The Daily - Can Barbie Be Rebranded as a Feminist Icon?

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

“Barbie” is premiering this weekend and is trying to pull off a seemingly impossible task: taking a doll best known for reinforcing conventional stereotypes of women and rebranding it as a symbol of feminism, all without coming off as a shameless ad for the doll’s maker, Mattel. Willa Paskin, a journalist and host of Slate’s Decoder Ring podcast, recounts her conversation with the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, about how she approached the challenge.Guest: Willa Paskin, Slate’s television critic and the host of Slate’s Decoder Ring podcast.Background reading: Mattel wanted a summer blockbuster to kick off its new wave of brand-extension movies. Greta Gerwig wanted the film to be a work of art.The reviews are in: Some critics viewed “Barbie” as satirically capitalistic, while others saw it as capitalistically satirical.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitchoff. This is The Daily. This weekend, with Hollywood in turmoil over declining ticket sales and a massive labor strike, all eyes are turning to Barbie, a new film that is trying to pull off a seemingly impossible task. That task is to take a doll best known for reinforcing conventional stereotypes of women and somehow rebrand it as a symbol of feminism, all without coming off as a shameless ad for the doll's maker, Mattel. Today, journalist Willa Paskin on her conversation with the film's director, Greta Gerwig, about how she approached that challenge and why America remains so endlessly fascinated by Barbie.

It's Friday, July 21st. It's Friday, July 21st. Willa, you wrote about Barbie and the making of Barbie, the film, for the New York Times Magazine, which is what we're here to talk about. But just to start, talk to me about your relationship to Barbie. I wish that I could say that I had a really intimate relationship with Barbie or a sort of profound one, but I don't really. I played with Barbies when I was a kid, but I can't say that they were like particularly memorable. They were just one of many dolls. I probably have thought about them more as a parent than I ever did as a child. Why more as a mother? I'm not yet a mom, but I'm going to be soon. And so this could be useful for me.

Yeah, I have felt that when it comes to Barbies, resistance is sort of futile. Like I did not buy any Barbies and that was sort of intentional. And yet there are, I think, over a dozen Barbies in our house to 10-year-old girls own a Barbie. And in America, 3 to 6-year-old girls, on average, they have 12 each. That's insane. Yeah, I think this is like the thing about Barbie is like... You cannot escape Barbie. And there's an element of that that was true even before the movie. Like... You cannot escape Barbie. And there's an element of that that was true even before the movie. I'm happy, I'm Barbie, the feeling's growing in me. Barbie is a doll that has existed for way, way, way, way longer than most dolls for over six years.

And she's really like embedded in lots of really important ways we think about girlhood and womanhood. Only girls can do anything right, Barbie. important ways we think about girlhood and womanhood. So Barbie is also in my house. I think I don't know if it had just been up to me that I would have let her in, but I decided it was worse to make a deal out of it. And so my kids play with Barbie. It sounds like this is maybe something you're not all together overjoyed about, but it's inevitable. So why invite more Barbie into your life? What seemed interesting to you, Willa, about writing about Barbie the film? Well, I mean, I was interested in all of these feelings about Barbie that I have and that I think actually a lot of people have, and also how that plays into making a movie about Barbie, which is this huge piece of IP. IP stands for intellectual property, and it's basically all Hollywood does now, which is to take something that people know

already exists and make a movie about it. Everything has to be pre-sold. It has to be a Marvel character. It has to be some other toy. And I think with most of those products or those movies, the thing that's compelling about it is everybody knows them and lots of people love them, right? And the thing about Barbie that's sort of interesting is that everybody knows Barbie, but not everybody loves Barbie. Like, Barbie comes with a lot of baggage. So there are absolutely people that love her, but there are people who hate her. So there are absolutely people that love her, but there are people who hate her. And I was just really interested in, like, why you'd make a movie like that and how do you make a huge blockbuster entertainment that's about something that people have such complicated feelings about. Okay, so let's talk about those feelings. Where should we start in talking about the complications of Barbie? Well, I think this goes right to Barbie's origin. So Barbie was created by Ruth Handler, who was a Jewish businesswoman who already co-owned

