Barbie: cult or trash?

The most famous fashion doll in the world has for a few days also been a planetary phenomenon on the big screen in terms of expectations, hype and takings. Much has been said and written by more or less illustrious pens and much will still be said and written: extreme feminism, accusation against patriarchy, commercial relaunch, promotional policy in favor of the giant Mattel, sisterhood, sexism, gender equality, banal criticism clichés and so on.

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Starting from the assumption that any analysis cannot fail to take into account the writer's point of view and thought, it is clear that Gerwig's film is impregnated with these themes, like with sold-out pink paint for the sets, throughout Gerwig's film which – we must remember it – it is Gerwig, one of the most talented directors and included by the Times among the 100 most influential people in the world, in short, she is not the latest arrival and if she decides to shoot and shoot a film about Barbie, well, it is clear that it won't be a film for nostalgic girls or adults. And in fact the youngest spectators are disappointed and bored and many of their mothers are left with a bad taste in their mouths. As Millenials who fully experienced the nineties and the Barbie jubilation with all the playsets, co-stars and various accessories, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that to grasp the three-dimensionality of Gerwig's story you must have lived through those years and in those years.

Years in which the world of Barbie, Barbieland, had its unconditional reflection in the real world and really was the litmus test of the economic and social status of the girls who owned it. A sort of hierarchy was created that started from the lowest rung of those who owned a basic Barbie and gradually rose with respect to the number of versions of Barbie in possession, of accompanying objects, of houses, villas, cars, motorcycles, planes, friends and friends of the doll and then branded accessories such as sweatshirts, tracksuits, backpacks and the weekly magazine on newsstands and much more.

Barbie was more a part of the real world than one would think. And Gerwig knows it, she proves it and shows it. The bridge, the gateway between the world of humans and the pink world of the perfect doll was all in the hands of the imaginative power of the play of the girls who held the doll and who in that exact moment of serious play (children when they play don't pretend but 'I am') really, really, thanks to the imagination, a little girl, exactly like Barbie, could be anyone she wanted. The dark side of the moon of this positive aspect as creative manifested itself entirely in disappointment, in the disenchantment of things, events and the future, with respect to those projections of childhood dreams which, just like games, made everything possible.

The disillusionment, the tear in the sky are not faults to be charged either to the nostalgic gaze, or to any sibylline and wrong ideas transmitted by a doll or by what she wanted or not to symbolize. Disillusionment is the price you pay growing up and Gerwig knows this too. In fact, beyond all the readings for and against machismo or feminism, pink or black, man or woman, beyond labels and stereotypes, what emerges from this comparison between parallel and distant worlds, which Gerwig returns for through an iconic doll, it is all the beauty and pain of life that the doll itself discovers and which, by experiencing it, it no longer wants to give up. Because a perfect, glossy world, always at the top of the performance, has no flavour. You don't feel the sweetness of plastic toast at breakfast, nor the salty dry tears shed. Feet always on tiptoes don't allow you to feel the earth, rootedness, sensations, or stumbles and falls. Because living forever is not a superpower but a sentence.

Above all, in all that idyll, the most perfect of imperfections and the most painful of passions would be missing: love. And love is what would allow Ken to exist outside of Barbie's gaze to which he longs and on which he depends, it is love for oneself, for what one is beyond everything and everyone, true nature, the genuine one whatever color it is. Love and life have no meaning without time. It's the time that gives value, the time that doesn't add up and doesn't repeat itself, the time to grow up, the time to make mistakes, the time for 'steady' mothers to see how far their children have come, the time that goes on in a single direction, forward, time which, in the last instance, has to deal with death, with finiteness.

If Barbieland goes into crisis impacting the real world and not vice versa, it is because real life made up of unexpected events and changes has a charm to which even perfect beings succumb and which for this reason, faced with the possibility of a choice, would leave the worlds of plastic to become living beings.

Life is perfect in her imperfection and this too, especially this, Gerwig knows and hers Barbie