Today, Explained - Barbie Dreampodcast

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Is Barbie a toy commercial doubling as the first installment of an inevitable Mattel Cinematic Universe? Or does it have something important to say? Barbie’s multitudes, explained. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Michael Raphael, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi Barbie! Hi Noelle. It's Today Explained. Alex Barish is a culture writer and editor at The New Yorker. Alex, how did a Barbie movie happen? I think we're in this moment where Hollywood has a kind of risk aversion. There's a real anxiety about getting viewership, getting audiences, all of these things. And increasingly, they are turning to the kind of tried and true, pre-tested material. Andby is you know one of the big intellectual properties that had remained untapped mattel are trying to dive into this industry and now we have a very interesting

match in uh this doll and greta goig how many different trailers do you guess you've seen uh too many since the beginning of time, there have been dolls. But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls. Until... It is kind of deranged how many are out there. It almost seems like you'd watch the whole movie through the trailer. You're going to start getting sad and wishy and complicated. She's not dead. She's just having an existential crisis.

What do you sense is the thing that everyone is so excited about? I mean, I think the talent involved, you know, Greta Gerwig doing this, Noah Baumbach doing this, Margot Robbie being Barbie, Ryan Gosling being Ken, one of many Barbies and one of many Kens, I should say. Hi, Barbie. Hi, Barbie. Hi, Barbie. Hi, Barbie.

Hi, Barbie. Hi, Barbie. Hi, Barbie.. Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie. And the sort of aesthetic of the thing and the strangeness of it, I think, you know, it started as kind of a joke and it became a meme and then people were like, wait a minute, they might actually be onto something here.

I could feel myself leaning into it and being kind of curious about it and also feeling scared, which is usually when there's something good about it. It started as a joke. It became a meme. It seems like it is rooted in fear, which is funny in and of itself, Hollywood's fear of trying to create something new. And so they turn to something old, something known. Yeah. And, you know, this is nothing new. Certainly in the past few years, we've seen this real reliance on franchises and on existing IP. There's this notion that I came across in my reporting of pre-awareness, you know, the idea that we're in, you know, we're in this moment with the pandemic, multiplexes are just not bringing

in audiences the way they used to do. Everyone's trying to figure out how to get people back into theaters. And the answer that a lot of studio execs seem to have arrived at is give the people something that they already know, that we already know they like or they're interested by. And that will hopefully bring them in. I wanted it to be obviously dazzling and hilarious and this kind of imaginative cornucopia of crazy Barbie-ness. All right, so while you were writing this piece, you actually got to go behind the scenes to see how the studio is trying to make this a hit. Tell us about who is producing Barbie and how they sort of spun it into this presumed blockbuster.

Yes, so this is a co-production between Warner Brothers, which is, you know, the type of partner you might expect, and Mattel Films, which is not the partner you might expect for any sort of film project. And in 2018, Enon Kraitz became the CEO of Mattel, and he essentially decided he was going to reinvent the whole company. It was really struggling. Toys R Us had just gone out of business. They'd posted $300 million in losses. And he said, look, we're sitting on this bank of IP that in his view is, quote, second only to Disney in terms of children's entertainment.

And we haven't really done anything with it yet. So what we need to do is stop being a toy company and start being an IP company. We are now shifting gear into our entertainment strategy and growing our entertainment offering with more content, consumer product, and digital experiences. And he needed to reclaim the rights to all of the different brands that they had licensed

out to other studios. Because Mattel have tried this in the past. You know, there have been deals to make a Hot Wheels movie before. There's been a Bobby movie in development at Sony for years. They tried Amy Schumer. They tried Anne Hathaway. And the tone of that film was much more sort of parodic. movie in development at Sony for years. They tried Amy Schumer, they tried Anne Hathaway. And the tone of that film was much more sort of parodic. You know,

Bobby was the butt of the joke. And he said, we can't have that we need something different. And they had to go through the act of reclaiming all of these things so that they could then put their own stamp on it in the way they wanted to. So he got to work on that immediately. And the other person who'd been, you know, watching The Right Psycho Hawk was Mugger Robby. And so the two of them met, you know, within months of crates coming into his position at Mattel and started to get things in motion. Barbie was the number one property globally for the year, in fact, for the second year in a row, and continued to grow, continued to innovate and represent the world. So a lot of momentum in the movie is going to be worth waiting for. And so what did it look like to get things in motion? How does this proceed from there?