a toy company with her husband, Elliot, that was called Mattel, that was founded in 1945. And sort of the story, like the origin story of Barbie is that she was sitting in a room, eavesdropping, listening in on her daughter, Barbara, who was named Barbie, playing with paper dolls with a friend. And they were just spending hours and hours putting these dolls in different outfits and thinking about their futures and careers and just sort of like imagining them as grown women. And she realized that there was not a three-dimensional doll that let girls do the same. There was basically only baby dolls that encourage them to practice being moms. And Ruth Handler was a businesswoman in 1945, you know, like she's talked about not like loving being a housewife. And I think she sort of was like, we should make this doll that

lets girls explore all the different ways that they can be adults, adult women that isn't just motherhood. So the story also goes that she was in Switzerland on a trip, family trip, and she came across this doll that's called the Build Lily. It looks a ton like a Barbie because Barbie was modeled on it. And it was at the time this sort of doll that was based on a character in a German comic strip who was sort of like a slattern, like a promiscuous harlot. And this doll was sort of meant, it was like an accessory for grown men. Like it was, you know, one of the things they could do, it was have in their car,

like sort of like Playboy silhouette mud flaps. And she saw this doll that was like, sort of like had this va-va-voom figure, but was sort of the right proportions to dress and bought three, one for her daughter and two for her, and sort of took it back to California as proof of concept. And the doll came out in 1959 and basically became a hit like right away. Barbie, you're beautiful. You make me feel. My Barbie doll is really real. If I'm getting this right, Barbie is the brainchild of a female executive who made the doll after hearing her daughter imagining the careers of her paper dolls.

But this doll, Barbie, is based on a sexy, blonde, German comic strip character. It just, there are a few contradictions there. Right, the contradictions are just like baked right in. They never end. And they run all through the 1960s. So what's going on here? A housewarming. Right. Now Mattel's famous Barbie has a brand new dream house. In the 1960s, you see things like Barbie gets a dream house. And even a sliding door that really opened. And she gets a dream house in 1962, like when women couldn't, like it was very rare for women to be able to get credit cards and their own mortgages.

Have you heard what's happened? Barbie's changed. And she goes to the moon as an astronaut before Neil Armstrong ever goes to the moon. So all those things are happening. And then at the same time, there's a slumber party Barbie that comes out in the mid-1960s and she comes with a scale that's stuck at 110 pounds and a book called How to Lose Weight, and the instructions are literally just don't eat. That's horrible. And also, like, going with that is sort of like the impossible proportions, this idea that, like, she couldn't really stand because her breasts are too big.

Her head couldn't be held up because her neck is too slender. Her liver couldn't fit inside of her body. You know, like, if this person were embodied, she couldn't be because it's impossible to look like Barbie. And this is sort of what we are giving to little girls to play with and holding up as this model of what they can be when they grow up. of what they can be when they grow up. Yeah, you have all these kind of awful stereotypes and standards about women and their bodies kind of baked into this doll while also having her occupy the Oval Office.

Right, exactly. You know, so by the 1970s, when the feminist movement is really taking off, this sort of critique of Barbie solidifies as just like, no, this sort of critique of Barbie solidifies as just like, no, this is everything society and men want us to be, this sort of like glammed up, male gaze ready, hot to trot, blonde, thin, high-heeled woman.

