The embrace of “Barbie” at this year’s People’s Choice Awards — where it won sixaccolades, including movie of the year — is testament to one fact: Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie and the cast have created a work that speaks to everybody, not just to women and the doll-owning young girls they used to be.
A film doesn’t rack up $1.44 billion, becoming the year’s No. 1 box office champ and ranking 14th on the all-time grosses list, by appealing to a niche audience of moppets with a jones for putting outfits on plastic figurines. You can’t cop a nomination for best picture (only the first People’s Choice winner to do so in over 25 years) with a mere Barbie-boomer nostalgia trip.
Ryan Gosling recently presented a feature film medallion to Gerwig and spoke about how her masterful direction and script connected with global audiences. “It was clear from the very first frame,” he said. “It was clear there was an author there, that it was personal. It was coming through every moment. And it not only made so many of us fall in love with the form again, it made countless young people fall in love with cinema for the very first time.”
Indeed, a film must have a story and characters for every moviegoer, regardless of gender, age, race or class. That’s exactly what “Barbie” has done.
“You, the audience, made ‘Barbie’ a global cultural phenomenon,” said America Ferrera in accepting her People’s Choice Award for movie performance of the year on Sunday. “It resonated with you … It made you feel seen, or helped you see someone else in your life, whether it was your mom or the resident Ken in your life.”
Speaking of Ken: Gosling shared Ferrera’s sentiments in his praise for Gerwig, citing the film as being “created the old-fashioned way, by a director who was paying such close attention to the world and the people around her, that she was able to use her deep understanding of the language of cinema and its power to facilitate a global conversation that no one else could so perfectly articulate but her.”
“Barbie” is the latest in a long line of best picture winners and nominees that have gone to satirical extremes — with its imaginative costumes, pink-saturated production design, elaborate dance numbers and hilarious one-liners — to comment on, and even change, how we live and think.
Drop-kicking us out of ’50s slumber and Cold War terror, “Dr. Strangelove” dared to present the insanity of nuclear weapons as something that could make us literally laugh ourselves to death.
“Network” took television’s impact to a predatory extreme that soon became all too real, while “Get Out” manipulated horror movie tropes to snatch away the mask of self-righteous suburbia and reveal racism’s ugly, leering face beneath.
Most recently, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” blew up the multiverse to remind us that all individuals are composed of many different identities, each of which longs for love and respect. And “Parasite” set up a fantastical showdown between society’s haves and have-nots, whose secrets emerge from the basement to reveal the toxic lies of classism and snobbery.
So now here’s “Barbie,” with its fantastical fault lines between Barbie Land and the real world, where age-old repressions of patriarchy confront appealing fancies of matriarchy, and expose the toxic lies of sexism and bigotry.
But surprise! Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s screenplay embraces no simplistic, us-good-them-bad stance. Instead, it offers a vision of true human equality and ignites a chain of what-ifs in its viewers: What if every individual were to be prized rather than judged? What if we all had license to forge our own destiny? What if each person could be free to pursue their own Dream House, whatever it might consist of, and be permitted to live in harmony with the houses on either side?
Empathy is the ultimate secret ingredient in the film’s recipe for success across all demographics. While “Barbie” understands young girls’ passion for dressing up playthings as a gentle, positive part of growing up, male viewers are led to recognize the analogy with their own “toys” and Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House. Those “toys” are okay too, guys are assured, just as long as they don’t intrude on the obsessions of others.
Ferrera’s monologue on the difficulties of being a woman has become, justly, world-famous. Yet Gerwig and Baumbach are fully aware that shouldering the responsibilities of being human isn’t easy for anyone, whatever their gender. Sure, we’re all trying to become our own complete person; and sure, that road is never easy. “Barbie” is here to remind us that in that effort, we can all do better.
At the People’s Choice Awards, Ferrera called the movie “an invitation to all of us to embrace our full selves as we already are: uniquely, gloriously and perfectly human.” The fact that “Barbie” is aspirational, rather than judgmental, explains why millions have recognized that it isn’t just pretty in pink. It’s pretty smart, and pretty wise as well.
Incidentally, the previous People’s Choice Award for movie of the year to secure a best picture win in the same year was “Titanic.” So please step aside, Rose and Jack, and make room for Barbie and Ken. If not the queen and king of the world, they are the present-day rulers of everybody’s hearts.
