“Barbie”… a doll produced by the Mattel toy company. An American businesswoman was inspired by the idea of a famous German doll. The year 1959 witnessed the first launch of the doll on the market, and it remained inspiring girls throughout all these years, as it developed over time to have forty pets and cars. And different jobs, and multiple races, and the manufacturers of Barbie were able to keep pace with the temporal, social, and even intellectual change, so they fought through Barbie racial discrimination, and dealt with motor, mental, and even psychological disabilities by producing dolls that bear these characteristics in the form of “Barbie”, and the march was not disturbed Barbie doll problems, lawsuits and issues.
Today, Barbie has returned once again to enter the world of adults, not children, through the movie, which caused an unprecedented uproar and came out with her name.
Despite making a billion dollars in the first three weeks, the controversy that accompanied it made even those who were not interested in cinema or Barbie seek to watch it.
The reservation expressed by Arab and European countries, in their opinion, is due to its promotion of content that contradicts public roles, and in some of its scenes and dialogues conflicts with religious values in general, with what it carries of promoting homosexuality. The films spread in our Arab and Islamic world far exceed what came in this Barbie movie.
First of all, it should be noted here that censorship, prevention, prohibition, and reservation in the era of technology, the Internet, and cyber openness have become a matter of ridicule and cynicism. In our world today, everything has become available, open, and permissible, and there are hundreds of ways to bypass any attempt to ban or censor.
There are several messages in the film, the most important of which is what appeared at its beginning with young girls playing with infant dolls, where the narrator says at the beginning of the film that the dolls were made in the form of infants to train the young girls in the only task that awaits them in the future, i.e. motherhood, care, home and kitchen affairs, and then a doll comes. Giant plastic Barbie to liberate girls from this role, then the film creates two parallel worlds, a fictional utopia world in which Barbie dolls live in peace, and perform all functions of society such as presidency, science, arts and literature, and a realistic world in which women live, and they perform tasks that come second to what men practice, and between The worlds drawn in the film are carefully closed.
Most of the objectors to the film are those who were aroused by the idea of focusing on the concept of feminism, which has become tyrannical in the whole world. There is no difference between “developed” and “developing” countries, as the details and events of the film lead us to the symbolism of women’s ability to liberate themselves from the prison of traditional roles. But at the same time, the events suggest that the real world leads them to move to new and different prisons that were not made by men this time, but it is fair to mention here that the film did not promote feminism arbitrarily or defiantly, but rather the message was beautiful and directed to modern women in a symbolic way, and this seemed clear in A dialogue witnessed at the end of the film, in which one of the characters says addressing the Barbie doll: “It is impossible to be a woman, you must be something special, but you will always do it the wrong way, be skinny but not be too skinny, do not be skinny at all but be healthy, own Money but don’t ask for it, be bossy but don’t be mean, be a mother but don’t talk about the kids, be a professionally successful woman but kind and caring for others, be nice around men but don’t seduce them” (End).
A dialogue that carries a clear message to all women, that the man is not the equal, but the equal is the catalog to which the woman subjected herself after she was liberated from the man.
The film is controversial in its events, dialogues, and messages, and every viewer extracts a certain idea or symbolism from it, but it may be the boldest film that deals with the issue of feminism in this creative way. , which is what the movie gave us in Barbie the game and Barbie the woman.
* according to “Al-Qabas”
Disclaimer: All published articles represent the opinion of its authors only.