Our Barbie doll comes with necklace, earrings, ring, shoes, and gown. And women are so much more than that. This is so limiting. There's a march in 1970, you know, like an equity march, and women are marching saying, like, we are not a Barbie doll. How did Mattel respond to all this feminist critique? I mean, I think they basically sort of brushed it aside. There were some minor changes, like in the early 70s,

Barbie initially always her eyes had been sort of downcast and to the side. And in the early 70s, she starts to look out at you like she becomes a subject, not an object, which is tied to the existence of the feminist movement, I think, even if they wouldn't have said that. But basically, like, they just continued. The doll kept selling. Like, they just didn't have to take it seriously. They were the only doll like this on the market. Barbie was just sort of indomitable. And that continued into the 2000s. And then basically in the 2000s, the contradictions that were always inherent in Barbie sort of indomitable. And that continued into the 2000s. And then basically in the 2000s, the contradictions that were always inherent in Barbie sort of became unsustainable. What you start to see initially is like the existence of their first real competitor,

which were Bratz dolls. Like Barbie just sort of started to lose its footing. And by the mid-2010s, it was actually very dire. Like, Mattel's own research about it was really bad. People thought the doll was vapid, didn't stand for anything. They saw that mothers weren't comfortable giving Barbies as birthday presents. And, like, you know, a birthday present is sort of supposed to be a reflection of your values. And moms were feeling uncomfortable mirroring Barbie. And then there's this other really incredible anecdote, which is that there was a study not done by Mattel that found that when little girls played with Barbies, they thought themselves less capable of a number of careers than they did after playing with a Mrs. Potato Head.

It was like the control in the study. as Potato Head. It was like the control and the study. So Barbie's association with a very particular way of being a woman started to sort of be a problem for them

in a way that, you know, had been lurking for decades but sort of really like came to the surface. In a way, I think they were like

actually for the first time existentially worried about the future of the doll. So what does Mattel do about this existential threat? They change. They realize they have to change. So they start to, in 2015, they start to roll out a lot of different Barbies. They roll out more than 100 different hairs and skin colors, and they make Barbies' feet flat.

And then in 2016, they start to, they release three different shaped Barbies, like a curvy Barbie, a petite Barbie, a tall Barbie. They release Barbies based on feminist trailblazers. So like you have a Billie Jean King Barbie and a Rosa Parks Barbie. And so all of these changes put Barbie on better footing. But Mattel, the parent company, was still really struggling. Mattel is a huge company. They own a lot of different toy brands, like Fisher-Price is them, Hot Wheels. Like, there's a lot of toys that Mattel makes. And in the mid-2010s, they were really struggling. And by 2018, they'd gone through three CEOs. They had lost half a billion dollars. And it's at that point that they hired a man named Enon Kreis, who is a Israeli-born

businessman whose background is not in toys, but is in entertainment. And like, crucially to the existence of the Barbie movie, he had like a very straightforward plan for what to do, which is basically cut costs and sort of sort out the back end of what was going on at Mattel. And also to stop thinking about themselves as a manufacturing company and to think about themselves instead as an IP company that manages franchises. So to answer this fundamental question that you've asked, which is why make a Barbie movie? This is kind of it. Mattel is trying to pivot into becoming a company that is about selling their IP. And they also need a brand reinvention.

They want to try to sell Barbie to 2023 women. Yeah. I mean, I should say here that Mattel had been trying to make a Barbie movie since 2009. But because Barbie is this contradictory character that people have strong feelings about, they kind of knew they had to thread this needle, right? Where it's like, you can't do a satire of Barbie, right? Because like, that's not going to sell Barbie. But you kind of can't just also do the propaganda Barbie because they couldn't have it be boring. So they had to, like, kind of figure out something slightly outside the box. And also, because of Barbie's baggage, they wanted, they needed a woman to do it.

They needed a woman with credibility to do it. And so about six weeks into his new tenure as CEO, Inan Kriz took a meeting with Margot Robbie, the actress who had been keeping an eye on the Barbie rights for a long time and had a relationship with Warner Brothers. And they had a meeting and they decided they wanted to make Barbie. And they put together the short list of directors that they wanted to do it.

And at the top of it was the director, Greta Gerwig. And why Greta Gerwig? Well, so Greta Gerwig became known to the American public at large as an actress. Patch is the kind of guy who buys a black leather couch and is like, I love it. She was originally in a set of movies that are sort of goofily called mumblecore movies, but are sort of like smaller, independent, realistic, chatty, slice of life movies. And she kind of had her breakout in a movie that she made with her partner Noah Baumbach called Frances Ha. It's so funny when people have kids and they're all, I used to be so focused on me and now

I'm totally not. It's like, no, it's still you. It's half you. It's a mini you. I mean, you made it. She had became a director in 2017 with Lady Bird. Lady Bird. Is that your given name?

