Barbie at the Gates of Time — Catherine F. King

I had the idea to write about Barbie as goddess figure in popular culture. Little did I know the connection would go deeper than I expected!

Barbie and her guides: young Sasha, determined Gloria, and wise Ruth.

This review contains major spoilers for the Barbie movie, so be warned.

Tackling female icons of the American landscape is one of Gerwig’s trademarks; just look at her confident 2019 offering, Little Women. (I have my issues with Little Women, but I can’t deny, Gerwig had a vision and carried it out). Margot Robbie plays Barbie— specifically, “Stereotypical Barbie.” A stereotype is something repeated without any variation; every version is identical to the other. In Barbie Land, every day is identical to every other. In this beachy paradise, the waves are stiff plastic and the sun is a mere lamp. In short, a place where time does not pass.

And yet, inside Robbie’s Barbie, a clock begins to tick. Thoughts of death interrupt her revelry. Her body turns on her: her feet go from being perfectly carved for heels, to embarrassing flatness. How disgustingly practical! In such a state, Barbie must seek out the outcast.

Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) is the only Barbie who bears the ravages of time, marred by a child’s markers. She gives Barbie her quest: voyage to the real world and find that child whose imagination is driving Barbie towards despair.

This is a Barbie (dark-haired) standing in a lawn of summery grass.

Barbie certainly doesn’t lack gumption. She heads to the real world with Ken in tow. While Ken gets distracted by the toys of the Patriarchy, Barbie learns to tune out the tumult of reality. By intuition, Barbie tracks down the last child who has played with her. This child is Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt. Barbie announces herself the avatar of joy and playtime.

Sasha, however, will have none of it.

She isn’t a little girl anymore. She lays the crimes of the doll-industrial-complex at Barbie’s feet and calls her a fascist. Her last, scathing remark is “I haven’t thought of Barbie in years.” This is a lie, we learn; her mother works for Mattel. But Sasha is a teenager. She is defining her own character in opposition to her mother’s. Speaking of whom…

Gloria, played by America Ferrera, plays Sasha’s mother. At first Gloria provides a getaway car and a grounded companion on Barbie’s adventure. But this somewhat frazzled mother turns out to be the movie’s secret weapon.

At Mattel Headquarters, Barbie realizes the human who endowed her with melancholy was not Sasha— but Gloria. Gloria, who in her spare time working as the secretary for Mattel’s CEO, doodles new Barbie outfits and contemplates her life so far, and what awaits her. Gloria has accumulated wisdom. She expresses herself, her world, through art. And most pertinently, she is beginning to face her own mortality.

Mortality has never looked so real for Barbie as when a chase sequence begins, demanding everything that Barbie has learned of the real world up to now. She seeks refuge in a surprisingly domestic office on the seventeenth floor. There she meets a dignified biddy, played with wry humor by Rhea Perlman. “Call me Ruth.” Ruth gives Barbie a reprieve from the chase, and a getaway out the back door. And that’s it for Ruth.

Or is it?

Ruth wears pearls; Gloria wears a wedding ring; Sasha wears trendy trinkets.

A sharp eye could detect that Gerwig is now showing her hand— with a maiden, a mother, and a crone, she is introducing Barbie-the-Stereotype to the Triple Goddess Archetype.

Archetype, in the Jungian sense, refers to an image or idea that is so prevalent in the culture that it can be recognized across time, around the world. Archetypes precede stereotypes; archetypes are flexible while stereotypes are flat.

A side note, my friend who teaches religious studies would like to remind you that the “Triple Goddess” idea was not so much codified as invented by Robert Graves. Furthermore, I have no idea if Gerwig was deliberately using this imagery. But let me finish my say. Like using the square root of negative one— it may not be precisely real, but we can reach some interesting new heights with this in the equation.

The three characters I have named each have a place in the Triple Goddess schemata as mapped onto the Barbie movie. Sasha’s place in the movie is the Maiden, who is busy making her own identity and contemplating who she might be. As the movie goes on, Sasha falls out of focus, as Barbie’s journey of discovery far eclipses hers. But Sasha has left her mark on Barbie, taught her something about becoming an individual. The next teacher is Gloria.

Gloria, the Mother juggling the weight of the world, proves to be the salvation of Barbie Land. Gloria understands the contradictory, multifaceted pressures that come with being a woman living under patriarchy. It’s Gloria’s words that can break individual Barbies out of their Ken-imposed bimbo-catatonia. Gloria’s indomitable sense of self is what lets the Barbies remember who they really are— and it would have been impossible had Gloria not been a mother, a woman of lived experience, a woman of a certain age.

Barbie and her friends take the lessons Gloria has imparted, and they carry these lessons into the Scouring of Barbie Land. And believe me, the Kens get off a lot easier than did Saruman. When the world comes back into alignment, it seems like an arrangement everyone will like. The Kens are easily forgiven, the humans can make their way back to humdrum Los Angeles. Weird Barbie has been embraced into the fold. Every doll is happy to be returned to their original Dream Houses and begin the Perfect Barbie Day all over again.

Everyone except Stereotypical Barbie. What will become of her?

Enter Ruth, tottering along the path in heels and a tasteful blue dress. She reveals her true identity: Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie. The creator deity of Barbie Land, who wants a little chat. Arm-in-arm, Barbie and Ruth leave behind everyone else to come to a dreamlike white void. The crossroads of time, between real and plastic, toy or self.

Despite being the creator deity, Ruth isn’t here to impose commandments. The choice of where does Barbie go now? She tells Barbie, that is up to you.

And that— whether Gerwig meant it intentionally or not— is a perfect illustration of the third place in the Triple Goddess schemata. The Crone, the Elder One, Grandmother, Wisewoman— she meets you at the crossroads. She tells you the truth. She gives you the tools to radically transform yourself and your life. And she leaves the choice with you.

The “stinger” of the movie has Gloria’s family see Barbie off on her way to a very important appointment. Barbie, wearing practical sandals, heads up alone. She talks to a receptionist, and for the first time, she gives her name as Barbara Millicent Roberts. The last gift from the Crone: Barbie’s true name. Now Barbie is bound in time with the rest of us, and Margot Robbie absolutely sells the erstwhile doll’s delight at her new state of being. Aging and loving, growing, changing, and menstruating— because Barbie is at the gynecologist’s office.

I wonder how people will regard this film decades down the line.

Come what may, I say, as the curtains ripple with a breeze; every day it’s heavier, my fear of what the climate breakdown will bring.

Come what may, as the media gossip machine could turn on Gerwig, and Margot Robbie will never be this young again anyway.

Come what may, we’re still bleeding from the wounds inflicted by Covid, and who knows what’s coming next. But this movie screams defiantly that WE ARE ALIVE and it is a GOOD AND GRAND THING TO BE ALIVE. We’ll always have Barbie.

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether Gerwig’s Barbie movie will actually stand the test of time, whether it will become a classic, respected film or a peculiar curiosity in the history of pop culture. I think this movie will remain liked, if only for how poignant its musings on aging will become with the passage of time. And certainly, it marks a high point in female-focused pop culture, where women at all stages of life are respected and honored as guides. Let’s see what Gerwig does next.