So Margot Robbie's idea was to enlist Greta Gerwig. That was kind of her dream writer for the project. And there was very few people I'd want to do this with. And Greta was the top of the list. And kind of like if she said no, I just don't know what I would have done. So she goes to her, kind of makes her pitch and says, you know, I think we could do something great with this together. And from there, she ends up going to El Segundo, which is where Mattel's headquarters are based and making this pilgrimage that now many filmmakers have made to their sort of toy workshop where she gets this crash course in the history of burby every past model every costume every dream house and then that becomes fodder for the film that she ultimately makes

and this is the kind of opening gambit of the mattel cinematic universe there are actually 45 films in development now you've got jj abrams Abrams doing Hot Wheels. You've got Daniel Kaluuya doing Bernie. We are opening into something truly wild. So what we're seeing is that Mattel is okay spending money on these movies. What has happened in the past that has made them okay with spending $145 million? What's the track record here? Well, the interesting thing is that it's actually not their money. So they have a model that's sort of capital light, as they put it. What they're bringing to the table is essentially the IP. So they're saying, like, they'll partner with a studio or a streamer and say, you can have our characters, and in exchange, you're the ones bankrolling this.

And they have a lot more creative control than they've had in past projects i think and and that has been definitely a point of uh tension in terms of the making of burby where there were things that greta wanted to do that they were not fully comfortable with but they've kept an eye on these past cinematic universes uh they they saw what hasbro did with transformers they saw what hasbro didn't manage to do with several other board games after that. And they've tried to learn from those mistakes to make this a more successful venture. But, you know, time will tell whether that pays off. What do we think is going to happen? Do we think it's going to pay off? I mean, everyone I know is talking about it and plans to go see it in the theater.

So it seems like something good happened here? Yeah, the hype is unreal. And clearly there are other people in Hollywood who are taking note of this and partnering with them, you know, as a result of the fact that this is the big opening swing. I think that Bobby will be a success. You know, it's on track to make a lot of money at the box office in its first week. And it already has paid dividends for them in terms of all these brand partnerships. And they've got special limited edition dolls that, you know, are based on the looks from the film and they're all selling out like it's it's done a lot for them in terms of their cultural capital that they didn't have before

but uh the question now is where we go from here and whether the same thing could possibly happen with you know the movie and i don't know that it will. I'm thinking of the Marvel comparison. Marvel movies, they do make money. But I think the bloom is off the rose. And it's been years since one of them has been considered like really good or, you know, saying something profound and provocative about society, which you get the hint that that review for Barbie will come out at some point. You'll get the NY Mag review and it'll be like, you know, this is deep. Is there a sense that this is deep or is there a risk that this is just a two-hour commercial for like a toy? Yeah, I mean, I think

there was a very real risk of this just being a commercial for a toy. And it's possible that there will be others in this cinematic universe that essentially function in that way. But it does seem like for Bobby, time and time again things coming out of the Mattel Cinematic Universe. But it's really going to be a question of whether other filmmakers have the same license and have the same ambition, and whether the toys that they end up working with actually have the same dramatic potential. You know, Bobby is kind of a lightning rod in our culture. And I think that gives you the potential to play and really engage in some thematically resonant material. But not everything will have the same potential. Coming up,

is it good? Is Barbie a good movie? An adult human woman joins us with her review. PhotoFrame by Wirecutter. AuraFrame is to make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the Aura Frame. And because she's a little bit older,

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And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. I overheard a woman at the supermarket say the strangest thing. She said, there goes Barbie. Poor thing. She doesn't know she's a toy created by a corporation. Silly thing has never wondered where the car or the house came from. And the truth is, Okay, so you are fresh from seeing Barbara's movie. Let's start with this. What do you think this movie is trying to say?