Yeah. Why is it in quotes? Well, I gave it to myself. It's given to me by me. Okay. A great movie that was sort of based on her coming of age in Sacramento. That was nominated for Oscars, and then she sort of leveled up and did an adaptation of Little Women, which was also really well received. And if I had my own money, which I don't, that money would belong to my husband

the moment we got married. And if we had children, they would be his, not mine. They would be his property. So don't sit there and tell me that marriage isn't an economic proposition, because it is. So she's like this really smart, creative person with Oscar nominations and indie credentials

and feminist credentials, and they approached her about doing the Barbie movie. So, I can understand why Mattel would want to have this smart, Oscar-nominated female director make this movie, but my question is, why would this young, Oscar-nominated indie filmmaker, who is seen as someone who makes movies about women's voices in a kind of 2023 way, why would she want to make a movie about Barbie?

Natalie, that is exactly what I wanted to know. And so when I met up with her, that's what I got to ask her. We'll be right back. Willa, tell us about this meeting with Greta Gerwig and why she decided to make this movie. Sure. So I met Greta at a production studio in Midtown Manhattan. But we can keep going right now, too. If you don't mind, I just want to... And we sort of just sat at a table in a nice office space. I actually had brought some Barbies of my children's as like props. I thought maybe something interesting would happen. And like it started with where you sort of start, right? Which is like, did you play with them when you were little?

What's your relationship to Barbie? And Gerwig grew up in Sacramento and she loved dolls. I love dolls in general and I did love Barbie. She has a sort of sense memory of standing in a Toys R Us, like beholding Barbies. And there was something about like like, the really big boxes meant a really big dress with really big hair. I loved looking at them. She played with them.

She says it was too late, like, until she was about 14. Because I knew, because people were already drinking at parties. And I was like, you are not cool. I remember what it was like to kind of begin to go through puberty and suddenly dolls are not magical anymore and everything about you feels wrong. And at the same time, she was also aware of like the critique of Barbie because her mother like was not wild about Barbies for all of the feminist reasons we've already discussed. So like like, most of them, like, just sort of crept into the house, as Barbies have a tendency to do, as, like, hand-me-downs. So Greta's mom may be a skeptic, but Greta is enamored with them.

She's a fan. I mean, I think it's complicated. Like, I think she will tell you that she loves Barbie, but I don't think it's because she can't see that there's complications to Barbie. And I think it was actually that Barbie is this contradictory, complex symbol that is what interested her. So obviously she had to, like, feel warmly enough about the doll for Mattel to feel comfortable,

like, having her do this. You know, they're not signing their prize property over to just someone who's gonna, like, tear it apart. But it's not that she doesn't understand that there's a complex conversation that's been going on about Barbie for a long time. I mean, she said to me, like, people ask, what's the story about Barbie? And

the story about Barbie is the fight that we've been having about Barbie. I don't think that wasn't important to her. So does that tension inform the way Greta is thinking about actually making the film? I think so. Like, I think she talks about Margot Robbie coming to see her. That's when I am going to really sit down and start trying to wrap my head around what is this? Because I... And like not knowing what it was going to be at all. I had very much that sense of the panic of like a blank canvas. But just knowing that like it kind of needed to deal with the conflict around Barbie. I wasn't sure how I was going to go about it. And I started reading a lot and researching a lot about like...

She ended up reading about Ruth Handler, who we talked about, who in addition to Barbie, ended up having breast cancer and would go on to have two mastectomies. And for the woman who invented Barbie to have a double mastectomy because she had breast cancer, I thought there was something, like, so incredibly human and poignant about that, given that this is some idea of big-breasted perfection. Something about that, like, was a point of entry for her. There was something quite beautiful to me of, like, taking something that is, like, the queen of plastic and giving her something real, or taking something that could be, you know, a corporate behemoth and making it something so tangible and homemade and personal and charming and committed and surreal and strange that it was like the most satisfying flipping of it. And I suppose that felt worth it to me.

