What Is Barbie Going For, Exactly? An Investigation.

What Is Barbie Going For, Exactly? An Investigation.,The reference-heavy teaser for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming ‘Barbie’ film is out. What can we expect from the upcoming film, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling?

What Is Barbie Going For, Exactly? An Investigation.

Barbie showed up and, just like that, the world changed. Are we talking about Barbie or Barbie, you ask? Why, both, of course! Ever since Greta Gerwig, prestige director and former queen of mumblecore, was announced as the director of the upcoming Barbie film, the anticipation has loomed large. “What exactly is Greta Gerwig doing?” the people (of Vulture.com) asked. “What kind of movie is she intending to make?” There’s also the fact that Gerwig wrote the screenplay with her partner, Noah Baumbach, who’s behind indie classics like The Squid and the Whale. The teaser trailer is chock-full of references. It’s an elaborate homage to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; the historical implications of the introduction of Barbie make up the narration by Helen Mirren, reminding fans of her work in Documentary Now!. Margot Robbie, playing Barbie, is clad in an exact re-creation of the original Barbie’s outfit; Gerwig is clearly thinking about the interplay between highbrow and lowbrow, between art and commercialism. But what does that look like in movie form? She’s a Barbie girl, but what is going on in her Barbie World?

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The main issue is that we don’t actually know what the plot of the movie is. In the early stages of the film, it was supposed to be “a fish-out-of-water story à la Splash and Big, whereby Barbie gets kicked out of Barbieland because she’s not perfect enough, a bit eccentric and doesn’t fit in,” Deadline reported back in 2018. “She then goes on an adventure in the real world and by the time she returns to Barbieland to save it, she has gained the realization that perfection comes on the inside, not the outside, and that the key to happiness is belief in oneself, free of the obligation to adhere to some unattainable standard of perfection.” That plot is not out of the question, but the film seems a bit more meta than that description allows for — the teaser implies a specific knowledge of Barbie’s real-world impact, for example. Also, Will Ferrell has been confirmed to be playing the CEO of Mattel, which means that Barbie could gain sentience (??) at some point.

We do have one other fun clue — Margot Robbie’s Letterboxd account, which was unearthed and then promptly deleted. The category of “Watch for Barbie” included such titles as The Truman Show, Splash, Puberty Blues, The Young Girls of Rochefort, and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The Truman Show has an obvious connection to the “CEO of Mattel” situation, but perhaps most interesting is the inclusion of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, both of which are musicals. Umbrellas is a searingly emotional, entirely sung-through romantic drama, while Young Girls is a musical comedy. Given the amount of dancing that is flashed through in the teaser trailer — including with Simu Liu and Margot Robbie in a disco dress — Barbie might be … a musical. Not to mention Dua Lipa, confirmed singer, is part of the cast.

What is Barbie? So far, it’s a collection of references — meta, esoteric, and pop culture alike — all wrapped up in a pretty pink bow.

This is a developing story.