One of the greatest joys of Gerwig’s Barbie is watching the beloved director successfully tell another moving female coming-of-age story without having her distinctive style tapered by excessive studio notes.
In between using Barbies and Kens to satirize our culture’s ever-present anxiety surrounding gender norms, Gerwig and Baumbach also have a blast writing gags for some of the weirdest characters in Barbie history.
UGLY HISTORY
The Dark Side of Barbie: Crime, Racial Issues, and Rampant Sexism
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie cleverly sends up some of the Mattel doll’s many, many controversies — but not all of them
TOWARD THE END of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, our titular heroine’s (Margot Robbie) journey culminates in the arrival of an unexpected guest: Her creator, the late Ruth Handler (played by Rhea Perlman).
Having just spent two hours confronting the reality that Barbies didn’t actually solve all inequality and are, in fact, workshopped by a bunch of guys sitting atop a phallic skyscraper, Barbie is incredulous to learn that a woman was her creator all those years ago.
“I am Mattel,” Ruth proclaims proudly.
Then comes the kicker: “At least, until the IRS got to me.”
In a movie where Barbie and Ken dolls can enter the real world as life-sized versions of themselves, the sheer number of jabs that co-writers Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are able to make at Mattel feel even more fantastical.
Barbie might be the latest in a tidal wave of IP-driven blockbusters, but no other brand at the center of this trend comes close in terms of cultural prevalence or controversy. Barbies have been omnipresent in generations of childhoods, with over a billion dolls sold since they hit the scene in 1959, but the older you get, the more fraught conversations surrounding the brand’s legacy become. Barbie can now be “every woman,” but does that really account for years of pushback? We’ve all heard the criticisms about the dolls’ impossibly tiny waists and inescapable association with a narrow, hyperfeminine, blonde ideal of womanhood. But Barbie’s actual history happens to be complicated and significantly more bizarre than pop culture would suggest.
As the Barbie movie coyly points out in its opening moments — a shot-for-shot reimagining of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s “Dawn of Man” sequence — the doll represented something utterly new when she stepped onto the scene in the late 1950s.
“I am Mattel,” Ruth proclaims proudly.
Then comes the kicker: “At least, until the IRS got to me.”
In a movie where Barbie and Ken dolls can enter the real world as life-sized versions of themselves, the sheer number of jabs that co-writers Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are able to make at Mattel feel even more fantastical.
Barbie might be the latest in a tidal wave of IP-driven blockbusters, but no other brand at the center of this trend comes close in terms of cultural prevalence or controversy. Barbies have been omnipresent in generations of childhoods, with over a billion dolls sold since they hit the scene in 1959, but the older you get, the more fraught conversations surrounding the brand’s legacy become. Barbie can now be “every woman,” but does that really account for years of pushback? We’ve all heard the criticisms about the dolls’ impossibly tiny waists and inescapable association with a narrow, hyperfeminine, blonde ideal of womanhood. But Barbie’s actual history happens to be complicated and significantly more bizarre than pop culture would suggest.
As the Barbie movie coyly points out in its opening moments — a shot-for-shot reimagining of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s “Dawn of Man” sequence — the doll represented something utterly new when she stepped onto the scene in the late 1950s.
- Before, girls’ toy options were essentially limited to baby dolls and play-motherhood. But Barbie represented a different vision of white womanhood in line with rising American consumerism at the time.
- You didn’t just have to be a homemaker, you could also be a lady about town with oodles of fashionable clothes.
- You could even have boobs.
Handler famously came up with Barbie after noticing how her daughter Barbara and her friends were far more captivated by the adult paper dolls they saw in comic books.
- At the time, she was the executive vice president of Mattel, which had grown from a start-up in 1944 to America’s third-largest toy company. Yet when she pitched the idea of an adult doll to her husband and co-founder Elliot, he remained unconvinced that such a toy had mass market appeal.
- While exploring Germany, Handler and Barbara were stunned to discover Bild-Lilli, a fashionable, grown-up doll just like the one Handler had imagined.
- Armed with real-life proof that there was a place for Barbie in the toy world, she got to work on designs.
- In 1959, Barbie was finally unveiled to the public at the American International Toy Fair.
...Naturally, a NSFW doll backstory wouldn’t convince American parents to whip out their wallets, so Barbie was introduced as a “teen model” instead.
- The two dolls looked so similar that the manufacturer behind Lilli sued the Handlers in 1961, claiming that Mattel “falsely and misleadingly represented itself as having originated the design.”
- The company settled the case out of court and went on to buy the German doll’s copyright and patent rights in 1964.
- Lilli, we hardly knew ya!
As Handler’s godlike appearance at the end of the Barbie movie suggests, she was a trailblazer in her own right. Born the 10th child of working-class Polish-Jewish immigrants, she didn’t have nepotism or generational wealth to fall back on. Yet in a time when very few women held positions of power, she spearheaded her own company to achieve just that.
“Yes, it was Elliot’s designs,” she once said in an interview. “Yes, it was Elliot’s name. Yes, he was very much a part of it in my mind. But I actually started Mattel.”
Handler’s legacy persisted long after her death in 2002, but her actual creative control of Barbie was cut short in the early Seventies. .."
READ MORE > Rolling Stone“Yes, it was Elliot’s designs,” she once said in an interview. “Yes, it was Elliot’s name. Yes, he was very much a part of it in my mind. But I actually started Mattel.”
Handler’s legacy persisted long after her death in 2002, but her actual creative control of Barbie was cut short in the early Seventies. .."
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