Barbie and Blockbuster Anti-Capitalist Toy Commercials

Sheepdog ideology ahoy!

I’ve been a critic of marketing my entire adult life. I probably would have never worked back to Marx if I hadn't been. It started during my time in radio, right out of high school, when I was recruited from doing on-air work to writing ads (they liked my voice and creativity). I had a philosophy that I would do it as creatively as possible and therefore be the “least annoying.” After a year or so, I realized that advertising was the devil (leading to a complicated relationship with radio through the years).

Barbie is a feature-length toy commercial. And it’s so aware of how neoliberalism has failed. It knows how evil the patriarchy and the right-wing are. But it also knows how lousy wokeness and left-wing is. But even in Acknowledging that everyone has the wrong idea, Barbie can only reset to the same paradigm it starts from, but with certain concessions.

Among the right, it is being criticized for not being right-wing. That’s basically what they’re mad about. They’re so mad they’re out in parking lots playing with Barbies. And the left, well, they’re twisting themselves into pretzels pretending this is somehow “different.” The left thinks there’s something new here, something legitimately anti-establishment worth defending from the Ben Shapiros of the world.

There is not. The left is every bit as stupid as Ben Shapiro.

The Matrix

I’ve seen some call Barbie “The Matrix for women.” They are, sadly, completely correct. The Matrix is not a single film, though; it is four. And while I enjoy the second two films of the trilogy, with time, I have come to believe they ultimately exist to temper the impact of the first.

The Matrix is an idealist critique. Thus, if the logic is followed to its end, its total can only ever be "But what if both sides just make up with each other?" The 1999 film ended with what seemed like a new paradigm: Neo (and humanity) openly fighting against the machines in a fight they could win. But it didn’t go further, and not just because of the sequel potential of the ongoing adventures of Kung-Fu Jesus. If there had never been another Matrix film, the first could have been seen as an open invitation for revolution. It felt that way.

I’m not saying that anyone in the studio system recognized this – or that they even cared. However, if there are sequels to such a film backed by capital, their material interests will always figure in. The sequels could have addressed ownership (read: material interests), thus providing a substrate for the struggle of the first film and a definite end for the final. However, the Wachowskis are not Marxists; they are postmodernists. Specifically, they’re followers of Jean Baudrillard, author of Simulacra and Simulation.

Baudrillard's work is about symbols and how they shape our understanding of reality. One could easily assert that his focus purely on the virtual and symbolic breeds a nihilism that diverts away from class struggle (note: this is why I generally prefer Debord; his Spectacle critique deals with much of what Baudrillard does without jettisoning Marx).

Idealism posits that historical change comes from ideas and consciousness. In this view, the material world is subordinate to the realm of thought. On the other hand, Marx's dialectical materialism asserts that material conditions, particularly the mode of production and the social relations arising from it, are the fundamental factors shaping society. The dialectic refers to the conflict between the two classes, which are split by a difference in material interest regarding the ownership of the means of production.

Ultimately, Marxism is about who owns and controls, thus focusing on power. It lays out a material basis for how one has power, too. A struggle of ideals, however, provides no material basis, thus anyone can be “the bad guy.” In a Marxist critique, the line is not drawn between Barbies and Kens, but between those with ownership of power and those without. Though it may look like one of those groups holds the power specifically for being in that group, it isn’t. Patriarchy doesn’t give men power; owning something that gives men leverage does. Patriarchy is a result, not a root.

But if The Matrix is an idealist critique and Barbie is The Matrix for women, it’s important to state that my problem isn’t “which ideals.”

Horseshoe

Barbie is so, so, so aware. Neoliberalism has failed, tee hee! From the start, it works overdrive to tell us how market/“choice” feminism hasn’t resulted in a feminist utopia. A male businessperson even says, “Oh, we’re still doing the patriarchy. We’re just hiding it better.” So “Barbie didn't solve all of women's problems... men are still bad!” How subversive!

Further, it shows us the stupidity of the wokescold, having some kid call Barbie “fascist” to her face, convincing not one soul in the audience (just as the real wokies).

