Barbie is the Bomb!

Welcome to what happens next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What happens next is a podcast which covers economics, political science and culture. Today's topic, Barbie is the bomb. Global tickets have already exceeded a billion dollars and rising. We have four speakers today. First, we're gonna hear from Sophia Saker, who is an intern on what happens next. Sophia recently graduated from Brown and we're working for a Hollywood talent agency when the writer's strike is over. What I'm most interested in learning about today is how is it possible that Barbie has become a cultural phenomena at its core. It's because of the response of young women like Sophia who have seen this movie three times already and want continued engagement with it. I want to find out from Sophia what is going on here. I also want to take this comedy seriously and our second guest is Kay Heimewitz from the Manhattan Institute and the author of the book Manning Up, how the rise of women has turned men into boys. I want to hear from Kay about the battle of the sexes in both Barbie land and the real world. Our third speaker will be my sister Debbie Warren who loved Barbies as a child and wrote her a graduate school application essay on collaboration when playing with Barbies as a kid. Our fourth and final speaker will be the what happens next film critic, Darren Schwartz and the topic will be why is this movie so funny and entertaining. My ultimate objective from this podcast is to encourage you to go out and see this film. It's that good. Let's begin with Sophia's opening six minute remarks. Let me just start off by saying that Barbie was written for me. As a recent Brown graduate from Chicago who is moving to LA to work in a Hollywood town agency and who loves romance novels, I'm convinced that Greta Gerwig most definitely had my archetype in mind when she wrote this script. I've seen Barbie three times and each time I wear pink to the theater. My virgin Barbie voyage was in a tiny cramped movie house when I was on vacation in Portugal with my family. There was absolutely no way I was going to miss opening night. I listened to the Barbie soundtrack every day. I repost on social media, every Barbie trailer and teaser. I have memorized America for air as fabulous monologue about modern female angst. I've watched cast interviews, film critics, and Barbie doll collectors discuss the movie and the Barbie doll's history. For this audio podcast, I am wearing a gap pink and white button down top that says Barbie in big pink letters on the back. I am all in for this movie. My love for Barbie is not at all unusual. There are millions of young women who feel this way. We live in a make-believe Barbie land. And everyone in the Barbie enthusiast community has seen the movie and loves it. Many of us have actually seen it multiple times. And I think that the cult is just at its infancy. Rocky Horror is still going strong 48 years after the fact. And I think that Barbie will have even more intense cult following, given that Rocky Horror wasn't even a blockbuster hit when it was released. Barbie connects across female generations. I am a part of that Gen Z female cohort that you social media and are open to taking Barbie's girl power seriously. This film is a cultural phenomenon. Barbie is a blockbuster in such a monumental way. It's like the wizard of Oz for this generation. It's funny, it's emotive, it's in technicolor. It transports you to another world like Dorothy moving back and forth between Kansas and Oz. It is about the journey. I did not care about Barbie dolls as a kid. All my focus and attention was on my American girl doll. So my feelings about Barbie have nothing to do with nostalgia. For me, the film centers on the battle of the sexes and the conflict between girl power and Barbie land and men's perceived success in the real world. Ken was a third class citizen in Barbie land where nobody cared about him. But when Ken is transported to the real world of Los Angeles, he is perceived to be a ten like bowdarek running on the beach. There was even a fabulous song to that concept. It is an all-male dance number dream sequence that absolutely kills it. Gerwig makes the audience laugh at all the aspects of the patriarchy from the Mattel board room to the blue-collar construction site. But she also makes women in the audience yearn for a return to a fantasy Barbie land where women rule without any real male participation, of course, other than as eye candy. This movie is a comedy about the state of current gender relations. I'm 22 and I have spent the past 17 years at the best progressive private schools in the country and was indoctrinated to believe in the dangers of the patriarchy and given a sort of how-to manual on how to take it down. I give Barbie my highest recommendation. It'll make you laugh. It made me cry. And it is pure joy on the screen. Films like this are timeless. And it is a must-see. Do not waste another minute. Get to the theater and see it in person because the experience will not be as enjoyable when you see it at home by yourself. Part of the experience is seeing it with the audience. You're going to want to laugh along with everyone else. So go now. You compare Barbie to the Rocky Horror picture show. My daughter loves to go to the midnight showing of Rocky Horror. She dresses up and screams out the most famous lines. Do you think that we will see similar audience participation with Barbie? I actually think that's already happening. When I have gone to see Barbie with my parents for the second and third time, people were loud in the theater, which is something that I've never experienced before, except for maybe Mama Mia, which is a musical. That's amazing. And why do you compare Barbie with the Wizard of Oz? I've seen a lot of old movies and very few of them stand the test of time. I don't really understand the context, the jokes, et cetera. The Wizard of Oz is timeless. Barbie has that same effect. In generations to come, people will watch Barbie. Even though it's set in our current world, you also have to look at the fact that Gerwood tips so much influence from Old Hollywood, particularly Technicolor and the excitement of the Wizard of Oz. And I think she totally brought that back for the Barbie movie. I know you're a huge Taylor Swift fan. How would you compare Swift's love fast with Barbies? I am even more of a Taylor Swift fan, a Swiftie than I am Barbie. I was born on December 13th, which if you know Taylor Swift, you would know that it's her birthday. I went to see the era's tour in Vegas and in Foxboro. And I sat outside the stadium two times in Chicago when she was performing here just to listen to the music from outside Soldiers Field. So I am totally part of the Swiftie culture, which is an absurdly large fan base that is just booming right now. But I've been there since 2007. I've been there from the start. Do you think that both Taylor Swift and Barbie effectively use their history or callbacks in their art as a wink to their most engaged fans? Greta Gerwig does this so well in Barbie. If you played with Barbie growing up, you might have seen growing up Skipper where you lift her