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.

The Barbie Movie was basically an introduction to the mysteries of Kabbala for unsuspecting normies.

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.

Barbie starts off with an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey

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.

Later that night, Barbie has difficulty sleeping, and in the morning, she wakes up tired and anxious. The usual routines don’t feel natural to her anymore, and things begin going awry. For the first time in her life, she feels awkward and out of place and starts questioning her reality. To satisfy her curiosity, she goes to meet the “Weird Barbie.”

The visit to Weird Barbie has a similar vibe to Eve’s visit with the serpent — or to Neo’s visit with Morpheus in The Matrix (there’s even a red-pill/blue-pill scene in Barbie, but with different kinds of shoes instead of different color pills). Like the serpent and Morpheus, Weird Barbie has secret knowledge about how the world really works, and like Eve and Neo, Stereotypical Barbie is presented with a momentous choice: blissful ignorance or . . . the Truth. Of course, as Weird Barbie makes clear, there really isn’t a choice, because once you allow yourself to formulate the question in your mind and seriously entertain it, there’s no going back. Oh sure, you can shrink away from the Truth and slink back to your old ways and live like a coward, but it won’t be the same. You will have changed. You will have seen too much. No matter how convincingly you pretend, you will know that you’re living a lie, and your soul will suffer for it.

A Brief Digression about the Garden of Eden Story in Genesis

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made . . . And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Genesis 3: 1-5 (KJV).

This is a strange passage. In the first creation account in Genesis, God (the Elohim) said, “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Genesis 1: 29 (emphasis added). So there is no forbidden fruit. But then in the second creation account, God (Yahweh) tells the man, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” It seems that God changed the rules … or is it the even same God?

Consider also that in the first creation account, God created humans, male and female, in his image and then deputized them to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, and to have dominion over all the animals. But then in the second account, God created a human male without a female, confined him to a garden, filled the garden with a bunch of animals, and then finally created a woman because the man was not faring well alone. If these different accounts are about the actions of different gods, it seems like the first God gave his people more autonomy and expected them to do great things, while the second god treated his creatures like zoo animals. Very interesting. Maybe these two distinct creation accounts arose because, in addition to there being two separate creators, there were also two different types of humans that got made?

I bring all that up just to say that there’s a lot of ambiguity, including moral ambiguity, in the Garden of Eden story. But whether the Garden of Eden was a zoo or a nursery, there was something missing. Like an indoor cat vs an outdoor cat, the humans could stay in Eden and get safety and security, or they could leave Eden and get to explore and hunt and live — and become real men and women, responsible for their own lives and for the lives of their children, rather than remaining perpetual children in adult bodies. Indoor cats live longer, but outdoor cats live more fully. Am I being like Yahweh when I keep my cats indoors? Or when I let my dogs go outside but keep them in a fenced-in backyard? If they manage to escape, are they evil? Do they and all of their descendants deserve to be cursed?

Maybe the story is intended as a noble lie? Imagine if dogs could understand English, and you could tell your dog stories about the Garden of Dogs and about a wicked dog that disobeyed his master and got cursed for it. Maybe you could scare your dog into staying in the yard instead of digging under the fence and exploring the world outside. And maybe you’d have good motives; maybe you want to protect your dog from danger if he gets out and wanders the streets alone, or from getting picked up by Animal Control and locked in the pound. But then, if I am having to restrain my dogs’ true nature in order to protect them, am I really their creator? (And if I am, why did I give them a nature that is at odds with the environment I created for them?) Did Yahweh breed humans like humans bred dogs? Sounds crazy, but the rabbit hole goes deep on this one …

Anyway, back to the Barbie movie …

And now, back to the Barbie Movie

I guess one upshot of the Garden of Eden story is that some humans simply aren’t content to stay in the Garden forever, just like some dolls aren’t content to stay in Barbieland forever. In all the stories about forbidden knowledge, people’s curiosity always gets the better of them. They go exploring, and they get more than they bargained for.

Weird Barbie answers Stereotypical Barbie’s questions and gives her a brief overview of the bizarre metaphysics of Barbieland and its relationship to the “real world.” Weird Barbie then urges Stereotypical Barbie to set off on a pilgrimage to the “real world” in order to connect with her counterpart there.

This is an interesting idea, that there are different manifestations of our existence across different dimensions, and that they are somehow connected. Barbie lives in Barbieland, yet she also has a physical presence in the real world, and what happens to her avatar in the real world effects her in Barbieland. I am reminded of the New Testament passage where St. Paul tells the Ephesian believers that they have already been seated together with Christ in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2: 6), even though they are still physically present in this world. Are we — or at least some of us (i.e., those of us who are not NPCs/Hylics) — somehow hyperdimensional beings? Very interesting. Anyway, back to the Barbie movie …

Stereotypical Barbie then travels to the real world via a series of magical vehicles, but halfway there, she discovers that a stereotypical Ken has followed her as a stowaway.

