Barbie Movie: A Kabbalistic Retelling of the Garden of Eden Story?
Or the feminine version of "The Hero's Journey?" The Barbie movie explores some deeply esoteric issues in a very interesting way.
There was an interesting debate last year about whether the Barbie movie had a secretly dissident message, an interpretation for which people like Aly Dee argued (see her review here), or whether it was just run-of-the-mill woke slop, which is what folks like Critical Drinker condemned it as. My daughter saw it and said she thought it satirized girlbossy feminism. It’s usually the sign of a good movie when people can intelligently disagree about its meaning. I finally got around to watching it last week, and I was pleasantly surprised, not by any political message, but by the very interesting ways the movie explores esoteric spiritual ideas — I’m pretty sure that between the writers (Jenny Bicks, Laurie MacDonald, and Walter Parkes) and the director (Greta Gerwig), someone is deep into the mysteries of Kabbala. To steal a phrase from Owen Benjamin, there’s some legit gravy in the Barbie movie.
Of course, to steal another phrase from Owen Benjamin, I also have “some serious gay to pay away” after watching this movie. There’s no overtly gay messaging, although there is a scene where two Ken’s argue about “beaching off,” and there is a trans Barbie (not identified as such, but sticking out like a sore thumb despite the makeup-artist wizardry and other Hollywood magic employed to subvert Mother Nature). Instead of anything overt, the gayness of the movie really comes from the Ken’s being an overly sensitive male who has been thoroughly feminized by his society, but this is not portrayed in a positive light. True to life, the females do not respect the feminized males — and this issue with earning respect turns into a major plot point later in the movie, as Ken must learn how to be a man in order to earn respect from Barbie. Ken’s initial state of feminized degradation comes across as being so ridiculous, that it supports the interpretation that the Barbie movie is satire.
A brief preamble about the political messaging of the Barbie movie and related issues.
Before I get to the esoteric gravy, let me address the Barbie movie’s politics: I am pretty sure that most of the people involved with making it are regular shit-libs when it comes to whom they vote for and which causes they support. They carefully adhered to DEI standards in the movie’s casting, even going so far as to have a “trans Barbie” (mentioned above). There was also an Obese Barbie, I guess to promote a message of body positivity. The girl-power speeches are certainly preposterous enough to be satire, but feminism itself has gotten thoroughly preposterous. The movie just presents postmodern feminism without embellishment, and this is so absurd that it comes across as satire.
Like most of the other fashionably Conformmunist people in Hollywood, the people involved with the Barbie movie probably just haven’t thought all that deeply about their political beliefs. They just recite the same slogans they hear everyone else chanting. But they have thought about what matters most when it comes to art: how to make good art.
If your focus is more on your political messaging than on the quality of your art, your art will suffer for it, regardless of how well thought-out your political beliefs are (though usually the politics in question are ridiculous). But if you instead focus on making great art, your movie can become a cult classic among right-wing dissidents, even if your personal political beliefs are absolute horseshit.
Case in point? John Carpenter, director of They Live. Seriously. The guy whose movie inspired some of the best dissident memes ever. You see John Nada (Roddy Piper’s character) looking through his sunglasses at the not-so-subtle social engineering propaganda behind every billboard and magazine cover, and you get it. You think of all the omnipresent delusional platitudes like “safe and effective” and “threat to our democracy” and “diversity is our strength.” You understand what the movie is saying. But somehow, the guy who made it managed to miss the point of his own movie! According to John Carpenter, They Live is a prophetic warning about the Trump voters in 2020 who refused to stop asking questions and just obey the regime-approved experts, no matter how contradictory the experts’ pronouncements were. You can have delusional politics, yet still tap into something truly inspired as an artist and create a masterpiece that conveys powerful political ideas, just like John Carpenter did with They Live.1
That’s why talented storytellers, like Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote truly great books, like The Sirens of Titan, can also have such stupid shit-lib politics, yet nevertheless convey some profound insights that are entirely consistent with a right-wing worldview.
Anyway, for the purposes of this post, I will mostly ignore the political issues involved in the film. I think the Barbie movie’s real value is in its exploration of esoteric spiritual themes.
