Barbie is the best thing that has ever been written about incels

Every night is girl's night. Until...

BARBIE SPOILERS.

I hadn’t given much thought to seeing the Barbie movie until I saw an article from FOX News that complained that Barbie spewed “man-hating woke propaganda” that was full of lesbian, gay and transgender character stories. Now that—THAT is marketing that you cannot buy.

So, I was eager to see Barbie—and take in all of the man-hating, gay woke propaganda that I could in one afternoon. The film opens in BarbieLand—an idyllic, plastic, pink-clad landscape where Barbie lives in her dream house, while Ken is around, and very infatuated with Barbie, he doesn’t get in the way much and she doesn’t pay him much mind (much to his chagrin). Everything is wonderful—every night is Girl’s Night —until Barbie starts having sudden thoughts of death, and realising that she has cellulite. She finally visits “Weird Barbie”—a Barbie with chopped off hair and grim face paint, who had been played with a little bit too hard—to figure out what the fuck was going on when her feet flattened, and made her high heels uncomfortable.

As it turned out, things were afoul in the real world—so bad, that it had transmuted from a real girl to Barbie, thus opening a portal from the RealWorld to BarbieLand. Oh shit. Barbie has to go to the RealWorld and figure it out—which she imagines will be easy, because, after all, Barbie showed the world that women can be everything, so everything should be fine. So, she sets off—accompanied by Ken, who surprised her, much to her chagrin—he always gets in the way.

Once they arrive in Los Angeles—Malibu Beach, to be exact—Barbie immediately starts feeling uncomfortable with the amount of sexual harassment, while Ken is loving the amount of men he is seeing. Barbie is annoyed—she has a mission, and needs to find the girl who is playing with her. “Go find yourself.” Barbie needs to think.

On his way to finding himself, Ken finds the patriarchy—and he loves it. He discovers a world where men have all of the power—and it is 100 percent awesome, and not uncomfortable in the slightest. He dreams of driving big cars, and reads a lot about horses—which become his special interest. He gives up on Barbie—who has never given him much attention anyway—and decides to go back to BarbieLand with his new knowledge.

When Barbie returns to BarbieLand, she finds that Ken has gone full incel—and taken all of the other Kens with him. Barbies are now serving them “brewskis” His faux-mink robe feels like an obvious homage to the QANON Shaman (although I am the only one in my group of five who saw this) and specific references to “blond fragility” felt like a way to reference white male fragility without coming under the fire of the culture wars.

It is easy to see this as a film about female empowerment—she is everything, he is just Ken, after all—but really, it is about how this model is no longer serving any of us. BarbieLand is an aspirational fantasy, where we can wear pink dresses and form-fitting bathing suits, but still run society because, really, why should one negate the other? Nevertheless, men are objects—not sexualised, but quite possibly ridiculed, and the impact of this shows. While Ken seems perfectly happy to keep following Barbie for as long as he is in Barbie land, the moment he is shown an alternative—the patriarchy—he latches on, and it doesn’t take long before he is spreading the message.

Some have criticised the film for being “feminism 101,” while others have said that it is “too critical of men.” Ben Shapiro even went so far as to burn Barbie dolls outside of the theatre, and liken his protest to those who “burn Qurans” to protest Islam—which is really just in its own category of criticism.

I saw the movie as a message to women—and really, anyone who wishes to dismantle the patriarchy or the oppression brought on by the gender binary. Ignoring and disempowering men—as innocent as it may be—is a slippery slope that leads to a desire to take back the power. On the one hand, some have pointed out that while Barbie simply ignores Ken during the era of BarbieLand, Ken’s vision of the “Kendom” openly subverts the Barbies, brainwashing Barbies into brewski-serving babes, taking over their dream houses and making them into mojo dojo casa houses.

But is this militant embrace of masculine energy so different from our feminist rage? We often have violent fantasies, and while we typically have enough fear and humility to not act them out, it doesn’t mean that we do not fantasise about a world where we rebalance the scales of equality by tipping it in the other direction. This is where I feel that the critiques of “misandry” and “overuse of the word patriarchy” fall short—the film is just as critical of the way that feminism and empowerment have been metabolised as it is critical of the hyper masculine world that we are forced to live in, and that is where it’s true brilliance lies. BarbieLand is not the answer, and neither is the Kendom—but as we seek balance, we are forced to harrowing extremes that serve no one.

Some have frowned that while Ken has a clear narrative arch, Barbie’s role is picking up the pieces, but isn’t that the point? As women living under patriarchy, we are so often reacting towards and dancing around men for our literal survival that we do not get to live stories of our own outside of that. Our narrative arch is one of empowerment that we can do “anything a man can do,” our accomplishments forever adorned with our own internalised sexism. Even our sexual desires are conceptualised within the framework of the male gaze. Some have complained that the film does not have a clear “message,” but the point of art is not to have a message—it is to be a mirror, reflecting something back at us.

Besides, Barbie actually has a beautiful narrative arch—where she was once content with living simply as someone’s idea, and not imagining anything else, she realises that she no longer wants to live like this. While she recognises that it might be fulfilling for the other barbies, she wants to be the one creating the ideas, rather than the one who simply embodies someone else’s idea. Isn’t this the most powerful message of all? It is an admission that “stereotypical” Barbie no longer has a place in our world—and rather than discontinuing her, or forcing her back into the box, she is given the opportunity to evolve and choose her own adventure. She is no longer perfect, and will likely make many mistakes as a human—but isn’t that the point?