Patriarchy does damage to us all, and Barbie (2023, dir. Greta Gerwig) clearly depicts that.
We went to see Greta Gerwig’s Barbie at the weekend and I was honestly surprised by how much I engaged with it — it’s a fun, entertaining flick, but where it really took me by surprise is in the three-dimensionality and nuance it applied to the male-female divide in the film, and especially the care it extends to its male characters.
As a gay man and especially as a trans one, I’m often left a little cold when it comes to some films’ explorations of gender dynamics — they often end up simplifying gender roles to a simple binary where men and women exist as homogenous blocks of society, assuming all men are masculine, all women are feminine, and assuming that all of them are cis and straight.
Barbie is refreshing for a few reasons — there aren’t many films where the titular female character proudly proclaims she hasn’t got a vagina — but one thing that really stood out to me was the variety in the male characters and the way that the film really criticises patriarchy whilst realising the ways in which patriarchy harms men in similar ways that it does women.
I honestly felt pretty seen and reflected in the character of Allan, who exists very much outside the expectations the cishet Kens project onto one another, and although the film doesn’t deeply explore queer relationships beyond the blatant gay vibes between Barbie and Gloria, it’s really unusual to see so many queer-coded characters in a film like this, particularly so many male ones.
Ken is kissed on the cheeks by his fellow Kens; there are multiple Kens with queer vibes; two of the businessmen hold hands as they run after Barbie. In general, the film doesn’t hold its male characters to the same stringent expectations of cishet masculinity so many films do — and there’s an inherent play with every male character’s gender in this film.
You get the sense watching it that part of the wonder of the world is that it exists in the minds of the kids playing with it, that it’s not yet tainted by the often obsessive focus many cishet adults have with binary gender roles.
Especially as a kid growing up, knowing I was different, knowing that I didn’t conform as certain adults wanted me to with strict gender roles as imposed on girls — or even boys — I was always aware that sometimes I or other kids would be playing with dolls and action figures, and adults would interrupt effectively to panic that we weren’t being strict enough about those toys’ imaginary genders.
The plot as it plays out in Barbie, larger than life as it is, feels similar to that process, funnily enough.
At the end of Barbie (2023, dir. Greta Gerwig), Barbie (Margot Robbie) apologises to Ken (Ryan Gosling) — she didn’t need to. She wasn’t asked to.
But she realised how alone and isolated he felt without her to tether his identity to, how at-sea he was, how he’d brought the patriarchal system back to Barbieland and desperately tried to establish it out of a desire to bring some meaning into his life…
And he didn’t even like it.
He had brought patriarchy to Barbieland and found that it didn’t truly fulfil him — there weren’t as many horses as he hoped for, he wears a fur coat as a status symbol rather than because he truly likes it, and it’s honestly a lot of work and posturing.
Barbie apologises to Ken because she feels compassion for his position: at the end of the film, he’s at the beginning of the journey she’s just at the end of.
Throughout the course of the film, Barbie has slowly realised the extent to which she feels imprisoned by expectations of perfect femininity, the limitations placed on her by her need to continuously be an impeccable example of what it is to be a woman — a woman frozen in youthful beauty, perfect in every way, with no allowance for individuality, for flaw, for interiority, for identity beyond her gender.
Ken is at the beginning of this journey himself. In the absence of Barbie, he will have to explore what truly makes him himself, beyond his mantle of Stereotypical Ken — he’s more than his clothes, his appearance, his role of beach. What does he want, beyond what Barbie wants? What does he like, beyond what Barbie likes? What is he, except for Barbie’s mirror? What is he, when she’s not there?
What’s truly refreshing about this moment is that while Ken interprets her initial extension of kindness and compassion to him as a romantic overture, she puts this down immediately, and she’s not painted as a villain or as somehow cruel for not wanting to date Ken, and not desiring a relationship with him.
How many movies demand that women go on dates with or enter relationships with cis men just to “be nice”? To “give him a chance”?
Ken’s behaviour towards Barbie and to the women of Barbieland is explicitly called out by Gloria, showing that he’s been self-centred and controlling — Barbie can extend kindness and compassion to Ken, understanding that he acted like that out of desperation and out of his own lack of identity, while still not being the one to pick up the pieces.
It’s Ken that brings patriarchy back to Barbieland — when we see him exposed to cis masculinity in the Real World, the film very adeptly shows us the performance and tools associated with cis masculinity. We see men at the gym, men commanding and domineering over women, cops on horseback, sunglasses, fur coats, leather jackets.
