Barbie

A film about a commodity trying to escape being a commodity, all inside of one of the largest commodity campaigns ever.

Enjoyable, sure. But I always find myself interrogating myself: why do I enjoy? Why is this pleasurable? I believe that what we find enjoyable, pleasurable, and desirable can nonetheless be scaffolded by the sociocultural apparatus that one occupies, that our pleasures are the result of discursive power and the normative structural conditions we inhabit.

The film yokes feminism and consumerism together in ways that feel at odds with the archives of feminist struggle. Yes, sure, it's important to not feel like your body or identity needs to appeal to any preconceived standard. I can understand that. But even as the film acknowledges how Mattel has profited by selling white heterosexuality as a normative standard to meet to feel belonging and acceptance, that its executives are shitty people, it feels like the self-criticism it conducts merely allows the brand to laugh in response, say "yeah, I think we messed up on that one", and then continue selling Barbies, just in this inclusive, multicultural, self-aware register. Then, the emancipation produced in the film, that "we should accept more body types", is the foothold for simply profiting on selling an expanded catalog of Barbies, maximizing the company's profits. Many such cases, unfortunately.

Profiting off of calling yourself an asshole is some of the most neoliberal white guilt shit I've ever heard. Everyone is offered something through this multicultural Barbie so that no one can escape it, so that any form of difference is not a difference at all, but a cohesive sameness that falls under the widened umbrella of Barbie. Negation, critique, and self-awareness are also part of a brand pivot, and sincerity doesn't make the corporation's commodification exceptional.