The most famous doll of all time, Barbie, steps into the real world in the Barbie by Greta Gerwig.
Do you have any idea about how the Barbie come out? Ruth and Elliot Handler, the creators of Barbie, which have been in our lives for more than half a century, are inspired by their daughter Barbara playing with her paper dolls. Introduced at the New York Toy Fair on March 9, 1959, the Barbie doll was born from the adult dream of a little girl playing with her paper dolls. * According to Ruth, this was Barbara’s way of experiencing the future in a safe way. Over time, these paper dolls became an American dream with their blond hair, blue eyes, thin waist and tall stature.
Far from a real woman’s body, Barbie dolls have been the dolls of a surreal world, designed with pink decors for years, with sloping feet, with thin waists that are impossible for normal body sizes, and always created to wear high heels. What if Barbie, who lives in a wonderland in our imagination, one day had flat soles, the water in her shower started to run cold, and at a party filled with dozens of Barbies and Kens, “Have you ever think about death?” What if he asked a question about real life? Director Greta Gerwig takes Barbie, whom we all used to dream of in a wonderland from childhood games, out of her magical universe and welcomes her to the real world.
Greta Gerwig, who we know with her adaptation of Little Women with feminist perception, also deals with Barbie from a feminist point of view, as we understand from the trailer. Some of the Barbies we see in the world of Barbie are doctors, some of them a Nobel Prize winner Barbie, but all Kens in the world are the same and do not differ at any point.
Greta Gerwig, who we see in the trailer, takes Barbie out of her usual pink box and leaves it on the streets of the real world. Even the fact that a man is exposed to a disturbing prank on the streets of Los Angeles as soon as he enters the real world is a clue that even a female figure of Gerwig coming out of a toy box will bring to the screen all kinds of difficulties that will befall him in the world.
I cannot wait for watching a Barbie story going through existential crises while I wait to see Barbie in the vision, in which Margot Robbie, who brought Barbie to life, appeared on the Los Angeles beaches with her iconic Chanel designs. Really, should Barbie take off her high heels and travel the streets of the real world to write her own story or return to her pink box?
*Dilara Buket Tatar, “From Modernization to Postmodernization Barbie”, Hacettepe Law Faculty Magazine, 2016.
