Barbie was one of the big summer blockbusters released in 2023. It made over a billion dollars at the box office internationally, with $636 million coming from the United States. The movie won many awards, including a Golden Globe, American Film Institute Movie of the Year, Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Comedy, and the AACTA International Award for Best Film. The movie is about how Barbie and Ken enjoyed their lives in a colorful Barbie Land until Barbie had an existential crisis. She and Ken travel to Los Angeles, where they would get arrested by accident multiple times. The Mattel CEO would later notice her and try to send Barbie back to Barbie Land in a life-size doll box, but decided to escape, leading to a pursuit. When she returned to Barbie Land, they found Ken and multiple other Kens overthrowing the system. This led the Barbies and the discontinued Kens to make a plan to release the other Barbies and restore the matriarchy across Barbie Land.
However, Ryan Gosling, who portrayed Ken, was the only person to receive an Oscar. Even though the movie mainly focuses on feminism, none of the female actors won an award. Pennridge English teacher Charles Lainhart says that the Oscars “often don’t tend to award comedies and satires and how it seemed random how Gosling got it.” Lainhart showed the movie to his classes and compared it to a book they read in AP Language called “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf. He says, “Virginia talked about the stress both genders are under, and the movie did a great job addressing those similar topics.” The movie also gave some important takeaways to the people. Lainhart says, “Ken had an awakening at the end, that he should be his own person.” He also discovered that the movie was not just a “silly comedy” but a “social comedy within it, as well as a different meaning during the movie.”
The movie reached young women and showed them they don’t need some things to solve their issues. Pennridge student Ava Vesey says, “The movie motivates girls to work harder, be independent, and not need a man to help them achieve their goals.” She also went on to say that the movie showed a strong theme of feminism. “Instead of Barbie being a materialistic girl, she had intelligence and a dream that she had to hide behind the makeup like she wasn’t allowed to have a job.” She also believes the movie is feminist and shows awareness of how patriarchy affects society. “There is a large section of the movie where the men take over the world that the women built, and that’s the patriarchy. The feminism part is when the Barbies take back their hard work,” Vesey stated. She also stated, “The movie is about women achieving their dreams… a woman should have won because it contradicts the movie’s main theme, feminism.” Even though there was controversy over the lack of awards the actors received, the movie still showed that people can never give up on their dreams, even if the path isn’t perfect.
Sources:
www.imdb.com/title/tt1517268/
www.aacta.org/aacta-awards/aacta-international-awards/
www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1517268/credits/
www.afi.com/award/afi-awards-2023/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1517268/plotsummary/