Interestingly, in both Genesis and Barbie, it’s the female who goes off the reservation first, and the male who follows her lead. In the journey from childhood, through adolescence, and on to adulthood, girls typically mature faster than boys, and what motivates the boys to become men is, in many ways, a desire to get women.

Barbie and Ken have a series of misadventures in the real world (the Los Angeles metro area — possibly circa the early 1990s based on various contextual clues, though the precise year is never made explicit), and hilarity more or less ensues. Barbie occasionally experiences some anomaly that provokes real insight and increased self-awareness. In one scene, she encounters an old woman at a bus stop and finds herself puzzling over why she inexplicably finds the old woman so beautiful. In other scenes, she detaches briefly from her surroundings and observes the world around her with a sense of childlike wonder and amusement.

To find her counterpart in the real world, Barbie eventually decides to be still and meditate, and she has a mystical vision of the girl she is connected to in the real world. She approaches the girl, named Sasha, while Sasha is sitting in her junior high school cafeteria alongside all her snarky friends. Sasha rebuffs and insults Barbie, to the amusement and laughter of Sasha’s friend. She deconstructs and lambasts Barbie’s entire identity, leaving Barbie confused and heartbroken.

This more or less represents the experience of leaving childhood and embarking on the journey of inner and outer exploration as an adolescent. There’s the social dynamics of junior high and high school and navigating that. There’s the “real world” into which you can make limited excursions as a teenager and either get into trouble or start taking on adult responsibilities by working and paying your own way. It’s all part of the necessary but often messy process of forging your own identity.

Meanwhile, the drone-like corporate executives at Mattel find out about one of their dolls being in the real world, and they try to capture her to prevent her from damaging their brand’s public image. One of the lower employees at Mattel, named Gloria, turns out to be Sasha’s mother, and eventually Barbie realizes that it is Gloria, not Sasha, who was her true counterpart in the real world. The Mattel executives corner Barbie and try to convince her to just “get back in the box,” so that everything will go back to normal, but Barbie makes a break for it and manages to escape.

This is also part of the process of forging your own identity: other people try to convince you to take on an identity that works for them, but maybe not for you. Maybe it’s the identity of a peer group, which may be helpful in some ways but harmful in others. Maybe it’s an identity tied to your family’s ethnic or religious history. Maybe it’s the propaganda and social engineering campaigns designed to turn you into a good American consumer of shit you don’t need at prices you can’t afford. While you’re still soft in the head and lack the life experience and self-awareness to really know who you are or what you’re about, you have to navigate all these various identities being thrust upon you. Some aspects of those various identities are helpful, while others are harmful, and many of the people pushing one or more identities onto you have mixed motives, some better than others, but most of them are thinking about your identity through the lens of how your identity impacts them.

How much easier would it be if you would just “get back in the box,” right? Many people do, and many others never leave the box in the first place. But some of us realize that the box represents spiritual suicide. For better or worse, there’s no cookie-cutter pre-packaged identity that you can just adopt as your own, not if you’re going to fully develop as a human being.

While fleeing the corporate drones, Barbie has a quasi-religious encounter with her creator, a grandmotherly woman named Ruth Handler (based on the real-life inventor of the Barbie doll). While drinking tea with Ruth, Barbie has a mystical vision of all the mystery and magic of Life’s rich pageant.

Ruth Handler is an imperfect creator, kind of like (if we’re being honest) the depiction of Yahweh in the second creation account.

Another brief digression about the Genesis creation accounts …

Whereas the first creation account depicts a more masculine creator, who tells his people to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and to have dominion over everything (a God who wants a conquering people), the second creation account seems to depict a more jealous and envious god who comes across as suspiciously feminine sometimes (a god who wants a subversive people). Consider Yahweh’s interactions with people throughout Genesis, both the types of people he (she?) interacts with and the types of behavior he (she?) rewards. For example, Jacob and Esau. Esau is a masculine guy, a real outdoorsman and a skilled hunter. Jacob is a mama’s boy who stays indoors with his mama and gets what he wants by engaging in the kind of sneaky deception and mind-games that his mama teaches him. Jacob is a liar and a sneak, beloved by his trickster mother. Esau is a man’s man, beloved by his father. Guess which one Yahweh chooses to bless and elevate and rename “Israel?”

Of course, there is another idea. God created humans in his image, male and female. The ultimate true God contains perfect masculinity and perfect femininity in perfect harmony. Somehow, the masculine and the feminine got separated, and like magnets with opposite polarity, they intensely attract each other and the resulting tension between them can create some powerful energy. Maybe the first creation account shows the masculine dimension (aeon) of God’s nature, and the second creation account depicts the feminine dimension (aeon)? Maybe some of these biblical passages symbolize the division and ultimate reconciliation of these divine masculine and feminine energies? And maybe there are good and bad ways to bring the masculine and feminine together (e.g., the trans Barbie), so there are important warnings contained in these stories as well? The Bible is a fascinating book …

Anyway, back to the Barbie movie …

The synopsis and analysis of Barbie continues …

Guided by her creator, Barbie manages to escape the Mattel building and return to Barbieland, accompanied by Gloria and Sasha.