arm in her breast grow. And that was a really big controversy in the 60s or 70s. And there's also the Barbie with like a TV in her back. That just, it was just an awful product and midge, the pregnant doll. And if you kind of know Barbie, you're like, oh my God, that's so funny. Like she put this in, she put time and effort and she thought about it. Taylor Swift does the same thing. And her songs show reference things about her life and her music videos. She'll have a cake somewhere and on that cake is actually the design for the next album. And I think it totally fans the flame. It becomes a piece of media that you interact with. Barbie is a piece of media that you can totally interact with. You can watch it 100,000 times and look for little details everywhere. In the same way that I have listened to Taylor Swift's entire discography every day since I was 13 and I never get bored of it. And I know I probably sound absolutely crazy but I just want to say it is a real phenomenon happening with my age group in generation. Everyone dresses up for the Taylor Swift concert. How would you compare the Barbie fashionista with the Swift fashionistas? I think it's very similar to the era's tour. People are decked out. I mean, you're not just wearing pink. You're in a full cowgirl get up. You have glitter all over you. Your hair is done up in braids or pig tails. I heard about this trend through TikTok and Instagram seeing other people post it. It makes you feel like you're part of one community and I think that's what's happening with Barbie. It's also fun. It's really fun to dress up to feel like you're a little kid on Halloween again. And I think this energy is still definitely there. How crazy are the girls outfits at the Barbie theater? The costumes are definitely racy. I don't know whether or not it's reclaiming your own sexuality and your body and loving it as it is or if there is external pressure from girls online, other women, et cetera, to wear a crop top and glittery shorts. There is definitely a sexualized nature in the clothes that girls are wearing to the theater. I'm sort of baffled by young woman's reaction to Barbie. I thought that Barbie was perceived to be a bimbo. One of my favorite lines in the film is said by Sasha, who is at that table with all the other high school students. And she says, everyone hates women. Women hate women and men hate women. And it's the one thing we can all agree on. And when I heard that line, I immediately thought of all the ways in which I have made comments about people's bodies and said, oh my god, this person's looking so anorexic today or oh, like talking about someone, oh, she's super slutty. And what I love about Barbie is that Freda Gerwig also calls out women in the ways that we uphold sexist ideals. There's been a lot of chatter about America Ferrara's monologue about female angst. I really didn't think it belonged in this comedy because it was preachy. Why did you think of what she said? She says, you have to be thin, but you can't be too thin. But you can't say you want to be thin. You have to be healthy, but you have to be thin. I loved that scene because there is a lot of toxicity within. I don't want to say like positive femininity, but I think that there is a lot of pressure on young women. Oh, if you're too skinny or anorexic, or oh, if you only want a guy, then you're not a feminist and you're not caring about your career, and it's these contradictions, which is why I love the monologue. It's interesting that you thought it was too serious for a comedy because I felt like in the moment of the monologue, Barbie is at rock bottom. She's just ready to quit. She's done. And this is kind of the rallying speech that America for Eras character gives Barbie. I felt like it fit in pretty well. It will say that its tone was very different from the rest of the movie. I guess I have a hard time answering that question because I felt like the content of the monologue was so important. Do you think the monologue resonates more for women than men? It's definitely about how women think about women. And I think that's what makes it so genius, too. When I saw the film with my dad, he said that he was confused by the monologue. He just thought to himself, is this how you see yourselves? He just didn't have any clue. Would you date a guy who says he didn't like Barbie? On Hinge, a couple of guys have messaged me and been like, oh, I hated the Barbie movie. And I immediately blocked him. And I was like, I don't even want to hear what you have to say. My daughter loved the musical Wicked. It's the Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. Do you think the Barbie sequel should focus more on Ken? I mean, he didn't really have an ending. I would be really interested to see Ken's journey. I would love that. I end each podcast with a note of optimism. What are you optimistic about as really it's to Barbie? I am very optimistic for the future of entertainment. A lot of creators, writers, directors are really listening to their fans and listening to what people want to see. And now social media, you can hear and you can say, okay, well, girls really want a story that takes, you know, their worst day ever seriously. And it's not just like, oh, you're fine, get over it. So I'm excited for that, the future. Thanks, Sophia. Let's now move on to our second speaker, Kay Heimowitz, from the Manhattan Institute, who is an expert on the battle of the sexes and who recently wrote an article about Barbie for the city journal. Go ahead, Kay. Seems odd that Larry decided to have an episode inspired by the movie Barbie because he's usually a very serious man who discusses important stuff. But I think the Barbie Quake is actually a really important cultural phenomenon that can tell us a lot about feminism, contemporary progressive sensibilities and the way the market works. The movie is the latest in a long series of brilliant chess moves confirming Mattel's place as the world champion grandmaster of marketing and marketing specifically to a progressive, relatively affluence, sophisticated customer. I don't know whether the company or the movie is woke. There's been a lot of grumbling about that. But I do know that Mattel understands Woke's sales potential. The most important fact to know about Barbie, I think, in order to understand this marketing success, is her origins in the late 50s. She was modeled on a German doll named Lily, like no other doll that had ever been seen in this country, certainly. And it was not a doll for kids. She was a gag gift that was owned by man based on a risque cartoon character who had a lot of r-rated adventures, certainly not for kids. And she looked apart. She had breasts and curves and slender legs and red-paldy lips and heavy blue eyes shadow. Ruth Handler, the co-founder of Mattel, some of the courses doll and was convinced that she could create a g-rated American version and that it would be quite successful. And in fact, girls went nuts over Barbie. And one of the reasons being that she hinted of adult sexiness and seduction. But mothers, for the same reason, hated her. They didn't want their kids exposed to this. Ultimately, the kids won as they usually did