So for Greta, there's really two things going on here that are really driving her decision to do this. The first is that she doesn't have quite as much baggage attached to Barbie as some people do. And the second is that she really sees that as an artist, she has the opportunity to do something interesting with Barbie. Yeah, I think that's right. But Willa, there's also something else here too, right? I mean, making Barbie the movie, this summer blockbuster, it's obviously the chance for this filmmaker to be behind something huge. Yeah, I mean, I think she was like very matter of fact about that.

She is like consciously leveling up as, like, a director, as an artist, as a businesswoman in Hollywood. Like, she is very conscious that to kind of get better at what she does and what she's interested in, she has to, like, keep making bigger and bigger movies so that she has, like, more expertise and more experience. This movie has a $100 million bigger budget than Little Women, which had, like, double the budget of Lady Bird. And also the thing is, like, Gerwig has described this as, like, a both-and kind of experience, and I think that is true, and it extends to her and Mattel,

which is that, like, their interests really genuinely aligned here. Like, she wanted to make a movie about this subject. She wanted it to be a big movie. And they needed somebody like her to do that and to, like, make that appealing. Like, they gave her an extraordinary amount of creative freedom, which is, like, unusual almost for any director. And, like, particularly for a female director, they gave her just a lot of latitude with a really big project. a lot of latitude with a really big project.

Can you give me a few examples of what that actually looks like, of what it looks like to have Greta Gerwig make a Barbie movie with creative freedom? So I want to kind of like answer that question in two ways. And one is just to say like very quickly set up the movie with as little spoilers as I possibly can. But basically like in the movie there's Land, and there is the real world. And Barbie Land is plastic and pink, and everything is perfect, and the real world is the real world. And through a series of mishaps, Barbie ends up in the real world and has to learn a bunch of things. But Gerwig and her colleagues, like, really nerded out on, like, the granular details of Barbie Land, like, obsessed about every detail,

and, like, really, really wanted it all to be tangible and touchable and feel like the toy, you know, like, fake but real. And I remember we were looking at all these different panels of painted skies because I wanted everything to be authentically artificial. And they obsessed about every detail. Is there water? No. Is there wind? Only if it makes their hair look good. Is it, you know...

And then there's also, like, what does it mean, creative freedom? Like, someone says, you're making a movie for Mattel and Warner Brothers. You know, it's a big project. There's lots of collaborators. There's always going to be notes and feedback. There were suggestions about scenes that would be cut for time. I was like, I can't cut that. That's the whole thing. That's for me. I remember saying this to the people in the studio or someone at some point. I was like, if I cut that scene, I don't know why I'm making this movie. If I don't have that scene, I don't know what it is

or what I've done. But my sense is that she was like pleasantly puzzled and surprised by like how much she was allowed to do her thing. It's like, use this assignment to go wild and to make something beautiful and big and anarchic. As a filmmaker, it is those moments of like getting to work with an IP like Barbie that you do get the ability to make something insane. Also a little bit like I was getting away with something. And without spoilers, I'm wondering with all this creative license that she has, does the film address all of those complications baked into Barbie that we've been talking about?

I mean, it certainly addresses some of them. Like, there's a scene in the movie where, like, a character delivers to Barbie, like, the entire critique of Barbie, that she's been making women feel bad for 50 years. But I think that Gerwig was interested also in humanizing Barbie. This is sort of like the slippery magic trick of the movie, which is it kind of like sidesteps the extent to which Barbie might still be playing some part in making little girls feel like they have to look a certain way or be a certain size or be a certain kind of woman. And I think the way that Gerwig sort of sidestepped that is because I think she thinks about the whole movie as like almost like meta textually, like writing the wrongs of Barbie.