This is all part of the hero’s journey. Barbie made a secret journey² and returned with mystical insights. Now, she has to share those insights with others.

When they arrive back in Barbieland, they discover that Ken got there ahead of them and brought back the secret of the “patriarchy,” which he taught to all the other dolls. Ken saw men getting respect in the real world, and it inspired him. Unfortunately, Ken is still very immature, and in order to get this respect for himself, he has embraced a ridiculous, one-dimensional caricature of 1980s action-hero masculinity as his ideal. The Barbies, on the other hand, have all been brainwashed into becoming Stepford-style girlfriends, mindlessly fawning over the Kens.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Genesis 3: 16 (KJV).

Ken has used the knowledge he gained in the real world to return to Barbieland and manipulate the innocent Barbies into practically worshiping him as a god. There is a dark way to use esoteric insights about human nature and higher spiritual realities. A useful truth that cuts through the delusions is Jesus’ proclamation in John 10: 10: “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

Stereotypical Barbie tries to convince the other Barbies to be re-establish their former matriarchy, but she repeatedly fails and eventually gives up in despair. She goes back to Weird Barbie’s house to mope. Gloria starts soliloquizing about all the impossibly conflicting demands that women have to live up to in the real world. This rant somehow inspires Stereotypical Barbie to get back up and try to become a real woman. Somehow, one of the brainwashed Barbies, who happened to overhear Gloria’s speech, is instantly delivered from her brainwashing.

Gloria makes some legitimate complaints in her speech. Our culture is psychotic and anti-human nature, and many of its demands are harmful and ridiculously contradictory for women — and also for men, because the social engineers hate both men and women and don’t want anyone to live healthy, happy, fulfilled lives and form strong, stable marriages and flourishing families. Why? Because the social engineers are miserable demons. And also because healthy people are more difficult to manipulate and control. Thus, the social engineers believe it is better to keep the masses sick and needy and confused and weak.

Listening to Gloria’s rant reminds me of Owen Benjamin’s bit from the track “How to Love” (from his album “Big Pianist”), in which he humorously sings about the impossibly contradictory expectations women have of men:

Gloria, Sasha, Stereotypical Barbie, and Weird Barbie go on a crusade to de-program all the brainwashed Barbies and use their feminine wiles to regain the upper hand in their relationships with the Kens. They soon learn to exploit the Kens’ petty egos and jealousies to get what they want from them and to keep the Kens under their control.

Another brief digression about feminine deception in the Bible

This reminds me of how Jacob followed his mother’s advice and successfully manipulated his father Isaac and his brother Esau — and how Yahweh blessed him for it. That’s the dark side of femininity: the power to subvert via mind-games and deceit. A society that is too feminine — to wit, one that is controlled by feminine deceivers like Jacob — may be prone to this kind of dysfunction. Also, contrast Jesus’ description of himself as “the Truth” (John 14:6) who sets people free (John 8:32), with Yahweh’s propensity for deception, and for rewarding deceivers. Why did Jesus tell Yahweh’s followers that their spiritual father was “the devil” and that this devil was a congenital liar and the father of lies? (John 8:44.) Maybe the God Jesus represents is someone other than Yahweh? (Just something to think about…)

Anyway, back to the Barbie movie.

This conflict between Barbie and Ken causes Ken to have an identity crisis. Barbie encourages him in his journey of self-discovery, as a man in his own right. Barbie then has another encounter with her creator, Ruth Handler.

Ruth gives Barbie a mystical vision of Life’s rich pageant in all its messy complexity, the highs and lows, the hopes and fears, triumphs and disappointment, pleasure and pain, etc. Inspired by her experiences, Barbie decides to become a real woman. The movie ends with Barbie standing at the front desk of a gynecologist’s office, checking in for her appointment and giving her name as “Barbara Handler.” She has taken her creator’s name, signifying her new identity.

And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 3: 22-24 (NIV).

Once you leave Eden, there’s no going back, for better and for worse. You have to go all the way and forge your identity as a real man or a real woman.

In Conclusion …

I don’t know that I would call the Barbie movie a truly great movie, but it was a surprisingly good movie. Its interesting exploration of esoteric themes makes it well worth watching. If I was Siskel and Ebert, I would give it a solid one-and-a-half thumbs up.

1. Speaking of the movie They Live, the prediction made by the speaker in this scene at a Bilderberg-style gathering of the elites about what the state of the world would be in 2025 is … unsettling:

2. A song about the “secret journey” phase of the hero’s journey: