By Michelle Woll, maw267@uakron.edu
Barbies has been considered one of the most popular kid toys ever since it first debuted on March 9th, 1959, and ever since then, Barbie has extended into several different games, TV shows, and movies. The latest Barbie movie was released on July 21, 2023, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken. In this movie, we are introduced to Barbie Land, a seemingly perfect place where every day is amazing. Barbie’s life has been perfect so far, but we see at a party that she randomly begins to have thoughts of death, which leads to an existential crisis. Since Barbieland is supposed to be a perfect world, having thoughts about death is certainly not normal. She then gets told that she has formed an emotional connection with a human that played with her, which is the reason why Barbie is starting to emotionally change, hence why she starts to think about death. She’s told she must travel to the human world to fix this and to be able to understand herself and discover her true purpose.
Once she and Ken are in the real world, they both realize that it’s not what either of them thought it would be like. Barbie had pictured the real world similar to Barbieland, perfect, women in charge, and everyone loving Barbie. However, she soon realizes that it’s quite the opposite, where men are the main ones in charge and have much more control over everything compared to Barbieland. This causes Ken to favor the real world, and he tries to bring patriarchy back to Barbieland, in which he succeeds, and he transforms Barbieland into Kendom. Now with Barbieland being turned upside down, Barbie is forced to try and fix it while struggling with her new emotions and view of the world.
This movie explores the themes of breaking societal stereotypes, the purpose of life, equality, and the struggles of being a woman. It's made about 1.4 billion dollars so far, which in my opinion is well deserved. It’s a great story, and if you haven’t seen it yet, then I most definitely recommend watching it.
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