in post-war American homes and as they continued to do today. Mattel had to mark at Barbie as a parent friendly, if not wholesome toy. Who could peak children's imaginations? They talked about her as aspirational. But maybe not in the way that parents might have wanted at that time. The year she first introduced was 1959. And the next year, birth control appeared on the market. After that, we had a sexual revolution, which continues to go back and forth today. You might think of Barbie as a kind of profit of that revolution because even though she wasn't supposed to be really sexual, she was. And it could certainly compare to the baby dolls that the girls were playing with up until then. Now all along, because Barbie was not to parents' taste, Mattel had to play a very tricky marketing game. But by the late 60s, so feminists went on attack against the doll. They thought that Barbie modeled bimboes and encouraged girls to become bimboes and arexic ones at that and to only be interested in clothes and shoes. Mattel saw this cultural shift that is the rise of feminism and turned it into marketing gold. They made career Barbie, as I call it. Barbie has been produced to have 200 careers. She's been a fashion designer, a lawyer, a doctor, an astronaut, a ballerina, a pilot. My favorite is the paleontologist. And she's even run for president several times. Each of those careers required different clothes and accessories. Barbie's dream house, Barbie's cars, Barbie's RV, Barbie's boats and all kinds of things like that. Mattel also struck at rich when diversity became the hot marketing too. They had already introduced a black Barbie way back when, probably in the 80s, but they now have a Latina Barbie and Asian Barbie, a wheelchair Barbie, and most recently and most unlikely of all, a trans Barbie. There are Barbies with 35 skin tones and nine body types. It is, as the company celebrates it, that most diverse and inclusive doll line on the market today. And that takes us to the movie, which is the most ingenious marketing move by Mattel yet. The trick was appeal to a fairly cynical, increasingly educated and increasingly socially progressive public. Not inclined to look kindly on a fashion doll. They had to really finesse this. And Greta Gerwig did it for them, I think, in a big way. It's brilliantly done. Mattel executives must have had to swallow hard, but Gerwig knew that irony towards Barbie and her history and the company itself was essential to selling this movie. And the company was smart enough, as it always has been, to read the room. Warner Brothers got their $162 million opening weekend and the streaming future, I think, is unlimited. Did you like the movie? I did like the movie. I thought it was very smart, very, very funny. I thought the acting and the dancing and singing was great. And it was very funny in a very sophisticated way. Lots of visual puns, verbal puns, ironic jokes about so-called toxic masculinity. You don't know which side Gerwig is on half the time, which is very, very clever of her. It was just great fun to watch. Did you like it? I did. They probably sat the tone in that very first scene in the film. I didn't know what to expect. I was ill at ease. I had gone to see it based on the recommendation of my wife, and I was nervous what I was in for. This is not made for me, you thought. I didn't know what to expect. And in that opening scene, where the camera pans over the history of dolls, and they end up with Margot Robbie wearing some incredibly sexy outfit, and then the 2001 music theme song, and the girls destroying those old dolls, it was hysterical. And it set the tone for the entire film. This was gonna be fun and not serious. It was a brilliant opening. Gerwig must have sensed that she had to make it appealing to people like her, like us. And she did. Gerwig makes fun of the Mattel Manager team. I played the role of the suit in my corporate experience, and I would love for Will Ferrell to play me. I mean, that would be the ultimate compliment, especially because he's so hilarious. I love the scene where Barbie walks into the boardroom, wearing a sexy cowboy outfit, and Will Ferrell pushes aside his subordinates to get her so attention. I think guys have gotten the wrong impression from the marketing and their pure set, that this film is not for them. Yeah, one of the reasons though, the guys don't wanna see this movie, is because they suspect that it's somewhat anti-male, and people have said that. And there's certainly a lot of jokes at men's expense, but I think it's terribly funny, and you have to have a tinny or not to see that Gerwig is poking fun at the concept of toxic masculinity. She has it both ways, always. I think it's quite successful that way. Now, I think she went too far, and the whole patriarchy thing that people took seriously, and I think that's baloney. Remember that Gerwig is a woman, and she directed this movie with a huge budget. The head of the film business at Mattel is a woman. The star, of course, is a woman. The producer is a woman. It's kind of odd to keep harping on patriarchy under those circumstances. Who was the audience for this movie? This is not a movie for girls. It's a movie for 14-year-old and up. It's much too sophisticated for children. Do you think the film is making a statement about the current way kids fantasize about Barbie? We don't completely understand how children play with this stuff. I mean, one of the ways that Gerwig tried to get around that is to acknowledge that a lot of little girls would get kind of rough with their Barbies. Remember the character, weird Barbie? She had her hair chopped off. I remember doing that. We'd sort of pull the legs apart, and she also did sex games with them too. Kate McKinnon was very funny about that. How would you compare Barbie with sex in the city? Both Barbie and sex in the city are about fashion, and consumerism on that level. I mean, Carrie had the succession with shoes, which is kind of funny when you think about Barbie, because one of the things that Ruth Handler insisted on was to take the original doll, which had no separate shoes, but just painted on shoes. And make sure that the shoes were replaceable. They sold a huge amount of fashion accessories, including shoes. I remember as a child just loving those little miniature things. That's another thing that we sometimes forget is how much girls, in particular, like miniatures, doll houses, and all the little furniture, and all that. We're first introduced to Ken in the movie, just hanging out of the beach. Ken does not have a job. He doesn't actually understand his role in Barbie Land. And what's interesting about this is that Ken's predicament reflects the young girl's perspective of not understanding what men do or what they should do. Ken is completely baffled on what his role should be in a young girl's fantasy world. Well, that's a really interesting idea of romance, falling in love, and Prince Charming, that kind of thing. It's really downplayed in the culture now for girls. The whole role of men and girls' lives is in question, even for little girls. If you look at the Disney movies now, you're not gonna see a lot of romance. You'll see