So both sides are wrong. Someone might say “So it’s centrism, then?” Yes and no. First, the no: both sides are 100% wrong. We need to start understanding as a society that, yes, the left and the right are all full of shit. Absolutely. The problem is that scientific socialism (Marxism) is nothing like anything else on the “left” side of the horseshoe. “Leftism” variants propose idealist lines, problems, and solutions, while Marx provides a material basis. Thus, the horseshoe is bullshit.

At least, that’s what I would have said a few years ago. The problem with the horseshoe isn’t that it is bullshit; it’s that everything on it is part of the liberal paradigm except communism and its derivatives. If Marx-derived thinking is removed, either side of the liberal horseshoe (left and right) really does lead us back to totalitarianism. The left and right are the same – no matter how different they look. They both want to preserve capitalism through their special version of artificially limiting the productive forces, and thus, they both lead to fascism (see Fascism and Social Revolution). So horseshoe theory is right if we understand that actual communism is not leftism, nor is it a part of the liberal ideological spectrum.

However, secondly, the yes: this film is pro-capitalist centrism. Leftist centrism, but centrism. “Leftist centrism,” one might ask? Well, let me put it this way:

The film is Bernie Sanders.

Bernie was ultimately an attempt to scoop up skepticism and discontent (whether he knew it or not is arguable, though). As I said before, both sides are actually wrong. People are noticing this in bigger numbers all the time.

That isn’t a miscalculation, nor is it “The Centrist’s Folly.” Left and right only differ from centrism in that they acknowledge they must do something. That something is some form of artificial limitation of the productive forces; for the right, it is straightforwardly to preserve capitalism. For the left, it is seemingly to destroy capitalism. However, the differing intent of the same action (whether it is right “localism” or left “degrowth”) is irrelevant when the result is the same (perpetuating capitalism).

“The Centrist’s Folly,” so to speak, is a fetishization of “balance” and the belief it can function in the capitalist paradigm. The insight that “both sides are wrong” is actually the most intelligent aspect of centrism. However, their solution is not a new paradigm but rather finding the right combination of aspects of the current one.

Bernie Sanders is a “leftist centrist.” He is a leftist in that he has obvious allegiance to the left; his rhetoric is fiery and “socialist.” He thinks primarily in distributive terms (very leftist), but ultimately he believes we need to change how we do a few things, which will make society function better. So in content, Sanders is a leftist, but in form, he is a centrist.

This is hard to grasp, as he means different things to different people. However, if one still supports Bernie Sanders in 2023, one either actually supports a degrowth agenda while thinking “the old man doesn’t go far enough,” or one simply sees the problems “on both sides” and doesn’t like the right-wing aesthetic. Either way, there is no paradigm shift.

Enter Barbie, a “woke” movie that also recognizes the problems of wokeness, ultimately landing squarely in the status quo (with some minor concessions). And, as with Sanders, about 5% of people who watch Barbie will detect that the movie bears this cognitive dissonance and move past it to something more “radical.”

But 95% of the movie's viewers, like Sanders supporters, will think they are geniuses and will repeat Barbie talking points in perpetuity because, to them, they’re new. They see the problems and, in the movie’s own words: “giving voice to the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman in the patriarchy robbed it of its power.”

In 5 years, the 5% of people that moved on will be embarrassed that they liked Barbie but will have nostalgia for it, having been the impetus of their moving on to something new. And like Bernie supporters, they’ll say something like, "oh, but Bernie helped set me on the path toward Marx, so he's not all bad.”

The problem is that 5% was never the point. The point was always the 95% of people who were skeptical and (for the sake of the ruling class’s material interest) needed to be turned back towards mainstream society. Bernie Sanders and Barbie act as a sheepdog ideology for them, redirecting them back into the same arguments and sets of actions.

Without Bernie, it could have taken longer, but it may have been more than 5% that eventually found Marx. But that's the point; Bernie gave everyone who hungered for something an instant gratification/catharsis rather than a long path to an unwavering consciousness.

And that’s also what Barbie does.

Men are Bad… And so is Capitalism?

I have seen many from all over the spectrum note that Barbie is emasculating, but I didn’t get this from the film. Ben Shapiro has gotten an absolute ton of shit for his criticism of the film, and honestly, I completely agree with people’s impulse on this one. I don’t like the film, and I’ve outlined my thoughts here, but his read is dumb. He saw the film as doing everything possible to alienate men from women and his ultimate takeaway was that the movie advocates “men and women are supposed to ignore each other.”

