I recently had the great pleasure of watching Greta Gerwig’s latest masterpiece starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Reynolds, unpacking the female experience in a satirical, comical, and, yet, very real way: Barbie. Barbie follows the story of Stereotypical Barbie, who lives in Barbieland, a utopia where Barbies are given all of the power and Kens are left to be an accessory. All of a sudden, Barbie starts to experience an existential crisis when the girl “playing with her” in the Real World also experiences an existential crisis. She eventually goes to the real world to fix the issue by finding the person playing with her, and learns about how women are treated in the Real World. Most importantly, she realizes what women in the real world think of her: how her idea that Barbie solved all women’s issues with their diversity was incorrect, and how women in the Real World see her instead as an unattainable and unrealistic expectation. While Barbie is figuring all of this out, Ken has learned about patriarchy, and decides to reweave the social fabric of Barbieland into a patriarchal society like he had seen in the Real World. Eventually, Barbie returns and sorts everything out, but the movie is packed with plot that I will leave you to watch by yourself.
I was startled by the similarities between Ken’s patriarchal takeover and the French Revolution as written by Dickens. Bookpacking includes going to locations and places of interest to the books we are reading ie. Les Miserables and Tale of Two Cities. However, I would say that the bookpacking adventures extend beyond the scope of seminars or class explorations. Seeing similarities to our books, literary or historical, in other forms of media or in other landmarks has added to the bookpacking experience as well. While Barbie is an experience I could have anywhere in the world, seeing it with my friends from this class, with the deep knowledge and awareness of Dickens and A Tale of Two Cities, was extraordinary. My bookpacking did not stop with the Place de la Concorde, and the revolution did not stop with Robespierre. The notion of western revolutions extended throughout this movie as well, and I saw almost perfect parallels between Barbie and our literary portrayals of the French Revolution(s). While the movie itself was far from radical, I think the plot itself mirrors that of Revolution like we study.
Through reading A Tale of Two Cities, my understanding of the French Revolution has much increased; but at the same time, the French Revolution was, at its core, people fighting for rights they didn’t have before. The sans-culottes having little political and social power is paralleled in the lack of agency for Kens in Barbieland. Obviously, this movie wasn’t made showing brutal beheadings of Barbies or violent revolution, but Ken’s patriarchal “revolution” is the response to his lack of power in Barbieland combined with him learning about the power men have in the Real World. Similarly, the French Revolution is precipitated by the lack of power the French citizenry have in their society, combined with the knowledge that they could violently reform in the way that the American Revolution happened. (This story is much, much more complex than this: I am merely drawing parallels between the ideas of Western Revolution as seen in America, France, and other Western countries, and the media that is created in turn.)
The concept of the revolution devouring itself was mirrored in Barbie as well. The phenomenon of the revolution destroying itself from the inside played out in France, Russia, China, and more, and Barbieland was no different. Again, revolution followed by brutal repression and violence was not the aim of this movie, and I don’t mean to lessen the impact of these events. However, on a lighter scale, the Kens ultimately destroy each other with a seed of doubt planted by the Barbies. If anyone has been in the situation of experiencing an unsolicited serenade, you will understand the fragile masculinity so easily shattered behind their actions. The Barbies play off of this, turning the Kens on each other, and thus the revolution is devoured.
Luckily, the Kens discover their “worth” and no Reign of Terror follows, but the idea of the leaders of the revolution being the ultimate end of the revolution is mirrored almost exactly in this film about dolls. Our class discussion really made me think about this, and I wrote my first essay on this: the circularity of time and how it forces the circularity of narrative, whether fictional or not. Barbie is obviously not a true story, and yet Gerwig’s portrayal of the rise of Kendom in place of Barbieland was startlingly similar to the way that the French Revolution began and ended. Ultimately, the Barbies regain control, and things return to as they were before, not too different from the return to monarchy in early 19th century France.
Tower dedicated to Napoleon in Place Vendome
This movie was meaningful to me in ways that were much bigger than the plot progression similarities to revolutions across the world, but I think that this was one of the things that stood out to me as I watched it. Gerwig managed to fit so much plot and information and morals into a 2 hour period, and I am still gathering my thoughts about it. The day we saw it was Thursday, July 27. The exploration that day had followed the path that the tumbrils took while carting Conciergerie prisoners to the Place de la Revolution, which was a shocking and haunting walk despite the throngs of tourists along the Louvre. Having had this adventure prior to seeing the movie was, I think, one of the reasons why the parallels were not lost on me. Our walk that day had followed the worst of the social upheaval that the revolution brought, the brief stint of Napoleon’s imperial rule, and the ultimate return to monarchical rule. The idea was to go to see Barbie to get out of the rain and lighten up a bit. And while this goal was achieved, the movie presented very real, very tangible ideas about revolution, intent and impact, circular time, women’s rights, patriarchy, the humanity in all of us, and so much more that should not be forgotten in the millennial humor and pink cartoon embellishments. Watching this movie was amazing not only because I have wanted to see it for so long, but because of the opportune timing in our bookpacking that I was able to watch it. I would say it added to my understanding of revolution, and added to my understanding of how both literature and history repeat themselves, from 1789 to 1911 to 2023.