in the Best Director category, where they’d have a good argument. Their outrage stems from the fact that, to put it simply, these two women weren’t nominated in major categories for a movie about women’s empowerment, and a guy was.

It’s almost as if they should be entitled to nominations because the movie was a “message” film that made a lot of money.

I’m sorry, but just because a movie has a popular message doesn’t make it good. And lots of movies that made plenty of money have been shut out in major categories at Oscar time. Typically, they’re genre films (science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.), which the Academy, for whatever reason, doesn’t value. No matter how good the direction or the performance, these films aren’t considered award-worthy unless it’s in some technical category like costuming or special effects. I have a problem with that, just like I have a problem with ANYONE deserving being overlooked.

I don’t know whether Gerwig and Robbie were deserving for their roles in creating Barbie or not. How could I? I haven’t seen the movie. I can’t pass judgment on it or them. What I do know is they aren’t deserving just because they’re involved in this specific movie with this specific message… any more than someone is undeserving just because they’re in a science fiction film.

As for me seeing it? My wife said it wasn’t worth it. She’s a woman, but that doesn’t particularly matter to me. What matters is I trust her judgment… a lot more than the opinions of teenage surfers from Malibu, outraged Barbie fans or the Academy’s nominating committee.

Stephen H. Provost is a former journalist, the author of more than 50 books, and the founder of Dragon Crown Books. You can find out more about his books at dragoncrownbooks.com.