friendship, but not romance. In my day, the movie ended with the love matcher. There was flirtation and little love songs and stuff like that. That's disappearing from girls' lives. Now, is it disappearing from their fantasy life? I suspect it might be because mothers and fathers are downplaying love and domestic life for girls in particular. They really want to see girls working on their careers. Now, I think a lot of young people are growing up with absolutely no sense that it is desirable to be thinking about love or raising children. So, I think there's a lot of questioning of very basic, very fundamental understandings of how you become an adult. And the question is, how much are they taking this idea up that boys are not relevant to their lives? I love that first dance scene where Ken played by Ryan Gosling is desperately trying to get Barbie's attention. Ryan Gosling, I remember thinking he did that so well. Where he's working so hard to maneuver himself into the dance. Personally, I think he stole the show. I thought Margaret Robbie was amazing as Barbie, but Ryan Gosling was spectacular. Ryan Gosling, I thought, was just brilliant. But you're right, that was a theme in the movie that men, they didn't really have a role to play. And many people, I think, quite rightly, have seen this as a kind of comment on the current stage of gender relations where a lot of women are being raised to not see themselves as needing men. And men is being superfluous to their real ambitions, which are much more along the lines of career and adventure. You mentioned that Barbie now has several hundred career choices available to her. And in the film, Barbie breaks out into the real world and she is seeking some girl power. So she goes to a construction site for some girl bonding and reaffirmation. And she finds only rough masculine men and she's shot. Where are the women? It was funny because it was supposed to be a kind of parody. This is what I mean about the layers of irony in the movie. Sometimes you're not sure where her wig is on this. Like, she certainly doesn't think that women really will ever or should ever be equal on the construction sites. It's never going to happen. There are all these differences between males and females. And realistically, we recognize that. But there's just a big struggle going on in the culture where part of the culture is saying, oh no, it's all socialized, it's not natural. And really sex is not a binary, it's a spectrum. The other people, sounds like me, really do believe there are fundamental differences between the sexes and that you're not going to change it. You may open up some possibilities that women would be interested in or men would be interested. But it's never going to really change the fact that they have different preferences and different interests. When we arrive in Barbie land, stereotypical Barbie played by Margarabi, is driving around in her cute pink corvette and she's saying hello to all the other Barbies in town. And it's like an advertisement for diversity equity inclusion from a college brochure. Is Gerwig saying that they get along so much better than men? And they're so friendly with each other and so supportive as they were in the movie? Or is she saying that in and of itself is sort of a funny idea? You can't really tell the same reason that I found the whole patriarchy emphasis. A little puzzling, was that supposed to be partly funny? I couldn't really tell. I know that a lot of people thought it was for real. That is that Gerwig really was trying to critique the patriarchy in a serious way. I mean, if you put Wolf Ferrell as the head of the patriarchy, that just is not serious. She's having it both ways where she's poking fun at the patriarchy at the same time that she's poking fun at the concept of the patriarchy. There's another really funny scene where she comes back to Barbie land and Ryan Gosling has introduced patriarchy to Barbie land and all of the kens are on the beach and the Barbies are cheerleaders in the manner playing sports and so on. They show a guy who is watching the Godfather and they make a point of saying, oh, it's the Godfather and he's explaining the Godfather to the Barbie. He's with. That was the first example of mansplaining in Barbie land. I think that women have very mixed feelings about whether they want to be in charge often and in relationships in particular. Maybe they like being bossed but I think in relationships, women are quite ambivalent. They don't want men who are too weak to put it bluntly. You know, there's this feminist cliche that really women are more turned on when men do the dishes than when they are acting as stereotypical males. You know, I don't believe that, actually. I think they're grateful to men who are doing the dishes and I think men should do the dishes because we're all very busy and women have careers as well. But I don't think they're turned on by it and I think that that is a fantasy that feminists have tried to sell that they don't want men to be too masculine. I'm not convinced about that. Based on recent sociological work, we know that women are looking for male mates who have a similar educational team and hire social economic status. It is ignored in the film. It's not recognized as a reality. But you are quite right and that's what research shows. Not just in the United States, by the way, in even the most egalitarian countries in Scandinavia, for instance, women want to marry up. That is, they want to marry somebody who is earning either as much, preferably more than they are earning. The education piece is not as primal. There is more inner marriage between women who have, let's say, a PhD and a guide that has a BA, you know. But they wanted to be making more money. And of course, the Barbie movie is based on the idea of girl power that women don't need men that they're not looking for men to be breadwinners in any way. You know, I'm not pushing the idea that men should be breadwinners. I'm just saying that the reality principle here is that women have a preference for men who make more money than they do. That is your favorite line of the film. My favorite Ken line. I'm not a lifeguard because I can't swim and I don't do boats or whatever it is. Barbie says to him, yes, you do beach. You know, you just do beach. He says, yeah, I do beach. I just thought that was very funny. Ken didn't like his life as a useless object. Ken has real aspirations. He attempted to get off the beach and jumped into the ocean. But the ocean was fake and he injured himself. Yeah, that's one of those funny visual gags of which there are just many, including when they're going between the two worlds. You know, there's a science as real world pointing this way. Barbie travels to the real world and is horrified about what she sees there. But Ken is over the moon. He loves everything he sees. He loves being the object of attention and that men have an important role in society. And he's so excited. He can't even wait to get home to Barbie Land to tell the other Ken's the good news. Gerwig did an interesting thing there where she also acknowledged that you can't live in this fantasy land and have a meaningful life in Barbie, that