Barbie was basically a Kabbalist retelling of the Garden of Eden Story from Eve’s perspective
For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, you can watch the brief trailer below, and then I’ll give my synopsis of the plot interspersed with my analysis. It goes without saying that there will be spoilers, but this is really not one of those movies that is all that big on being suspenseful anyway. I thought the plot was a bit predictable in terms of what happened, but that was part of the film’s charm: how familiar the story felt, once the movie got going. Why did it feel so familiar? It’s basically an esoteric retelling of one of the oldest stories of them all, one that many of us learned as children: the story of Adam and Eve.
The Barbie Movie trailer
Here’s the trailer (see if you can spot Trans Barbie):
My synopsis of the Barbie movie with commentary
Below is my synopsis of the movie along with my commentary. To keep the synopsis and the commentary separate, I will format the synopsis portions as block quotes (even though I’m not quoting the movie or anyone else) and then leave the commentary in regular formatting.
The movie begins with an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey. All we see is a dark void. Then, a barren, rocky, inhospitable world comes into focus. A narrator begins to speak, saying, “Since the beginning of time …” A moment later, we see the first sign of life, a little girl’s shoe. Next, we see a small and seemingly isolated band of little girls playing with primitive dolls (like the apes picking at a pile of bones in 2001). Suddenly, the iconic notes of Thus Spake Zarathustra peal out, and there appears (in the same manner as the black rock in 2001) a gigantic Barbie doll. This spectacle overwhelms the girls, who promptly chimp out and smash their dolls to pieces on the ground.
There are a couple of related things going on in this opening scene. Obviously, this scene is a parody of 2001. But the initial images of an inhospitable planet are also reminiscent of the first chapter of Genesis: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
There are two distinct (though often conflated) creation accounts in Genesis with somewhat conflicting details and timelines. The first, (the Elohist version) from Genesis 1:1 to 2:3, is more cosmic in scope, and the second, (the Yahwist version) from Genesis 2:4 to 2:25, is more anthropomorphic and personal in its depiction of God. The second, also, is where the story of Adam and Eve and the Serpent is told. The opening scenes of Barbie are like that first creation account, cosmic and impersonal. But then the movie shifts into the second creation account, beginning in a world that seems in many ways like the Garden of Eden …
A race of Barbie dolls are living in a utopian realm called “Barbieland.” All the women are called “Barbies,” and all the men are called “Kens.” Every day is the same. Their lives are full of mindless fun with all their friends. The women hold all kinds of important-sounding jobs, but they don’t really do any serious work; they’re like children playing dress-up and pretending to be doctors and pilots and so forth. There’s no need to worry about productivity or competence. There’s no such thing as job-related stress. There are no angry bosses or an impatient customers. “Work” is just a lot of fun and games.
While the women pretend to work, the men just hang out at the beach, play games, and vie for the women’s attention. The relationships between the sexes are romantic but completely non-sexual. The dolls all live in perfect happiness and harmony, and they are magically provided with everything they ever need or want. They have no anxiety about the future and no regrets about the past. They never age, and it seems like they will live forever, in perpetual bliss.
Well, this pretty much sounds like the Garden of Eden, doesn’t it? Nothing is cursed. Everything comes easy. Everyone is safe. A permanent vacation of childish fun without a care in the world. Without any responsibility, without any real challenges, and without any real consequences. There’s no need to change or grow, ever. There’s no concept of “growing up,” and no need to become a man or a woman. The idea of “man” or “woman” is meaningless in Barbieland.
One evening, in the midst of all this frivolous fun, “Stereotypical Barbie” (the main character) finds herself inexplicably wondering about her own mortality. She voices this concern to her friends, but they are appalled that she would even broach the topic of death. Barbie instantly gets the hint and tries to play it off, and to her relief, the party resumes like nothing had ever happened.
And thus the disquieting seed of self-consciousness begins to sprout in her mind. Herman Hesse captures the experience of this process (albeit from the male perspective) perfectly in his novel Demian: that sense of adolescent confusion and longing to return to the way things were, but also knowing that there is no return, that the only way out is through, that one must leave the comforting confines of childhood and forge one’s own identity as one makes one’s way in an alien world that is at once both alluring and menacing.