Like she talked about this explicitly, like if Barbie has made people feel bad, like they're not good enough. The only thing I could think to do was to make people feel good enough. But obviously that does, like, sidestep this part of the doll, right? She has historically done this and may still be doing this, even if she's not doing it in the movie. And did you ask her about that sidestepping? Do you know if she did that on purpose? I mean, I think she was, like, is very aware that she's making, like,

a fun summer movie. And so I think she sort of was like, this isn't supposed to be a lecture. And so she knows like all of the faux pas. I think she felt like getting into every single one was sort of like pulling the whole thing down and sort of needed to be like more buoyant and lithe and like a movie people want to see. And it seems fair to say that maybe it's too much to expect of a summer blockbuster like this to get into all of that. But at the end of the day, humanizing Barbie is also obviously hugely beneficial for Mattel, right? I mean, this kind of works out for them.

This is a rebrand of Barbie. It has us all talking about the doll. And it's kind of sending us this message that this complicated version of Barbie that we had all of this baggage attached to is not the real story here. Yeah. I think it's a win-win. Like, I think everyone at Mattel is really, really happy about the film. And I think for, like, people of a certain age, this idea that, like, you can make something that would sell some other product is, like, distasteful. But the fact is that, like, so many movies are that now. And additionally, like, Star Wars, which was based on the original idea, is that now. And so it gets harder and harder to sort of draw some hard line in the sand about what's, like, really icky and you shouldn't do if you're an in the thing you're making, and if actually it turns out 98% of people in the world know it and are interested in it and are going to be, like, hyped to see what you did, like, those are all really compelling reasons to make something for a filmmaker now, I think, of any gender or stature. Right. There's a way in which she's just making a very pragmatic decision as a young, ambitious filmmaker in Hollywood right now.

Right. pragmatic decision as a young, ambitious filmmaker in Hollywood right now. Right. Willa, you've been saying this has been a win-win for Greta Gerwig and for Mattel, but the movie is just about to come out. How do we know it's a success? So you're totally right. I cannot see the future. I do not know how much money this movie is going to make. It is tracking to make $150 million or so, which is like triple what it was supposed to make, like, even three weeks ago. And so much of that is, like, because of just the wall-to-wall Barbie everything, which is all being driven by the movie. I mean, like, it is insanely inescapable

right now. It's, like, at Pinkberry. It's at The Gap. I mean, it's selling insurance. It's selling candles. I mean, this is part of like the whole plan on Mattel's side of like how this was going to work, that it's like going to put the doll in front of everybody, but not just the doll, right? Like the whole brand, it's going to be for people that aren't just kids. It's going to like hugely expand its demographic appeal. And like that is what they wanted to happen. And there's always people that are going to find that eye rolling and always people who are going to want in. And this is like why Barbie is powerful. You know, she's 60 years old and every single person in the world knows who she is and has feelings about her. And like that's just sort of irresistible at this moment in time for everyone who makes stuff to get a piece of.

Yeah. I mean, just in making this episode, I googled Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, and Google turned pink and sparkly. Barbie has taken over Google. Yes, of course it has. What hasn't it taken over? So this movie has kind of put Barbie back into the spotlight, into the white-hot center of things,

with all of her contradictions and baggage. It sounds like you're not going to be getting rid of your Barbies in your house anytime soon. I mean, who could get rid of their Barbies right now? Impossible. Willa, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today.

On Thursday, Russia launched a third day of aerial attacks on Ukraine's ports that appeared to be aimed at crippling the country's ability to export grain. One of the attacks destroyed 60,000 tons of grain waiting to be loaded onto ships. The assault comes just days after Russia withdrew from a year-long agreement that had allowed Ukraine to ship its grain to dozens of countries despite a Russian naval blockade. The U.S. now fears

that Russia's next target will be civilian ships carrying grain to and from Ukraine. Today's episode was produced by Shannon Lin, Ricky Nowetzki, Michael Simon-Johnson, and Summer Tamad, with help from Alex Stern. It was edited by Michael Benoit, contains original music by Alisha Baetup, Dan Powell, Diane Wong, and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Natalie Kitcheroff.

See you Monday.