very famous line that's been quoted endlessly. Do you guys ever think about death? She says in the middle of this very ecstatic dancing. She says, think about death. Everybody just freezes. It was making that serious point just about, you know, you got to take the tragedy and the limitations of life and work out meaning within those constraints. Barbie is just a doll and she lacks nipples in a vagina. Tell us about the decision to make Barbie sexy but without the relevant body parts. You know, at the time that Barbie was first introduced into the market, there was a belief that you sort of protected children from sex, enlightened parents knew that they were going to tell their kids about the facts of life. And they had all these nice books that would do it for them. But certainly in middle-class life in the West, there was a protected space for children where they were not supposed to be exposed to too much sexuality. You could argue that Americans overdid it, read recently about a school where a teacher got in trouble for showing that Michelangelo's David. But there was this idea of childhood latency where children really were not that interested in sex and shouldn't be aroused. The idea was to protect these girls to keep them innocent because they were vulnerable to predation. And by the way, I just a funny little detail I came across was that Ruth Handler, when they started to make can, she wanted to make a bulge at his crotch and the other people in the team wouldn't let her do it. Barbie makes her way to the real world and finds the owner of her Barbie doll in the high school lunchroom. It's a young woman with four herbesties and when she introduces her as Barbie, she's met with hostility. The teenage girls find the idea of Barbie as violating current progressive feminist ideals. What did you make of that? Girls grow out of Barbie. It was always considered a doll for younger girls. When it first came out, she was imagined to be for like eight to ten year olds. And our kids grow up faster these days. Most of them are finished with Barbie by around six or seven. So the teenagers, it was a matter of pride to say, you know, that's kid stuff. I'm not interested in that. And then I think today's teens are also aware that Barbie represents a different kind of femininity that they don't want any part of. So that was part of what she was getting out there. Well, the high school girls mentioned Barbies anorexia that she's highly sexualized and represents an uber over the top feminist norm of the previous generation that we will no longer tolerate. Right, exactly. I'm sure that a lot of girls would say that. But teenagers haven't been interested in Barbie for a very long time. And so why do you think her mother was so fascinated by Barbie? Being an adult, female is very difficult. She has a daughter who hates her and she has a job that she's bored at, I guess, and a husband who seems useless. He can't even speak Spanish. So I think that the idea there was to create this sort of ordinary woman. She's an overworked, she gets no thanks. Her interest in Barbie is supposed to be just her way of hanging on to a more innocent time. I did think that the speech by America Ferrara about how hard it is to be a woman. I have trouble listening to that and taking it seriously. And I also thought, given that this is a comedy and given how many layers of irony there are in that movie, I wasn't even sure if we were supposed to take it. Seriously. I agree that scene probably should have been cut. It doesn't fit with the comedy essence of the film. Why is this movie a marketing coup for Mattel? Do you think it will rejuvenate the brand for the old audience of young girls? Or will this open up Barbie for a completely different audience? Very much the latter. I think that the Mattel company realized that they have a very large piece of the child market. They want to expand their market. Dixon, who is the CEO, I believe, of Mattel or was until he just left for the gap. He very much said, we want to appeal to young adults, mothers, he calls them glamas. That is glamorous, grandmothers. You mentioned the importance of birth control in the sexual revolution in 1960. Why did you bring that up? And why is it important in the Barbie context? Because the introduction of a sexual doll means that young children were being introduced to a different way of thinking about womanhood than they had been in their play earlier. So by giving us Barbie, Mattel wasn't launching the sexual revolution but they were right in sync with it. It is very interesting to me that these things were all happening at the same time. I end each podcast with a note of optimism. What are you optimistic about? Well, optimistic about Greta Gerwing's career. I'll tell you that. The movie is a big success. I'm optimistic about the cleverness of the movie and the witness of it. But I can't say that I'm optimistic about the relations between the sexes right now. Thanks, Kay. We're now going to move to our third speaker, my sister Debbie, who will speak about her personal experiences with Barbie. I don't remember exactly when I started playing with Barbie, but I was fairly young. I had the original Barbie, blonde hair, blue eyes, tall skinny. I had Ken, who was very handsome, blonde, hair. But his hair, as you know, doesn't move. It's like part of the plastic part. It's really actually quite nasty. I had her sister, Skipper, who was also blonde, and her hair was, you know, brushable. And I had a few other dolls that I also played with when I played with Barbie. So like toddlers and babies, because Ken and Barbie would get together and have kids, of course. I had the yellow convertible and zoom around the neighborhood with her. And I had her dream house. So I had pretty much all the paraphernalia you could possibly have for Barbie. I recall getting a lot of her merchandise from Hamie Downs or House Sales or Gifts for Birthdays. But my biggest score was vintage Barbie clothing for one of mom's friends. It was the 60s style. So it was like great fabrics and bright colors, flared pants, fabulous boots. And I even got a Dickie for Ken. And a Dickie, if you don't know what that is, it's like a fake turtle neck where the fabric only covers the chest area. So that Ken can wear a V-neck without it appearing like it's just hanging out. Anyway, I never played Barbie alone. I usually played with my friends or with Ron, poor guy. And the only way that Ron would play with me was if we then played cars afterwards or before. I know a lot of people focus on Barbie's figure. Her perfectly pert boobs, her ridiculously tiny waist and her extra long legs. But the reality is, I don't think kids that play with Barbie really focus on that or really register it. I mean, yes, her boobs were a source of bewildering it. But only because as a young girl playing with her, we really didn't have any boobs. So it was like, wow, we're going to get these, you know, when we grow up. Barbie wasn't really who we aspire to be or to look like she was just toy. Now, I'm not exactly sure when I stopped playing with Barbie. But the next time she popped up in my life was when I wrote an essay for my business school application. I remember