As I may have said here before, I have probably watched fewer movies than anyone you know. So I don’t often mention them. The two I saw most recently were “My Octopus Teacher” and “Babies,” both of which I’ve enjoyed more than once. I watched “Babies,” a 2010 French documentary, with my four-year-old grandson just last month. Its subjects are four babies in their first year of life, in Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo, and San Francisco.
I very much love that movie, for the meditative and close-up way it shows vastly different styles of mothering across cultures and around the world. I admit, my own style doesn’t exactly fit with any of those shown, but if I had to choose among the four, I feel most akin to the Mongolian way. In any case, all the families in the movie are pretty traditional for the local culture in which they are raising their children.
The contrast between that movie and the current one everyone is talking about, “Barbie,” didn’t cross my mind until I read this article in Salvo Magazine: “Existential Barbie: A World Without Love is Never Kenough,” by Annie Brownell Crawford. The author starts with a brief introduction:
“The plot begins when Barbie suddenly starts thinking about death, her feet fall flat, and she discovers cellulite on her thighs. To solve her existential crisis, Barbie travels to the real world with her unwanted Ken tagging along. When she arrives in California, Barbie is shocked to discover a world of exaggerated patriarchy where men think of her as an object and girls hate her for her beauty. Here, as the teen character Sasha explains, ‘Men hate women, and women hate women.’”
Crawford notes that “the film moves chaotically between satire and sincerity,” and she wouldn’t be quick to draw conclusions from the above statement alone, but there are reasons to think it was meant seriously. So she responds,
“Modern feminists seem to hate women as much as they believe men do, for the female body confronts all of us with our intrinsic dependence on one another and ultimately upon God. As the apostle Paul reminds us, ‘woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.’ (I Corinthians 11) We only know ourselves as women and as men through our relationship with each other, and we only know ourselves as humans in relationship to the God we image. The female body reminds us of this interdependence and the givenness of our existence, for our mothers literally gave us life.”
Of course the biggest difference between these two movies is that one is all about babies, and the other one lacks babies entirely, except for the unfortunate baby dolls:
“The film opens with an origin story wherein the newly created Barbie rescues little girls from being forced to play with baby dolls. After independent, infertile Barbie arrives, the young girls of the world celebrate their liberation from motherhood by smashing their babies to bits.”
I’m not enough of a movie buff that I am likely ever to see “Barbie,” but if I did, I might afterward go on to read some of the critics who are saying that if you dig deep through those layers of irony and satire, it’s actually anti-feminist and conservative in its message. Maybe how you feel about that depends partly on what you think The Patriarchy is. Is Ken in or out of it?
I wonder if Kimberly Ells has seen “Barbie”…. She attended the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations this spring and heard much about the desire to “smash” and “eradicate” the patriarchy; so she started asking around at the event, What is The Patriarchy, exactly? She wrote succinctly about the answers she got in this article: “In Praise of Men.”
I’d be interested to hear if any of my readers has thoughts about these movies or the questions raised by “Barbie.” And if you haven’t seen “My Octopus Teacher” or “Babies,” I definitely recommend those!
Gladsome Lights 
I might beat you to the title of watching the fewest movies ever. ‘The Octopus Teacher’ was one that I too have seen, wondered at and enjoyed. As for ‘Barbie’, I am unlikely to make the effort.
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So much to say, so little space. I almost went to see “Barbie” when I read why Ryan Gosling decided to do the movie when he saw how his daughters had carefully put their Barbies to sleep in their dream house while leaving Ken outside in the mud near a puddle. I thought “Finally a movie about how men are now treated like floating pairs of pants with many women being artificially fertilized so as to avoid having a man interfering in her raising of the child (commodity)”. But no, the baby dolls I grew up with and loved are smashed in the movie to be eagerly replaced by the alien-looking infertile Barbies who I never got into when they appeared in our culture when I was 10. Oh well.
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I have such mixed feelings about the movie. I went to support my sister whose daughter really wanted to see the movie. My first reaction was that it was horrible and the smashing of baby skulls was too much. I didn’t see the humor, but then I read reviews saying completely different things. I feel like even if it is satire that will go over the heads of young girls.
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I enjoyed both Babies and My Octopus Teacher. I’m very picky about the movies I watch, and I am not sure I want to see it. There are certainly strong feelings pro and con, from what I’ve read or watched. I was never really a Barbie doll fan, although I really liked her little sister Skipper!
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We went to Oppenheimer for my birthday yesterday instead of Barbie — and I’m glad we did because it was fantastic. But after reading this I am more interested in seeing Barbie, which I wasn’t at all before. It sounds quite intriguing!
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Well, I haven’t watched a movie in years. I like the quotes you offered. I have never even heard of the movies you mentioned but they both sounded very interesting.
You are always so thought provoking.
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I really like this, Gretchen! Very thoughtful.
Thanks for posting it
Leslie
Sent from my iPhone
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I read a review of Barbie in National Review, here https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/08/28/the-confusion-at-the-heart-of-barbie/ if they let you read it; don’t know. I’m not tempted to see it, myself.
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Thank you, Lisa. I think that article was one that argued for a conservative take on the movie…
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I’m not a regular movie goer. So, there’s that. Add in the fact that I’ve never paid one lick of attention to Barbie dolls (or Ken, for that matter), I can’t think of any reason I should begin paying attention now. Beyond that, I loved my dolls. I didn’t need to be ‘rescued’ from them any more than I need to be rescued from my old-fashioned beliefs about what a doll can represent: companionship, imaginative play, and comfort.
I laughed at the comment that the film is ‘actually’ anti-feminist and conservative. I consider myself both feminist and conservative, and it amuses me no end that when Barbie first appeared on the scene, it was the feminists who hated her for the stereotypical perfection she represented.
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My only memory of my baby dolls was when I was five and had my tonsils out. The nurses wheeling me into the operating room let me have my doll right by me. The only memory I have of my own Barbie was of trying to sew clothes for her. The tops never would fit right. I realized not too long ago that of course! — her unnatural bustline would be a challenge for a ten-year-old dressmaker.
But about the movie — I can’t accept as “conservative” a production that shows girls smashing their baby dolls. That’s dark, and our society doesn’t need any more darkness.
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Exactly so, particularly since what is shown in films too often becomes reality.
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Oh: and what I consider ‘conservative’ has more to do with conserving the values inculcated by my upbringing than adhering to certain political beliefs.
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Yes!!
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I think I may have seen snippets of that Babies film you mentioned. At least I recall seeing something about the different ways women carried their children, swaddled or didn’t swaddle them, what and how they fed them, and so on. All very fascinating to follow each culture’s way of rearing children.
I’ve probably seen more movies than you have, but not by many. In most cases, reading about movies is enough for me, so thank you for the review and your commentary 🙂
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“Babies” is not focused on the mothers like that, and not much footage of the babies being carried or fed. There is no script, though you hear bits of conversations in the language of the mothers if they happen to be speaking nearby. It’s a very artistic production, and a people-watching kind of experience.
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We LOVE Babies and My Octopus Teacher, as well! We own Babies on DVD, and every so often we pull it out and watch it over again- surprising how such a quiet movie can be so enthralling.
Meanwhile, although my adult children have all seen the Barbie movie, I’ve been putting off seeing it because my 9 year old wants to see it, and I told her she couldn’t until I saw it first. She still plays with baby dolls – and Barbies – and Legos and Playmobils and stuffed animals, and I don’t want those cinematic images to disrupt these last few years – weeks – days – of childhood play.
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I went to see Barbie. The sets are fantastic and it romps along. I think any serious messages were lost on me.
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