My TV club pals and I watched Barbie this weekend. It was a lot of fun!
I think it is key to understand what it is: it is a movie from the Mattel corporation trying to capitalize on nostalgia from 30-45 year olds who played with Barbies. It is a very good one of those; compare with Michael Bay's Transformers films or the recent Power Rangers movie or GI Joe or Battleship or Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It indulges in the silliness you want from a movie about a toy, which a lot of the nostalgia-bait movies miss somehow.
But: It does not sustain discourse. It is roughly the sane politics as Saturday Night Live, which is to say: lowest common denominator liberal. I don't know that the script knows what the patriarchy is other than "men are in charge and that's bad because women should be in charge."
What is it that appeals to Ken about "The Patriarchy" as he experiences it? Societal respect, acknowledgement of his existence and interests, the possibility of achievement, and male friendship. None of that is the actual problem with the patriarchy! A good society should be extending all of that to everyone!
At the end of the movie, as they are trying to reconcile, one of the Kens asks to have one member on the supreme court, and this is denied with a little zinger about how Kens can have as much power as women get in the real world. Which denies the actual achievements of several actual women on the supreme court, and which implies that the ultimate goal is for women to get a turn wielding the oppressive power of the state. ("More women border guards!")
The movie is very funny! I had a great time. Just don't come to it looking for a coherent ideology, because that's not what it's for.