I wanted to write about collaboration. And so for those of you out there that don't know me, I'm not the most passive person. I don't know any burns seen who really is now that I think about it. I'm independent and outgoing, but also a bit of a know-it-all and quite stubborn. I wrote about how I played Barbie as a certain way with Ron. And I believe I led the narrative of the story when we played. But when friends came over, they would try to add their two cents on how the story should play out. Now, I recall initially being quite annoyed by all this. I wanted to play a certain way and they wanted to do something else. But then I realized that some of the ideas that my friends brought up were actually quite good. And so my essay tied my Barbie experience and working with others as an adult together. My mom read the essay and was like, oh my gosh, are you kidding me? You're writing about Barbie going to business school? No, you cannot do that. It's totally inappropriate. And Ron was like, oh my gosh, you can't write about this. And he turned it into a term paper, so it basically lacked any personality. And then I went to see Mrs. Carton, who's one of Ron's best friends mom, and who also happened to be an editor. And she was like, this is great. And she loved the personal touch. So that was what I submitted. And then the coolest thing was that on the first day of business school, we were all gathered in the auditorium for the dean to speak. And he started talking about how diverse of a class we were and how interesting the essays were. And then he brought up about how a student had written about Barbie. And I was like, oh my gosh, hey, that's me. I remember mom was bewildered that you decided to write your application essay on Barbie. She thought it was a more appropriate topic for nursery school than for graduate school. Mom thought Barbie was juvenile. She thought it was a kids play toy. And I think she thought I should have written about something more professional. I remember mom calling me to tell me that the admissions department awarded her Barbie essay, and I was like, one of the best in the applicant pool. How do we get this so wrong? It's a way of getting the attention of the admissions officer. And so it's probably something refreshing for them. Totally out of the box. Who else is going to write about Barbie? No one. And I put together essays where we're really boring like Ron's term papers. Sorry, Ron, throwing you under the bus. Collaboration and teamwork are a core to the business school mission statement. But it's not clear that playing with Barbies is the best way to show your group work. Why Barbie? When we were growing up and going to school, it was always about you. You do the paper, you study for your test, you take the test, you do everything alone. And then business schools all about collaboration. So I was trying to think about a time of my life where I collaborated or worked with other people. And it was never really in school. I somehow thought of Barbie and how as a young kid, I would make up the ideas. Here's the story for Barbie for the day. And this is what we're going to do with Barbie. And I'd have friends come over. They would have different ideas as to how the story should play out for the day or what we should be doing or where Barbie should be going. I realized I was sort of relenting if that's the right word to use to other people's ideas in realizing that, hey, you know, when people put their thoughts in, it sometimes has a better outcome. What was your favorite part of the Barbie movie? The beginning, where Barbie gets up every day and everyone's saying hi to Barbie. Hi, Barbie, hi, Barbie, and then the kids, hi, Ken, hi, Ken, hi, Ken, hi, Ken. I liked how it was really diverse, how it was really inclusive. I liked how female-oriented it was. I mean, as a woman, right? So, you know, woman president, woman congress, women rule the world. But when I played Barbies, I didn't really think of it that way. How do you think about Barbie? Barbie was just an individual. She was married to Ken. They had babies. They lived their lives. And probably my stories were representational of my own household. There was that weird Barbie in the movie that represented the Barbie dolls that were physically assaulted by their owners, torn to shreds. Burnt hair, magic markers on their face. Did you ever deface your Barbie dolls? Barbie was not physically assaulted in her household. She did do the splits a lot because I could not. Could you buy a weird Barbie doll at a store? No, absolutely not. Are you kidding me? Would you see a Barbie movie sequel if it's called Ken? Well, I actually thought the Ken's were really funny. Ken was awesome. The jealousy. For me, Ken was never subservient. Ken was never insecure. Ken was just her boyfriend or husband. So, I didn't really see that side of Ken. But I guess in reality, I can see it now because he was so second best. How do you think about Barbie dolls when raising her kids and its underlying message for girls? I was brought up thinking I could do anything, right? I could bring home the bacon. I could fry it up in a pan, Angelie. Remember that commercial? Yeah. But once it became apparent, I realized I couldn't work be a wife and be a mother and be good at any of those. So there is a trade-off, which is unfortunate. You can't do it all. I end each episode with a note of optimism. What are you optimistic about? Oh, my gosh. I'm optimistic that my daughter will have a better life than I had as a woman trying to have a career, have a family, and being successful at all. Thanks, sis. We now move to our final speaker, Darren Schwartz. Darren, you're the film critic, what happens next? Yes. I learned. You're also a cultural critic. I am, yeah. Barbie is a cultural phenomena. Yes, absolutely. In what way? I think it is a Star Wars-esque type of response from the world. If you remember, Star Wars 1977, people were waiting in lines. I was nine or ten. Some people saw it 50, 60 times. People would just obsess with it. And people have seen this movie four or five times. I've seen it twice. I had no Barbie dolls in my life. And I've seen this thing twice already. I think it is a cultural phenomenon. There are so many different aspects of it from women empowerment. It sounds like some men are mad about it. I don't know. We can talk about that. What's going on with that? I'm not mad about it. I think it's amazing. Musicals are back. I was thoroughly entertained. The performances were incredible. I think there's probably been multiple nominations across the board for lots of different people. And I think they're very bright colors as well, which I appreciate. You mentioned that you did not have Barbie dolls growing up. Correct. Did you have GI Joe? I had a lot of GI Joe stuff, yeah. Do you think it's because you preferred your dolls to have more violent tendencies? Do you mean were Barbie dolls violent? No. Like the dolls that you have like GI Joe, I think represent the armed forces. I think it's a GI by definition. What other dolls did you have and was always related to violence? GI Joe dolls, which represents the military, are there to keep the peace and to protect liberty. If