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‘Let’s Go Party!’ Barbie Readies To Paint World Pink

Australian actress Margot Robbie poses on the pink carpet upon arrival for the European premiere of “Barbie” in central London on July 12, 2023. – Hollywood A-listers have been walking red carpets in hot pink, glitter is back, and companies from The Gap to Burger King are doing rose-colored collaborations: “Barbie” mania is everywhere as the hotly anticipated film hits theaters worldwide. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)

The globe is about to be rocked by a pink tsunami when “Barbie” – Hollywood’s sarcastic new take on the doll feminists once despised – launches with a massive marketing campaign.

Even an actors’ and writers’ strike couldn’t stop the juggernaut, with the first photographs of stars Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as her square-jawed beau Ken causing a fuchsia frenzy on social media.

With the film hitting theaters in Europe on Wednesday and North America on Friday, anticipation is high for how director and independent film star Greta Gerwig approached the most blatant of corporate product-placement vehicles.

Marchers dressed up to promote the Barbie movie prepare for the start of the Capital Pride Parade in Washington, DC, on June 10, 2023. – Hollywood A-listers have been walking red carpets in hot pink, glitter is back, and companies from The Gap to Burger King are doing rose-colored collaborations: “Barbie” mania is everywhere as the hotly anticipated film hits theaters worldwide. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)

Many people were startled that the famed feminist director of “Little Women,” “Lady Bird,” and “Frances Ha” would be enticed to take on a doll whose body is reported to be so unrealistic that if she were a real woman, she would be unable to walk.

But it’s evident from the trailer that Gerwig’s take on Barbie is far from serious.

She has her heroine kick off her high heels and put on a pair of sensible Birkenstock sandals to leave Barbie Land behind and plunge into the real world after a few idyllic “life in plastic” days with the other Barbies in their bubblegum Californian world.

With Ryan Gosling camping it up as a breezily sexist Ken barechested under a fur coat, the two go AWOL, to the horror of toymaker Mattel.

“If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you,” the trailer proclaims.

“The movie is packing so much in,” Robbie told AFP on the pink carpet of the London premiere.

‘Full of controversy’

“There is so much joy, it’s hilarious, it’s very clever and it has a lot to say,” said the Australian actress, who is also one of the film’s producers. “It’s a crazy ride and a visual spectacle. I cannot think of another movie that is like it.”

While critics say Barbie has brainwashed generations of young girls with an unattainable ideal of beauty and thinness, others see her as a figure of female emancipation through figures like Astronaut Barbie and Barbie the surgeon.

Striking SAG-AFTRA members picket with striking WGA (Writers Guild of America) workers near a billboard for the Barbie movie outside Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California, on July 17, 2023. (Photo by MARIO TAMA / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)

Gerwig, 39, said her approach to tackling Barbie was “by not denying that she’s full of controversy.

“In some ways Barbie has been ahead of culture, in some ways she has been behind it,” she told AFP. ” But she has definitely been a topic of conversation for 64 years.”

Chinese-born Simu Liu, who plays one of the many Kens in the movie, said he admired how Gerwig “doesn’t shy away from some of the criticisms of Barbie, some of the very valid criticisms of body image and of diversity… but still wraps it in an era of optimism and hope.”

Issa Rae, of “Awkward Black Girl” fame, who plays one of the Barbies, said despite all the “negative associations”, for her Barbie went back to core memories of her childhood.

Girl power makeover 

“I think about telling stories with Barbies, making Barbies kiss and thinking about all the different questions I had about life, posing that onto Barbie,” she told AFP. “So people are very protective of her in that way.”

Gerwig — who wrote her first hits about New York life with her partner, “Marriage Story” director Noah Baumbach — is next to take on another childhood cultural colossus by adapting the “Chronicles of Narnia” for Netflix.

While Barbie’s creators Mattel seems pleased to be portrayed as cartoon baddies in the film’s trailer, they are banking on the blockbuster giving their iconic doll some “girl power” cred as she confronts patriarchy.

However, despite Barbie’s Dayglo optimism, Mattel’s dolls division’s turnover plummeted by 9% last year.

And it has not been easy to erase old sexist attitudes. Barbie, who had been uniformly blonde and white for decades, has been undergoing a massive makeover since 2016, with 175 distinct models reflecting all colors and body shapes — “curvy, tall, and petite” — as well as dolls with physical limitations.

Written by PH

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