Barbie: Why Some Fans Are Bashing The Film's Take On Ken & The Patriarchy

Contains spoilers for "Barbie"

Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" movie was never going to arrive quietly. Its marketing campaign has basically dominated the collective consciousness as the world waited for the film to actually hit theaters — and when it did, it sparked controversy over the fact that Gerwig committed the crime of making an audaciously feminist movie based on a doll for little girls. Fox News declared that the movie is "anti-man," and Senator Ted Cruz threw a fit over the fact that a fake map in the movie depicted a disputed section of the South China Sea, in his opinion. (As other publications already have, it's worth noting here that the map also says England and Asia are right next to each other, and at least one country is wearing a crown.)

All of this is to say that, in the wake of a movie where Margot Robbie's Barbie has to topple a mutinous, hastily-formed patriarchy led by Ken (Ryan Gosling), men are not okay. They're pretty mad about the whole thing, actually. Specifically, they're mad about a funny movie about a toy crafted by one of the best filmmakers working today. Over on Reddit, some fans took issue with Gerwig's vision of Barbie on an official discussion thread; as u/agysykedyke wrote, "Comedy was pretty good and Ryan Gosling carried hard, however the message feels extremely confused here. The film very obviously tries to express topics such as feminism, patriarchy, power, and gender roles, however I feel like the way these themes are addressed is strange."

The Redditor goes on to point out that, when Ken turns Barbie Land into his own personal Kendom and brainwashes the remaining Barbies into becoming subservient, Barbie has to fix it — and what that means is the Kens go back to being less powerful than the Barbies. "Why do they even do this?" they ask. "The whole point of feminism is for women to be equal to men, not to create a female dominated society where the Kens are goofy muscleheads who can't do anything. If Barbie land is just the female version of Ken's kingdom then why does the show portray one as right and the other as wrong? Why not settle for something equal? I know it is supposed to mirror real life and reverse the gender roles on feminism movements, but still I feel like this was [sic] unessesary."

The Redditor concludes that while they enjoyed the movie, they thought it leaned too heavily into social commentary and didn't like that it rails against the patriarchy — though, if you've seen "Barbie," it feels almost impossible to untangle the movie from its fight against the patriarchy. Redditor u/jwkwon306 expressed a similar sentiment, saying, "The message of empowering women was SO INCREDIBLY on the nose and preachy that I started to think it was a satire of a satire. Perhaps I gave Gerwig and [co-writer Noah] Baumbach too much credit because even when analyzed two levels deep the message is still so unclear and confusing."

With all due respect to Reddit — a phrase that has, perhaps, never been written on the Internet before — Ken's complete inability to functionally understand what constitutes patriarchy is the joke. Upon learning in the real world that people will call him "sir" and just basically let him do whatever he wants, Ken, who is incredibly insecure about being "just Ken" in Barbie's shadow, takes this idea and bastardizes it. Kendom isn't "the patriarchy," aside from the fact that Nobel Prize-winning Barbies are relegated to serving "brewski beers" to their respective Kens. Kendom is a cowboy-style sham of a societal construct that mostly centers around TV screens playing endless footage of horses.

In fact, when Barbie reclaims her home and confronts a distraught Ken, he admits that not only did he really not like running his Kendom, but he lost interest in patriarchy all together when he realized it wasn't actually about horses. So what's the point of all of this? The point is that, as we strive for true equality, the marginalized must be given control over the structures of power. In Barbie Land, the Barbies possess the power of the real world's patriarchy — and in the aftermath of Kendom, they agree that Kens should have as many rights as women do in the real world. 

"Barbie" isn't for everybody, but sometimes, critiques are just simply in bad faith. For those who want to see Gerwig's candy-coated take on gender inequality, "Barbie" is in theaters now.