you need violence to protect liberty, fine. But it's not on us. It's on you, whoever you are. I don't think I had any other violent dolls, except for GI Joe. Like animals. I mean, there's violence in nature, right? For sure. Laughs and elephants and things like that. Those things as well. Yeah. The film, like Star Wars, seems to have international appeal. Are you surprised that this Uber American doll and cultural phenomenon resonates with an international audience? I'm not surprised at all. I think internationally people love American culture. If they pay hundreds of dollars for Levi's in different countries, seriously. We don't get a lot of movies from Sri Lanka. But I think Sri Lanka, like watches our movies. America is still the bastion of cultural entertainment and cultural degradation. I think that that probably is why people love this movie across the world. So, Fiya mentioned that this film has the potential to be like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Do you think it's true? I think it's got enough kitchen in it. Why did Steve Rocky Horror movie show in the Southfield Town Center? Something people were throwing toast and rice. We decided to see Barbie Together. This is the first movie we would ever see it together. Well, in a theater. Yeah. And in the middle of the movie, you got up and left. Now, I would have thought that a film critic doesn't do that. What are missing? What happened? Well, I think I needed to get, was it a popcorn run? And you get a popcorn run on the way back? I did want to kind of slide into Oppenheimer. I told you, hang on, I told you that I was keto. And I couldn't have the popcorn. Yeah, the popcorn was for me. And for you, could you're on keto? I get nothing. But I wanted to go to Oppenheimer because the first time I saw it, and this may be on a future show, there were major audio issues. And I saw it in Oak Park, a larger theater, a very echoey. A lot of people said they had a hard time understanding dialogue. So I wanted to go in and check it out. By the way, the record is much better audio. So that's where I was. And I came back. So you felt that it was time to do an audio check on Oppenheimer during the Barbie movie. Yeah. And were you able to follow the popcorn returned? Were you able to understand what's going on? Fortunately, I was able to kind of pick up where I left off. Okay, yes. What did you think of the opening scene of the film? Absolutely. I mean, the Queen. No, Marin, yeah. It was introducing us to Dolls of the Past. And then little girls trying to be mom serving tea. And then they introduced the Barbie. And here was this fantastic Margot Robbie in sort of like a zebra one piece. Right. And the girls looked at this like jaw drop. And they started destroying their dolls. To the sound of the 2001 soundtrack. I thought the opening scene was brilliant. And it was a precursor to all the cultural male, female dynamics themes that we saw the rest of the movie. Men in our age, mid fifties, are very wary of seeing Barbie. What would you tell me? Is that a thing? Is that a fact? I mean, I talked to like my brother. Yeah. Really? Why? I said wrong. You gotta see this. It's fantastic. Are you serious? Yeah, I'm serious. I'll see it. I wasn't aware of the resistance to see it. I don't have any resistance to see it. I'm a movie guy. Ah! So I'm creating moreportements. I'm so creating. I'm creating moreportements. I'm creating moreportements. I also know that there's reporting that there's a spike in breakups. Women saying, I've seen Barbie. I've seen the light. My guy... I'm not good. I'm out. So that seems like it's a problem for people that are like the old Ken in the movie before Ken saw the light. Well, before Ken saw the second light because he saw the first light, hey, they do the men's stuff. Then the second light was okay, maybe we got to like dial that back. This is a comedy. My brother said to me like, how good is it versus other comedies? So I said, Ron, I'm going to tell you comedies and I'm going to rank it versus those comedies. So I want to play that same game with you. Well, you've made an assumption that I agree that Barbie is a comedy. It's like Cisco, Ebert, you could do whatever you want. I would be Cisco. I think of you as Ebert. Who lives longer? Ebert. But he had like a jaw cancer. I mean, it's a disaster at the end. Which is unfortunate. Brain tumor for Cisco. So it's not like it's a great end. Either way, they should both rest in peace because they're wonderful people. That bless them. Super bad. First is Barbie, which is funny. Super bad. Super bad. Super bad. Super bad. So that's a much deeper film. It's a commentary. You can go really deep if you're paying attention, or you can just be surface level. Like, oh, this is fun and fun colors and singing and Super bad was just about wrong. She funny comedy about young guys. It's probably literally the antithesis of Barbie. The exact opposite of Barbie. Barbie is a much better film. And if you're a dumb guy, you'll love Super bad. Hangover. Hangover versus Barbie. Hangover. 100%. 100%. Because it's funny. Barbie, to me, is more of a drama. I thought, oh my God, there's a tiger in the bathroom of a guy that what these guys are doing, and I wasn't thinking about anything deeper than it's funny, these guys got drunk, what the hell happened, where's that guy? Where's that tooth? Where's the tooth, where's the guy? What happened? Who took the guy? Why is there a guy in a trunk? Okay, next. Godfather, Barbie's funnier. What else? How did you like when they caught Ken mansplaining with the Godfather to Barbie? Amazing. They had an idea of having Ken point the guitar at the girl in play. He played the song Push, and I forgot who sings it. Yes, it's called Push. I think it was great, because the lyrics meant he was going to push, I'm dominating you. But in a separate note, he sang. Right, I got to sing that song. He sang, I'm Ken. That song is that I'm Ken is number 87 on the Billboard chart. That's it? I'm shocked it's not number one. It's working its way up. He is a Disney kid. Ryan Gosling is a star. I'm saying that I'm Ken will probably be top 20. What did you think of the dance scenes for I'm Ken? Phenomenal. It was kind of a West Side story type thing. They're all kind of wearing black and white. Ryan Gosling is in La La Land, which brought back the musicals. They're musicals now. I think Ryan Gosling steals the show. Every scene he's in, he just takes over. I don't agree. I think they both steal the show. I think that Margarabi... They give both steal the show. One person steals the show. Who's the thief? I think you're saying he's still the same. I think at the end of the day, Margarabi had a lot on her shoulders to carry this, to carry the messaging, to carry the whole thing, and she pulled it off amazingly. Ryan Gosling was, you know, somebody got to be the foil. No, you don't do the foil. You could be the romantic love interest. He was the romantic idiot. He's not a love interest. There's no point in time that she was actually interested in him. I think it's a very pro-male film. I think they didn't appreciate how pro-male it really was. We saw Margarabi won. Should Margarabi to be called