None of these individual things are inherently bad (except for cops, obviously), but they are each used as tools in certain performances of cisgender and broadly straight masculinity.
One of the reasons that certain right-wingers are so upset about Barbie is because it proposes that masculinity is just as much a performance and a set of optional behaviours as femininity is, that masculinity is not rigidly attached to manhood (nor femininity to womanhood) — when the Kens embrace patriarchy, they embrace certain aspects of masculinity as ways of demonstrating and affirming their power, not only over the Barbies of Barbieland, but also over each other.
Lifting weights or asking Barbies to get beers for them isn’t wholly about the enjoyment of the exercise or even the beers, but about who can lift the most weights, whose Barbie is most submissive to him, who is the coolest about drinking their beer.
Look at Ken’s clothes as an example — up until this point in the film, all of Ken’s wardrobe has been based on his relationship with Barbie. His own beach attire has been designed to complement and match any outfit Barbie might wear, as well as to allow him to fit in with the other Kens with their matching K logos, all of his travelling outfits are matched to Barbie’s, and then when they go through the thrift shop together, his cowboy outfit is made to go with hers.
But his fur coat look is effectively a copy of what he saw the first unique man he saw in the Real World — it’s no expression of his own feelings, but just him mimicking a man that stood out in the hopes that doing so will give him the same power and influence.
In the dance scene, he’s in a matching uniform with the other Kens — even in the party, his jump suit with its K doesn’t exactly mark him as unique, because the other Kens are Kens too.
When Ken starts dressing up with the fur coat and shades, or when he wears his lacrosse outfit with the open vest and black fringe, these pieces are just costumes he wears to make him stand out from the other Kens, and hopefully give him more authority over them.
The same might be said of Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House — Barbie’s Dreamhouse, at the very least, has the word “dream” in its title, representing the dream of her being a modern woman, single and fulfilled, owning her own things, doing every job she can dream of, without the input or approval of a man, a father, a husband.
Ken has no dream beyond Barbie’s approval, and unlike her, he cannot conceive of one: at the very least, Mojo Dojo Casa House is fun to say.
Even the things he’s filled the house with — fridges of beer, frames full of weights, a TV constantly running on films he has no interest in watching — don’t reflect anything but his desire to be the opposite of Barbie, and to write over everything that made her house hers.
And yet when pressed, he crumples. He’s done all this to control Barbieland and by extension to control Barbie, which he doesn’t truly want to do either — all he really wants is for Barbie to care about him, and he can’t force that.
By his own admission, part of the real appeal of patriarchy was that he’d be able to play with horses, one of the few things except for Barbie himself that Ken shows genuine interest or investment in, and he’s disappointed at how little they play a part.
It’s not Barbie’s fault that Ken doesn’t feel served or fulfilled by patriarchy: Barbie is her own woman, and it’s up to Ken to find his own way. Part of the problem of patriarchy in the Real World is the extent to which men’s feelings are made women’s problems, so much so that women don’t have the time to attend to their own independence.
In the meantime, Barbie doesn’t owe him a relationship, doesn’t owe him her time to teach this all to him when he needs to go on this journey of self-discovery for himself.
The film is remarkably nuanced in its exploration of patriarchy and the way that Ken feels hemmed in and trapped by it — not as much as Barbie does, but in similar, parallel ways.
Ken, in the first half of the film, is constantly insecure, and spends all his time following Barbie around and getting on her nerves with how desperate and demanding he is for her attention — he fights with the other Kens, he acts like a dick to them. In the second half, his focus is primarily on demonstrating his authority to the other Kens and getting them to act according to his example, in the hopes of using that newfound authority to draw Barbie to him.
Throughout, he constantly quarrels with and snipes at other Kens — with Tourist Ken (Simu Liu) especially — because they threaten his relationship with Barbie, and therefore his standing in the matriarchy of Barbieland, but even when a patriarchy is established there, his position remains insecure, and still he exchanges barbs with the other Kens, trying to control them, based on the attention they’re given by the Barbies.
And yet the Kens do not exist wholly within the framework of cisgender masculinity that exists in the Real World.
When Ken is looked at with sexual desire by passing men on their arrival in California, he doesn’t register it as a threat or with any particular insecurity — and why should he? The Kens are very free in their physical affection with one another, touching each other constantly without concern that it should emasculate them, two of them even kissing Ken on both cheeks during the big black-clad dance number.
