Saw Barbie. More horse themed than I expected
the thing that gets me about about barbie is that barbie land wasn’t even purposefully a matriarchy, barbie land came about because of the way little girls were playing with their barbies, it wasn’t created by mattel it was created by the people using the toys, so the fact that the barbies ignored the ken’s and had girls night every night wasn’t because they had some bias against him, it was just an accurate depiction of how kids play with barbies. I had some ken dolls as a child and they were essential to the plot in the sense that of course my barbie has a boyfriend because that represented the world i saw around me, but also he didn’t have any purpose in my dream world because i was only interested in what the girls were doing because they represented me and how i wanted to be, I wanted girls night every night I wanted the girls to be president and austronauts and not because of some inherent feminist idea but because I was a girl and I wasn’t thinking about boys, ken was an accessory. this movie wasn’t made to change the world but it showed a different perspective than what we usually see which I thought was fun. Men don’t have to be the centre of all our stories and its not even because we hate them, sometimes we’re just not thinking about them
Allan acknowledges the narrators voice, saying that he’s confused about how there’s only one Allan. This means he hears the narrator and understands what she says.
Later in the movie, when Barbie is crying about how she isn’t pretty anymore, the narrator cuts in to say as a note to the movie creators that Margot Robbie was probably not the best casting choice to make that point. Allan, able to hear and understand the creators voice must have heard this and therefore must know that he is in a movie.
When he is attempting to escape barbieland, Allan pulls a bunch of fighting moves out of nowhere, fighting off several Kens despite the Kens being the stereotype of a strong atheletic guy and Allan being Micheal Cera. It is my hypothesis that this power and strength comes from Allan being aware he is in a movie and therefore, like in a lucid dream, able to manipulate his reality in order to pull off feats like taking on five Kens at once (in a fight). In this essay I will-
animentality