Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie have stated it before, but they still can’t seem to believe they got away with the version of the Barbie movie they created together.
“This movie is a goddamn miracle,” Gerwig told Time magazine recently, explaining that Barbie is like a “surprising spicy margarita.” You go in thinking you ordered a classic that you know in love, but then you get a little bit of heat off the salt on the rim – but it’s good, so you keep drinking. “You can already taste the sweetness and you sort of go with the spice,” the director concluded.
The “spice” in Barbie’s case is the criticisms of the doll and what she’s come to represent – both expected and unexpected. Gerwig, as well as the rest of the cast and crew, have worked to make it clear that this film will neither be an advertisement in disguise nor will it be a scathing critique of the doll franchise – like Barbie herself, it will be a complex and nuanced analysis of what this specific piece of plastic has come to represent to us as a society.
Greta Gerwig Played With Barbies While Other Kids Were Drinking
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Greta Gerwig was perhaps uniquely qualified to write and direct this film because she played with the dolls far longer than most – “too long,” according to the 39-year-old director’s opinion.
Her mother wasn’t a fan of the dolls; she said: “She went through the ’60s and was like, ‘What did we do all this for?'” Still, little Greta’s mom couldn’t have been that upset that her daughter continued to play with Barbies, given the alternative:
“I was still doing it in junior high. Kids were drinking, and I was playing with dolls.”
For the record: 12/13/14 isn’t too old to play with Barbies. Kids are just mean. (It IS definitely too young to be drinking, so that’s score one for Greta and Barbie.)
What Are Barbie Dolls Actually For?
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People play with Barbie dolls in all sorts of ways, from playing house to performing acts of destruction. Kate McKinnon, who plays Weird Barbie, said it best when she described the way she used to watch her sister and friends play with the dolls, drawing on their faces and setting them on fire:
“They were externalizing how they felt, and they felt different.”
(McKinnon, for her part, didn’t play with Barbies at all: “I didn’t see myself in Barbie when I was younger. I saw myself in an inflatable lobster.”)
Most small children use dolls to externalize and model their own feelings about the concept of growing into the womanhood promised by a Barbie doll, either by acting it out or wholeheartedly rejecting it.
Alexandra Shipp, a Barbie actress who appeared on a float at West Hollywood Pride this year, used to reject her Kens in favor of a scenario where two Barbies were raising a Skipper (the teen doll established as a “little sister” for Barbie). It was an accurate reflection of how she wanted her life to go.
Playing With Barbies in Middle School Makes Greta Gerwig a Born Director
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While Kate McKinnon has not become a lobster yet (except in that one SNL sketch with John Mulaney where she played Clawsette), Greta Gerwig’s late-stage play also indicated where her life would go.
After all, she is now a writer and director: Her job is to create and execute stories, instructing each actor on where they go and what they say, approving choices about what they wear and where they live. Playing with dolls past the age where most kids usually stopped wasn’t an indication of immaturity: It was proof positive that she was a born storyteller.
Directing the Barbie movie is like going full circle back to where it all began: Greta Gerwig is once again telling a story by playing with Barbies, but this time, the Barbies get to playback.
You can see the outcome of this dynamic play in less than a month: Barbie comes to theaters on July 21.
How old were you when you stopped playing with Barbies? How did you like to play with them? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments below.