This movie is trying to say a lot. It's Today with this. What do you think this movie is trying to say? This movie is trying to say a lot. It's Today Explained. Shirley Lee is a staff writer at The Atlantic. First, it is saying that Barbie is not just a product, but a worthwhile protagonist. It is trying to say that Barbie as a doll has always been the subject of debate because, well, she's supposed to represent a woman and the ideal woman at that. It is also trying to say that Barbie Land is flawed in its own way, despite how perfect it seems. And it is trying to say that Ken needs a purpose. I just don't know who I am without you. You're Ken. But it's Barbie and Ken.

There is no just Ken. So Barbie is not just a product. She's a protagonist and she's supposed to be the ideal woman. Who is that for? I mean, I never had Barbies. I had like a Kmart knockoff. But I don't remember even as a girl Barbie really being for me. This notion that she's the ideal woman, for whom? This is something that the film tackles.

The history of Barbie begins with Ruth Handler, her creator in the 50s, realizing that her daughter, Barbara, you know, needed a doll that wasn't just a baby doll. I don't know if, you know, folks really know this history, but essentially, you know, little girls were just playing with baby dolls and playing the role of mother. And so Barbie was kind of created to be an alternative to that. The whole idea was that a little girl could dream dreams of growing up. The fascinating thing about the Barbie doll is that after all these decades on the market, Barbie has never been married and she doesn't have to be a homemaker. Her whole message, her whole thing is that she's Barbie and she can be anything. And so she's technically for young girls to understand that they can be anything.

And that may seem like a wonderful message for young girls to hear, but the film is kind of about how paralyzing that can be and how stifling it is as a message, and how just it kind of ignores the fact that being a woman is more difficult than just telling yourself that, hey, everything's possible. It's not just that the movie is unexpected. I think it's that Greta kind of pushes it in directions that I didn't think they would let us go in. And I think a big part of that was kind of acknowledging the things that people find problematic about Barbie

as well as the things that people love about Barbie. Here, I'll put it this way. If I told you that you're about to see a film that is about the ridiculous expectations around womanhood, you'd probably expect like a lecture, right? You're expecting something academic, something didactic. It's going to be someone on screen being like, boy, it's tough being a woman. Something kind of gloomy. Yes. And just grim and sobering. And instead, what Greta Gerwig, the writer director, has done is she's just she's kind of nestled that in this bright and bubbly and sunny and wild adventure about a pair of dolls. And it's absurd. But because of all of that, you get to the end of the movie and you're like a pair of dolls and it's absurd.

But because of all of that, you get to the end of the movie and you're like, well, of course it's absurd. Who would have gone into a film that is just being sold to you as it's about womanhood? And it's a little bit sad that you can't, I'm trying to think of a different word, but this is the word for it. you can't consume a movie about womanhood that takes womanhood seriously without silliness as its cover. That's really what fuels this movie and makes it way more interesting than just, you know, a brand extension. the fact that it is a Greta Gerwig movie. How does this fit into Greta Gerwig's previous filmmaking? And how does it fit into a Gerwigian conception of feminism or what it means to be a woman? I love the term Gerwigian. TM. Yeah, yeah. Adding it into the official, you know, film lexicon. I mean, first of all, it's very much about the cultural touchstones that are formative to girls.

That is something you can also say about Little Women, right? It's a novel that Greta Gerwig herself has talked about reading as a child and kind of being this important marker of what she understood to be sisterhood and womanhood. And Barbie is very much another touchstone. As a toy, she has represented what a woman should be for young girls. And I think a lot of what Greta Gerwig has done in her project so far as a writer-director have been about reconciling how girls learn to be women. That probably sounds kind of lofty and serious, but think about it, right? Lady Bird is very much about her own childhood and her coming of age and exploring how Lady Bird comes to accept herself and realize that she is already the best version of herself that she can be.

I wish that you liked me. Of course I love you. But do you like me? I want you to be the very best version of yourself that you can be. What if this is the best version? That's the thrust of Little Women, that each of these March sisters are learning from each other and from their experiences to become the women they are.

