It's Okay Not To Like Barbie

The Only Barbie Review You Need, from the Only Reviewer Who Hasn't Seen It

Almost two decades ago, reflecting on the desire of right wingers to be accepted by the cool kids, particularly when it comes to the embrace of worthless cultural fads, Mark Steyn wrote that “the National Review countdown of the All-Time Hot 100 Conservative Gangsta Rap Tracks can't be far away.” Steyn was arguing that rather than beg for table scraps from pop culture’s toxic feast, conservatives should be unafraid to turn away from that poison and return to celebrating great art aimed towards the true, the good, and the beautiful. Many conservatives have learned that lesson since, as demonstrated by the nonstop growth of classical education: rather than accept a watered-down version of the public school curricula – a poison pill with a little less cyanide than the one the state hands out – families are flocking to institutions that provide a boldly countercultural alternative.  

Nonetheless, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, so every time some shiny liberal Subaru comes driving by, the conservative temptation to chase after it remains. Our current Barbie moment is a case in point. Greta Gerwig’s film has become a box office phenom. Rather than take the L and admit there remains much work to be done deprogramming secular feminism’s victims from all Miss Havisham’s bitter lies, many conservatives decided to move into pink dreamhouses of their own. The Federalist published the novel argument that the film cannot be bad because people like it, and people don’t like bad things – certainly news to Cardi B’s ever-growing piles of wet a** money. Elsewhere, Catholic intellectuals produced Straussian interpretations of Gerwig’s work, arguing the true, hidden meaning was profoundly conservative – and that Trans Barbie was oh-so-cleverly featured to subvert our culture’s pro-trans narrative. Sure, and Butterfly McQueen’s notoriously grating portrayal of Prissy in Gone with the Wind was actually a parody of the white viewer’s innate racism. Layers upon layers, man. Before you too find yourself celebrating trans inclusion as a win for Jesus, it might be time to realize that, when it comes to cultural fads, it’s nobler to take the loss than to live a lie.

The uniting feature of Christian pro-Gerwig commentary appears to be not knowing what time it is. Conservative Barbie fans point to the film’s concluding scene – at the gynecologist – as proof of the work’s ultimately pro-nature, pro-family theme. This is an understandable mistake: like me, I’m sure many of these church-going commentators encounter the gynecologist primarily in the months before she helps deliver their latest child. In their minds, an OB-Gyn is a walking metaphor for the miracle of childbirth. Yet in today’s world, particularly the world inhabited by young secular women, the gynecologist is in fact the prized gateway to everlasting sterility. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology is one of the nation’s leading pro-abortion voices, gynecologists perform the overwhelming majority of the nation’s abortions, and even gynecologists who don’t perform abortions themselves routinely push The Pill despite its deadly dangers. I’m sorry, conservative Barbie fans, but this ain’t your grandma’s OB: as I have written before, today’s medical establishment would rather have you barren and suicidal than changing diapers. King Lear’s vengeful curse – “into her womb convey sterility!” – is now your doctor’s sincere prayer. By film’s end, Barbie’s lady parts may finally be real, yet with the help of the gynecologist, she will ensure that they – like those of innumerable women buying tickets these past few weeks – will remain just as unnecessary as her old, plastic ones. Thanks to the God-defying miracle of modern medicine, we can all have nude blobs now.       

I’m all about having brainless fun at the movies. Let he who has not bought tickets to watch Tom Cruise ride a motorcycle off a cliff cast the first stone. But somehow I don’t think Cruise stopping mid-stunt to launch a five minute sermon on the joys of Scientology would be so happily overlooked by most critics; I know it would have soured my filmgoing experience. What a pitiful sign of weakness it is, an indicator of wholeheartedly buying into one’s own second-class citizenship, when our conservative thought leaders expect us to shrug off yet another angry secular lecture and “a little gratuitous” male bashing because there are some funny one-liners involved. Could you imagine corporate media critics behaving as charitably towards, say, a romantic comedy with a Gospel message? We need not speculate: a completely apolitical movie exposing the horrors of sex-trafficking was just savaged by every leftist newspaper on the off chance that its audience might believe that Jeffrey Epstein was a real person or something. That degree of sensitivity to potential political messaging in every work of art is unattractive indeed, and a sure sign of living in totalitarian times. On the flip side, however, turning the world’s blindest eye to a film’s blatantly political messaging is just as much a sign of living under totalitarianism – in fact, it’s even worse, for it shows that the people have so thoroughly bought into the propaganda they no longer recognize it as such. In the case of corporate media critics savaging Sound of Freedom, the thought-policing is coming from outside of us, from our powerful societal overlords. When conservatives blithely overlook the hatred aimed at us in the leftist agitprop we consume, however, when we start believing in our hearts that two plus two really does make five, our wannabe tyrants can finally relax the boot on our necks because we are eagerly oppressing ourselves. Big Brother would smile.

That might be a hard argument to follow, so let me offer an illustration: imagine your daughter is being bullied at school because of her freckles. The popular kids won’t let her sit with them, they call her freckle-face, they send her home daily in tears. Then a week goes by and you find out that all of a sudden she has newfound popularity, she’s sitting at the cool kids’ table. What changed? Turns out, every morning she has been applying globs and globs of makeup to conceal every single freckle. Is that a good thing? Will you be proud of her for covering up the beautiful skin God gave her, in order to fit in with bullies? I would hope not! Well, in this illustration, Christians trying to like all the movies people who hate them make are like that poor girl concealing her true beauty – they have internalized the oppression. The bullies don’t have to mock her anymore - they have won so thoroughly she now hates her true self. Guys, we’re in negative world now, we’re not going to fit in. In fact, considering that it is negative world, if you do find yourself easily fitting in that’s probably a sign you’re doing it wrong…

Steyn was right, as usual, all those years ago. Look to build, or resurrect, real culture, not simp, Ken-like, after liberal fads. After all, what does a winning strategy look like in a Godless anti-culture – proving that we can degrade women just as well as the cool guys can? Having fornication celebrated as enthusiastically at conservative prayer breakfasts as at liberal pro-abortion rallies? Cheering on disgusting pimps because they’re ‘our’ disgusting pimps? Like a youth pastor a decade past his prime trying to ‘rap’ with embarrassed teens, such efforts simply degrade everyone involved while doing nothing to advance any cause. After all, from the perspective of the cultural consumer, why go for the half-hearted imitation of degeneracy when liberals are always happy to provide the real thing?

Before Gerwig employed genitally mutilated Barbies, she went out of her way to spiritually mutilate Little Women. Among other thoroughly anti-Christian edits, she stripped Louisa May Alcott’s work of its many mentions of The Pilgrim’s Progress. Given this hostility to Bunyan’s masterpiece, Gerwig is likely unimpressed by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s modern update of the tale, “The Celestial Railroad.” Hawthorne’s short story parodies pilgrims-in-name-only who expect to reach the City of God without giving up any of the worldly luxuries of man. Gerwig’s conservative fans would do well to read it before they continue in their quest to claim America’s degraded popular culture for their own. Hawthorne’s message is not hidden and applies just as much in our day as in his: if you are heart-set on following the same tracks as the Godless world around you, don’t be surprised if you end up at the same fiery destination. Don’t put your faith in Gerwigian gnosticism. Look instead to the leaders building genuine alternatives. It’s hard work, but it’s a lot better than trying to win the culture by pretending every loss is actually a victory in a hyper realistic Mission-Impossible-style mask of defeat.