It's really fun but I didn't like the ending, the kens should have all been put into labor camps
The whole meta-commentary is that top-dog style dominance is pointless and recreates the same disparity solely through binary means. Its literally an anti-corporate feminist message diffused through feminist humor. So much of the movie is based on this ex:
- Barbie-land is a corporate feminist gender swapped society from real life.
- The characters that are LGBTQ coded are literally sidelined the entire movie as side kicks.
- The Kens main complaint is that they are only recognized as people through Barbies.
The entire thing is based on the same axioms as "MORE WOMEN CIA TORTURERES" and "They say the next one (missile) will be sent by a woman." memes. The reason Greta Gerwig uses turn of the century mixed with mid century markers of masculinity is that so you don't get tied up in knots about Kens starting podcasts. Apparently people still get caught up on an ironic gender flip.
See I disagree, that's actually a good feature. Many "movies with a point" can only take on the perspective a sole protagonist as a totalizing force. The split protagonists in Barbie show that the actual antagonists are the systems under which the protagonists exist both in Barbieland and the real world. It's a true solidarity movie in the sense that Barbie not only does what is good for Barbie but she also learns to make space for Ken in a society that is a gender mirror of our own. Ironically Barbie in this way does have an apotheosis as an avatar of corporate feminism (woman savior) in but in aesthetic only, because in action she is showing solidarity along intersectional lines within her own society. Something that she ultimately wants to bring to the real world. Barbie doesn't start the movie with all the answers as an all knowing intersectional socialist, she develops that on screen by bouncing off her deuteragonist in Ken. Ultimately not only does this structure make a fun movie, it makes a good movie with a point. Very often I have a hard time watching movies with a point with other people because at one point the "fun" of the movie falls apart for the "point", something that doesn't happen with the complexities of Barbie.