Many men seem to think this movie is attacking them, but honestly, the men in the movie functioned as a criticism of feminism. Men were women in the movie, or at least how women see women (“oppressed”). Patriarchy is a stand-in for feminism in this movie. Ken obsessively reads about it and becomes a Guy Boss, which seems intended to tell the viewer that “girl boss is just the new boss, same as the old boss.”

This could have worked to bring the movie to a better place than it lands if the metaphor were more fully investigated. However, the male audience didn’t necessarily detect the metaphor, so perhaps “not going further with it” wasn’t really its crime. Barbie hoped to ask hardcore feminists, “What if the opposite sex took apart your world? Wouldn’t you feel pretty attacked?” This is an empathetic position to take, not an attack. However, the real problem is that power isn’t genuinely addressed, and the conflict is just based on what men think vs. what women think (thus, men are still the bad guys… or possibly women are?).

Similarly, the movie outwardly points at capitalism as “the problem” several times. However, there are many idealist critiques of “capitalism.” It’s bad because of growth, greed, and other emotions or ideas. Without providing a material basis, it’s not really a critique of capitalism because it’s not directed at any particular aspect of it or it as a whole because it identifies nothing material about it. It’s directed at the word “capitalism,” but that’s all.

Capitalism’s defining contradiction is material; capitalism wasn’t a thing until production was socialized, but the feudal, private mode of appropriation of product was retained. This is the “germ” of all that is capitalism, and it creates class: those who rule because they own and those who are subordinate because they don’t own.

The Mattel corporation – the owners – function only as bumbling comic relief. In truth, to even bother with the corporation sounds promising, and “to depict them negatively” might also feel good. Still, they are not addressed as owners or even as powerful in any meaningful way. Their opinions don’t actually matter, as demand straightforwardly drives their business. The CEO notes that “ordinary Barbie” is a bad idea – until it sells incredibly well, then he calls it a good idea.

Capitalist ideology is reproduced; the film's end puts Barbieland back to the matriarchy (read: the patriarchy) with some minor concessions. The audience gets its catharsis here. The protagonist Barbie knows too much, though. She isn’t satisfied, so she gets to move into the “real world,” where she lives out her new fantasy of a complex, imperfect life that is “beautiful” because it’s “real.”

The would-be Peter Coffins out there, the ones not satisfied with the audience's catharsis, are meant to be serviced by Barbie’s catharsis. But her ultimate win is to live in a world where she means nothing, where she is at the mercy of the powerful and experiences sadness/anxiety/etc. due to alienation and other problems created to maintain class. She got bumped up to live in capitalism, which is human. It’s flawed. Again, it’s “real.” Thus, capitalism “is human nature.”

What a critique of capitalism!

Conclusion

Initially, I had planned to skip watching this movie, but my curiosity was piqued when some friends insisted it was subversive. I was interested in why they saw it that way. However, after seeing it, I still see it as a toy commercial that sticks its nose into various hot-button mainstream arguments so that when someone hears or participates in them, they think of Barbie, a toy one can go to the store and buy.

To quote a review:

Despite Gerwig’s feminist and anti-capitalist overtures and evident pains to make the movie about perils of neoliberalism, this is still a two-hour advertisement. My viewing partner (indeed a grad-school-enrolled millennial) was hip to all of the film’s layered messaging but nonetheless walked out saying she wanted to go buy a Barbie.

- Charles Lyons-Burt, Barbie Review

Barbie is toy marketing. It is not cleverly disguised, as it follows the “outrage marketing” paradigm I outlined ages ago. I have an obvious predisposition towards a critique of that. Rather than seeing Barbie as provocative in any way, I found it grotesque and pro-capitalist. Yes, it nods and winks at ideology-loving “leftists” in the audience, but what doesn’t nowadays?

I am more likely to excuse media that doesn’t desperately want to be seen as critical and subversive, but Barbie does. Simply put, it is the exact opposite of those things. It is justification for (and veneration of) capitalism.

And the left loves it.