I wonder how so many people came up with the idea that Barbie is a bold project for the emancipation of women and the collective. After watching two hours of childish brochures and embarrassing commercials between amazement and boredom, I left the cinema, devastated, as the next group of infatuated people in pink entered the room. With the wish we had for this film. Warners has invested $100 million to promote a glittering cairn and is sure to get its money back.
So far nothing new under the sun. But now the madness begins: the strong identification that your target group lives with the product. They are identified as genuinely believing that filling the coffers of some plutocrats is a political and social revolution. Since the twentieth day, gays in Iran are no longer hanged, trans people are no longer discriminated against, we all choose pronouns and women all have positions of power (am I the director of this newspaper yet?). I read activists writing, “I’m crying, we made it.” And I remember the glorious Barbie Liberation Front boycott, where they broke into Mattel factories and exchanged GiJoes and Barbies voice chips. At Christmas in 1993, the blondes said, “I’ll kill you” and the mallards, “Take me shopping.”
Because until recently, being an activist was incompatible with being a proud consumer of all the nonsense that came into vogue. When Lisa Simpson managed to create a smart and capable doll, Stacy Malibu countered with the same doll as always, but with a hat. And many girls bought it because “the hat is new”. Come on, new wave activists: same old shit, but the size of a picador’s hat.
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