Charmaine Peters

Barbie and the real world: Feminist conversations on and off screen

La Trobe University, Australia

This paper examines how art reflects life in Barbie (Dir. Greta Gerwig, 2023) in conversations held on-screen in Barbieland and off-screen in the real, ‘real world’. Movies and scripted television programs consistently act to reflect and/or subvert the cultural values of the era of their creation. The release of Barbie ignites cultural arguments related to feminism and patriarchy and their iterations in contemporary society. The film acknowledges the historically controversial nature of Barbie (the doll) to provoke discussion concerning contradictions existing within feminism and patriarchy. In this way, Barbie’s (Margot Robbie) existential crisis could be interpreted as echoing the dynamics and discussions occurring in contemporary society in relation to matters of gender and equity.

In Barbie, the jokes are not on the individual male, female, or ‘other’, but rather on the patriarchal structure itself. The contrasting settings of Barbieland’s musical-fantasy bright, saturated colours, and the real world’s drab, muted backdrop work to balance the levity and gravity of the story’s conversations. In the film’s pivotal scene, ‘real world’ character Gloria (America Ferrera) delivers the message that breaks the cognitive dissonance spell the Barbies are under in Barbieland, empowering them to restore their female agency in a patriarchal system.

The aim of this paper is to continue these conversations to explore the ways feminist discussions succeed in and beyond the script to deliver a punchline and not a sucker punch!

Charmaine Peters holds a Master in Screenwriting (UniMelb) and is a PhD candidate in the discipline of screenwriting. She resides in Melbourne, Australia. Her practice-led research concerns defining the female comedic voice in Australian television. Her research queries include examining how the use of humour allows for uncomfortable truths to be voiced with comic relief from the female perspective. Her article ‘Boxed in: Covid-19, comedy, and a captive audience’ is published in TEXT Journal.