REVIEW | ‘Barbie’ and the metastases of enjoyment

I started my week by watching Barbie at 11am on Monday. I loved it. It is some wacky sh*t. I didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t read anything about it. I had only seen all the hype.

Stylised pop, fun, music, dance, singing, comedy and a classic learning-to-love-yourself narrative, with all our social, political, economic and identity issues laid bare for the peculiarities they are, inviting us to laugh at ourselves, reminding us how nice it is to be feeling human beings who can be kind to each other if we want.

Then there is also the branded element. Huge. Mattel is as much a character as anything and anyone else in this film. The evolution of Barbie and Barbie-adjacent products (Allan, played by Michael Cera, was my favourite, and Ryan Gosling as Ken is hilarious) is detailed throughout the film, poking fun at itself as a brand and as a corporate structure.

Is this all just very clever marketing? Capitalism doing what it does best, its chameleon nature allowing it to be whatever you want it to be? In this case a feel-good film about a product with a long and complicated history. It seems to be saying, hey, look at us, we’re all complicated and messed up, but I guess we can all be nice to each other and continue to make money. And in some ways, I guess, why not?

If it wasn’t for the disastrous inequality that is the underbelly of capitalism, I would be completely on board with this message. But for all its satirical punches at the patriarchy, the waves of feminism we have surfed and the apparent self-deprecating posture of a megabrand, it is unsettling because it is about product. It is hyping their brand.

But maybe our modern subjectivities are so bound up with products that it is ridiculous to think we can imagine ourselves outside that reality. It is both what is problematic about the movie and what I enjoyed about it. It seemed to be an honest statement. Yes, the world is tiring and confusing, and there is so much stuff at every level to worry about, can’t we take ourselves a little less seriously for a bit? Numb out on some candy-floss aesthetic while declaring we are aware that is what we are doing. Always got to be signalling in late capitalism. I’m aware, I’m aware. And now that I am aware, am I allowed to enjoy what I’m not supposed to enjoy?

All of a sudden Žižek’s book The Metastases of Enjoyment springs to mind. Is brand-sponsored film making a malignant growth on our leisure activities? Probably. But I still had a thoroughly lovely Monday morning.

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