You know, I just feel like women, they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition and they've got talent as well as just beauty. And I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I'm so sick of it. But I'm so lonely. And Greta makes that very clear by, you know, chopping up the book and collapsing the timelines, which is why her adaptation of the novel, and I think it's like the seventh film adaptation of the novel, feels so fresh. You get this reconsideration of certain characters you hadn't thought about as deeply before. And in this, in Barbie, she's reconsidering Barbie. She's taking a character

that we, you know, whether you played with Barbies or not, I did play with Barbies as a kid. I wanted to. Yeah. Well, there you go. You must've had some opinion of Barbie. You must've either wanted a Barbie or you want to be seen a certain way when you were playing with Barbies. And maybe as you grew up, you wanted to hide those Barbies. I know I did. And I think she's the kind of filmmaker who really just takes that and picks at it and kind of asks you, well, why did you want to look away from Barbie? But why did you also want to look at Barbie? Why did you want to play with Barbie? Why is Barbie such a cultural flashpoint? And I think those are the themes that she's very preoccupied with in her work.

And that goes back to her performances in mumblecore films, you know, that Frances Ha is very much about being a 20-something woman trying to figure out what she should be doing in her life and, you know, where she stands with her best friend. Tell me the story of us. Again? All right, Frances. We are going to take over the world. You'll be this awesomely bitchy publishing mogul. And you'll be this famous modern dancer, and I'll publish a really expensive book about you.

The D-bags we make fun of will put on their coffee tables. And I'd say, the last thing I'd say about this, because I could go on and on and on about Greta Gerwig's of, I think something that really ties her films together is that she just takes girlhood and womanhood and that experience extremely seriously. other writer director's hands might come off again didactic or um or preachy but they sound so natural because she's had all this experience as a performer and barbie is no different there's a pivotal monologue that's delivered that kind of follows in the footsteps of amy's monologue in little women ladybirds at the end of Lady Bird, et cetera, et cetera.

And you wrote about it. You wrote about the monologue. The monologue does not come from Barbara. It comes from the human character, Gloria, played by America Ferreira. We don't want to do spoilers, but give me a sense of why you, you know, the Atlantic magazine says, surely you can write about anything you want. And you say, I'm going to write about glorious monologue. What's up there? Well, I think the first thing that really just hooked me was the idea that this was coming from a human woman when this entire film is so populated by Barbies and Kens and jokes about Barbies and Kens, loving jokes.

And then also characters who are employees at Mattel who are absurd, and they're led by Will Ferrell. And then the speech goes to the one human woman. And it's a great speech that's longer than the other monologues I've mentioned. But I think what's fascinating about it is that it says a lot of things I think women know. It's so straightforward and it is somewhat sobering, but it works because the rest of the film has been so bubbly and wild and just magical that when this comes, it doesn't feel preachy. It just feels like, well, this is fact. Being a woman is about figuring out how to deal with these contradictions. That when you're a girl, maybe you do believe Barbie's whole message about being anything.

But as you grow up, you start to realize that the value that women have in society is lower than maybe you were taught. And it just feels very Greta Gerwig. And it's what kind of grounds the film from being this brand exercise, making you buy more Barbies. I don't think it actually encourages you to buy Barbie. It encourages you to think about Barbie. Surely. Yes. Is it good? Is it a good movie? I think it's good. Look, I'll tell you this. The closer I got to my screening, the more anxious I became just because, I mean, you and I both know we've been bombarded. We have been bombarded. Oh my God, stop. And as women. Yeah, yeah. It's just like inevitably i've gotten more and more worried about it but i think the reason why it's good is that all of these things i've been saying about

how new how like nuanced it is it just engages with that and i i think it's good because the performances are good it's having so much fun it is an absolute blast while at the same time understanding that it's an unusual film and that it can't just be a movie that's selling Barbie. And I don't think it is that. But I will say this, look, as an adult human woman, I think it's good. Shirley Lee is a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. Hadi Mouagdi, this Barbie is a producer. Matthew Collette, this Barbie is an editor. Laura Bullard, this Barbie is a fact checker. Michael Raphael, this Barbie is an engineer. I'm Noelle King. I'm an adult human woman. And this is Today Explained. So.