Ken? Yeah, it could take the arc of Star Wars. Were you gonna go back in time? No, it's gonna be like Star Wars came out and then Empire Strikes Back. So it could be Ken Strikes Back. Darren, you saw Margarabi for the second time today, without me. Did you dress up? I did not dress up. And why not? I didn't think of it. You think of everything? I just don't understand this. We never saw people dress up. I'm wearing a pink shirt for this. It's a little bit of a soft pink or maybe a salmon. It's only pink I have. Okay, fair enough. I didn't think of it, but I totally support people that didn't listen. I got a lot of pink. If I see it again, if I think of it, I can go pink pants, pink shirt, pink visor, pink socks. White shoes. Perfect. Contrast. The Indigo Girls. What's the name of the choice of that song? Love it. One of my favorites. Have you ever seen the Indigo Girls in concert? I think I saw them at Pynab in Michigan, possibly part of the original Alapalooza. I saw them twice. They came to Penn when I was in college. And I also saw them at Carnegie Hall. Now you started a band. You sing as part of your creative experience. I'm gonna ask you to sing. You've been working on this song all week. Where are you in that process? You asked me about this. And I sense have gone online to look at the chords, which are completely different, because I used to play the easy chords. And so I just picked up my guitar today and started it. And more than likely, I will refuse this. What did you make of America Ferreira's monologue speech? I feel like it was a little too much. It was coming through anyways. Showed don't tell? Yeah, yeah, maybe. And that might be one of the reasons why guys are mad about it, because there's two overt. I didn't think her monologue speech was anti-male. It seemed to me that the point was that women treat other women badly. What did you think of Wolf Ferreira's performance as CEO of Mattel? I think it was genius. There was actually some complexity there. You didn't exactly know what he was thinking sometimes. I think he was confused. It seemed like he had his personal mission to like forward Barbie's life and to make sure she was empowered. He got defensive when she was confused and said, oh, I just thought the CEO would be a woman. And he was particularly incensed about the thought that his position, the CEO position, had to be a woman. And he mentioned there had been a woman just recently, like 10 years ago, who was a CEO. Second, he's the son of a mother. Okay. He is the nephew of an aunt. And then he said, some of my best friends are Jewish. Next topic. Ken tries so hard to get some love from Barbie, but there's no reciprocation ever. Tell us about Ken's desperate struggle to get Barbie's attention. Ken was frustrated if he reminded me of a 14-year-old kid. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. The girls developed quicker. They're more social. They're more worldly. And obviously, homerons are raging and he's trying to do everything to get her attention. She's got nothing. Nothing. He's got no game whatsoever. And so most guys would be able to identify. For sure. With that Ken. Like, you got nothing, buddy. Keep trying. Nothing's gonna happen. And he's very jealous of the other Ken's. Why don't they just give up? They look, these girls are not interested. Fine. Whatever. Let's go camping. Let's go beach. Horses. There was a horse theme. I think there was some confusion by Ken that horses reflected some kind of masculinity. Tell us about the horses. Well, I think horses do in some way represent masculinity. In what way? Kind of an old west cowboy way. Okay. Maybe that's just America or South America as well. Who knows? The rancher. The cowboy. The guy. Who doesn't watch Yellowstone, you know? And Mount Rushmore, he had changed into horses. Oh, yeah. When Ken returned from the real world. You know, when he came back, he changed Mount Rushmore, which I forgot was on, I think, women to horses. That's right. Another reference to the movie is when Ken and Gives Barbie two choices. Weird Barbie says the Barbie have two choices. High heels are a broken stock. And she says, I'll take high heels. She said, no, no. And do you know what movie that's from? The Matrix. Morpheus says, to Neo, blue pill, red pill. And I think the red pill takes you to the rabbit hole. Blue pill sends you back to the Matrix. When Ken returns to Barbie land from the real world, what was the first thing that he did? Ken said, this is my Mojo dojo casa house. Oh, I love that. Tell us about the Mojo dojo. Well, whatever. Is him and his buddies hanging out. They're drinking beer. He's wearing a fur coat. People are pumping iron. The women are now subservient. Someone who was a physicist is now bringing Ken beers. And massaging his feet. Yeah, totally thing. And I don't understand why did they somehow succumb to this subservient role on the back and call of Ken's? Because Ken came to the real world and he saw the patriarchy. But why would the girls fall into this trap? There's probably an argument to say that that's a bit of a plot gap, maybe. You know, like how do you do it? Here's the answer. Ken came to the real world. Like the world we live in, you and I. And he saw the patriarchy. He was able to take that energy back and apply it in a world that wasn't expecting it. He was able to kind of make that happen. So that's the way that I see it. Darren, I end each episode with a note of optimism. What are you optimistic about, Israel's Spruby? I'm optimistic about the state of male and female relationships and human relations in general. I think the movie folks funnets themselves. And it seems empowering for some. And I like the fact that there is some energy around it. And I like the performances by everybody who's great. Thanks to Sophia, Kay, Debbie, and Darren for joining us today. If you missed last week's show, check it out. The topic was, is General Francisco Franco still dead? Our speaker was Michael Reed, the author of Spain, the trials and triumphs of a modern European country. Spain had an election last month. And we learned about the implications of a near tie in that election. And what it means going forward for both Spain and Europe. The issues in Spain should be familiar to an American audience, too much immigration, abortion rights, and should the region of Catalonia be an independent nation. I now want to make a plug for next week's show. The topic will be the movie Oppenheimer. Our speaker will be Jeremy Bernstein, who is a former physics colleague of Oppenheimer at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. And the author of the book, Oppenheimer, Portrait of an Enigma. I hope to learn about the scientific and engineering challenges for building the atomic bomb. And what it was like working directly with Oppenheimer. I found the movie entertaining, but they didn't answer the big questions related to the bomb's development. We will also be joined again by our movie critic, Darren Schwartz. You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website, What Happens Next in 6 Minutes.com. Please subscribe to our weekly emails and follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining me. Goodbye.