Fenster writes:

Other than Whisky Prajer, who was hiding out in the cellar of this cavernous abandoned bloghouse, it is still pretty quiet here at Uncouth Reflections. That gave me some time to reflect on my post yesterday on Barbie, and here I reconsider, and possibly reverse, some of what I wrote yesterday.

It may seem odd to write a reconsideration after just one day’s time. But we live for better and worse in a Twitterized universe where all life can pass by in an instant. And, as I say, other than Prajer in the basement I have this whole place to myself, and you can get a fair amount of reflection done in a day if you are intentional about it.

Yesterday, I opted to eschew much consideration of the film as film, and so avoided for the most part auterurish questions of intent and aesthetics. The film is deservedly a springboard for mulling over the effect it is having on the funhouse mirror land that is our “culture”. But it is worth considering what is going on inside the contraption, even if that risks indulging in tricky questions of intent.

If you read yesterday’s post (and who hasn’t, really?) you will recall the gist of it, something I could have put in the lede instead of following my usual practice of multiple digressions.

But there I go again.

I felt that the bulk of the movie mirrored our confused state at present as regards sex and gender. But that, having simulated our confused state, the mandatory feminist conclusion could not work. There were too many balls in the air, too many social things that just don’t add up, for the film to credibly end on a you-go-girl note.

I said that was a failure, and posited an ending that I thought would have been better, and that maybe even the filmmakers might have preferred were they able to duck the requirement for a feel-good ending. I thought the feel-good ending they came up with was anything but, and said I would have preferred an ending in which both men and women come to grips with the pickles they are in, both separately and together, and resolve to work together on a shared better way. In that ending maybe Ken would get over his first rush of exhilaration having discovered his own gender in the real world, dropping the Andrew Tate bullshit after a time, and, with the prodding and lures of Barbie, coming to a place where his masculine self can reasonably, though not always giddily, benefit from a real relationship with a real woman. And vice versa, of course.

You know–the kind of answer that is hardly new, and that has served civilization rather well for a long time. Men willingly drop their beastly qualities, at least where women are concerned, in exchange of the pleasures of their company and the status derived from snagging a good one and siring a bunch of childen who can grow up to honor dad.

The female trade-off is similar but not exactly the male script in reverse. This because males and females are not mirror image opposites of one another as much as kissing cousins, with all those complications. Females defer to male power on the surface in exchange for holding their own kind of unique feminine power, plus the status gained by snagging a good one and mothering a bunch of children just because.

So that’s my happy enough ending. Get the fuck over the overriding narcissism of our age and find a 21st century version of the way things have generally been.

This is a Burkean conservative view, of course. But that’s kind of what I am. Try new things as you will but always keep in mind that certain patterns are longstanding for reasons, and deserve our respect.

Of course if you are not so inclined, and if you feel that the summum bonum is for women to take pride in their vaginas when visiting the gynecologist, good luck to ya. I think that inadequate, and that over time the sisters may agree, as they did in the movie before Barbie pulled a fast one.

Which brings me, after another set of digressions, to the reconsideration of the movie.

Here, I make the argument that the movie’s conclusion failed as a happy ending because a happy ending was not the intention. Barbie, as it turns out (at least until I change my mind) is a tragedy. My preferred ending was a better happy ending. But the conclusion supplied works perfectly well in terms of tragedy.

Whose tragedy? Well, The Tragedy of Barbie, I suppose. But tragedies have a way of rippling out to consume everything in their paths, in the manner of the conflagration of the world by fire that Edward Teller worried about in Oppenheimer. Many are the Shakespearean tragedies that end up with dead bodies everywhere, mostly because the main character could not see his critical flaw, and took everyone down with him. So while the play may be called The Tragedy of Barbie it is also the Tragedy of Ken, The Tragedy of Barbies, The Tragedy of Kens and the Tragedy of You and Me. Alan does fine, the lucky chap.

So let’s just drop our posturing and predispositions and try to take a look at what actually happens in the movie, so as to evaluate this claim to tragedy.

Most of the film’s inconsistencies are resolved when looking through a tragic lens. Ruth Handler adapted a sexpot German doll for the American market, a simple act that spun off in a million directions when it confronted the contradictory demands of the American “market”. Women were gaining their “liberation” over this period but, as the film suggests, that came at a price to both sexes.

Yes, Barbieland is a human contrivance and not real. But in the awkward vocabulary of the film Barbieland exists in a dynamic relationship with the real world. So if in that world female judges lose the thread of justice by overfeminizing the abstract realm of law (which happens in the film), this means something as the filmmakers see it. It is not just the action of silly toys.

First wave feminism. best captured on film by Jill Clayburgh in movies like It’s My Turn, assumed the fundamental compatability of men and women. Men should just be a little fairer and things will work out. But the world portrayed in Barbie is far harsher.

“Listen sisters we have struggled to gain power over men. You know as well as I do what will happen if we listen to the soft-hearted among us. Men will regain power over us. and that will not be a good thing. For every Alan there are a hundred Kens. each ready to establish dominion over us when given a chance. We cannot let this happen!”

But in return for that safety Barbies must live in Barbieland, where they hold power over emasculated males, can’t run a damn thing, and have their own relationships with one another shrunken down to “hi, Barbie!”

So Barbie and Ken visit the real world. Remember Barbie had no yearning to do so. She was happy (enough) in Barbieland and only agreed to visit the real world to cure deficiencies that were an impediment to life in Barbieland. It is curious, though not that strange when you think about it, that Ken was more willing to travel to parts unknown. just as he wants a sleepover and maybe even a kiss without knowing exactly why. That pesky y chromosome–hard to keep down when paired with x.

It should also come as no big surprise that it is Ken, not Barbie, that immediately gets what real life means. He returns to Barbieland in a state of intoxication about life’s possibilities as a man, with male power, and a dick. Oddly–or perhaps not so oddly–the Barbies get intoxicated in their own way. The interactions are sexist, I suppose, if you insist. But they are not unlike a different kind of “liberation” that boys and girls have felt for millennia when they come to grips, so to speak, with their natural equipment, and what it may mean for their personal and social power when dealing with the other sex or their own.

Barbie returns to a land permeated by testosterone and estrogen. Danger! It is here that we see her true character, and the arc of the tragedy is revealed. Ken took a bite of the apple. The other Barbies shared in that experience. But not our Barbie. She opts, fatefully, to stage a reactionary coup. She succeeds. Our Ken, and the rest of the Kens, are routed.

So Barbie has won. But what did she win? She realizes there was truth to Ken’s message of openness to life’s possibilities. But she is not “man enough” to go through the crucible. No, her path as tragic villain is clear: she defeats and humiliates the men, ditches the sisters in Barbieland she cajoled into the coup, hitches a ride with her new BFFs from the real world, gets a vagina and then proudly puts it to use seeing a gynecologist.

This is liberation? Return to Barbieland petrified by male power. Get your sisters to kill off the male threat. Leave them in Barbieland with their newly re-emasculated Kens. Run off to the real world where you can cash in on Ken’s risk taking. And then find yourself. “victorious” and “liberated”, in a doctor’s office.

After the appointment–what then? You can see her going back to the car to be with her new Best Friends Forever.

“Hi Best Friends Forever!”

And so we return to the beginning of the film. Barbie as monolith, a tragic edifice, poisoner of life.