With that said, the reason that Allan, Sugar Daddy Ken, and Earring Magic Ken don’t fit in with the other Kens is largely because they’re simply too queer — they don’t fit within the rigid framework of masculinity imposed by Stereotypical Ken on Barbieland even when it’s not quite as harsh as the version that exists in the Real World.
They don’t want to perform masculinity with a view of enacting patriarchal control over the Barbies, or want patriarchal control at all. They have their own identities that they’re far more confident in because they’re rejects from Barbieland in the first place, and Allan?
Well.
Allan actually has quite a lot in common with Stereotypical Ken — just as Ken exists only to be a companion and accessory piece to Barbie, Allan exists to be a companion and accessory piece to… Ken. Who fits in Ken’s clothes, even.
Is there any wonder he’s had time to develop his own identity, and to think for himself what he wants of life and masculinity, when Ken has never considered Allan as integral a part of his identity as Ken is supposed to be of his?
Allan and Sugar Daddy Ken particularly don’t match up with the example set by the other Kens — Allan doesn’t have the chiselled and broad physiques the other Kens do, doesn’t posture or peacock himself with the same masculine confidence and is instead far more retiring; Sugar Daddy Ken is twenty years older than many of the other Kens and Barbies, and fussing over his little dog isn’t exactly a very masculine example; Earring Magic Ken is, of course, himself a gay icon, and although he has the same chiselled physique and rugged good looks, he represents a wholly different dream and ideal to many of the other Kens.
Allan is desperate to escape the corrupted Kenland because it’s so stifling — he has no interest in subjugating any of the Barbies or fighting with the Kens to show how masculine or impressive he is, and he fights the other Kens as his last resort to enable his escape.
What a mood Allan is.
I came away from Barbie honestly surprised by how nuanced its take on masculinity and femininity was, and indeed, on the dynamics between men and women — I can understand the instinct and desire that cruel men should be punished for their parts in enforcing patriarchy, but I appreciated the balance to Barbie’s plot.
Magic Earring Ken, Sugar Daddy Ken, and Allan are very clearly shown as existing outside of the desire to enforce the patriarchy and the toxic masculinity that enables and props up its framework, unable to fit into it if they tried, and it’s also shown that various of the other Kens are dissatisfied with their position in the patriarchy too. They just want to have fun with each other and the other Barbies — while the harm they experience from the patriarchy is not depicted as equal to that which the Barbies experience, given that they’re not expected to be subjugated in the same way, it’s made clear to the viewer that the power they wield over them is a double-edged sword.
The desperation to show their power over Barbies and each other is stressful and difficult for them, and they hate the stress of running absolutely everything in Barbieland — it’s easy to divide and conquer where the Kens are concerned because the new system of power has forced divisions between almost all of their friendships.
It would have been so terribly easy for the film to effectively brand Ken as a controlling, abusive incel, the other Kens falling in line with his example, and to have him horribly punished at the end.
What the film did for him and all the other Kens in the film was far more nuanced, and far more kind — Barbie feels great compassion for Ken even after all he’s done to her, but the other Barbies are also pretty nice to the Kens after everything, barring the one jab about only letting them have one Supreme Court Justice.
After countless films by cisgender people about the “truth” of men and women that basically amounts to ideas of the male and female sexes as immutable burdens that simply force men and women to torture or take advantage of each other — this latter even frequently being shown as the key to a “successful” marriage — I can’t even begin to say what a breath of fresh air Barbie was.
Not only is this a film that doesn’t feel a bit hostile to the idea of a queer audience, but it’s also one that implicitly includes queer people and our approaches to gender and gendered experience, realising that the patriarchal power structure isn’t as simple as men being superior to women, but has more complexity to it, is more wide-ranging than that.
Men and women can exist independently of one another, defining themselves by their individual desires and wants and passions rather than the trappings of their gender or what marks them as a “good” or “successful” man or woman; masculinity and femininity are presented as things to explore and enjoy, but not necessarily to be forced into exhibiting perfectly; heterosexual relationships between men and women are clearly shown as options in life, but by no means are they compulsory, and in fact, the societal expectation that any man/woman dynamic must be romantic is shown to be quite harmful.
No wonder the conservatives are so up in arms about it. It threatens their whole way of life.
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