The Beautiful Enlightenment of "Barbie"
Spirituality, Redemption and a Surprising Connection to "Groundhog Day"
This article contains plot spoilers for “Barbie” and (too soon?) “Groundhog Day”
The first non-medical outing I made after fracturing a bone in my foot was to a theater showing “Barbie”, the most anticipated movie of the summer (sorry, “Oppenheimer”). Because I’m still healing I asked my son to accompany me, and the fact that he agreed to a second viewing only 48 hours after his first raised my already high expectations. By the time we emerged from the theater, my opinion of “Barbie” had increased even further. Beyond its obviously entertaining aspects—the stunning costumes and sets, the wonderful songs and dance sequences—it’s a movie for everyone—all ages, genders and types—a rare feat in any era, but unheard of today.
Thanks to Greta Gerwig, its brilliant co-writer and director, what should have been a movie for little girls has become an instant, genre-bending, classic. “Barbie” is a comedy, a drama, a musical, a parable, a road movie, an adventure story and a critique of male-female relationships and gender politics—and probably a few other things I haven’t thought of yet. Women find it empowering, as do many men (my son, for one).
Other men—notably Bill Maher, who wrote a cringe-inducing screed about it, and a right-wing podcaster whose name I failed to note—find “Barbie” distasteful, even threatening. That’s because—unlike almost every other movie made since the beginning of cinema—its main character isn’t male, and the secondary character who is male happens to be a blank slate. Why Maher and company should fear two plastic dolls with no genitals is a mystery to me, but somehow they do. Much like “Barbie”, their reaction is very funny and a little sad.
That a movie could generate such a wide range of opinions and interpretations is proof of "Barbie”’s genius and charm. I anticipate ever-wider (and wilder) commentary on it, though surely none will make me laugh like the right-wing podcaster’s claim that Barbie goes to the gynecologist because she wants—a baby.
As if these aspects weren’t enough to ponder, there’s “Barbie”’s spiritual dimension. In the days since I saw it, I’ve been thinking a lot about “Groundhog Day”, Harold Ramis’s 1993 classic comedy. Unlike Barbie, its protagonist, Phil Conners, is no doll: he’s an arrogant, cynical Pittsburgh TV weatherman sent to Punxsutawney, PA, to cover the annual emergence of the town’s famous groundhog. After a blizzard he failed to predict traps him in Punxsutawney, Phil finds himself repeating the same day again and again, without consequence or escape. After many Groundhog Days, during which he commits crimes and attempts suicide, Phil begins to make positive, incremental changes in his actions. In time—a great deal of time—these add up to his redemption. By the end of the film, Phil has done many good deeds, learned to play the piano, and fallen in love with Rita, his producer, a woman he previously wanted only to seduce. Having told Rita he no longer cares about escaping the time loop of Groundhog Day now that they’re together, Phil wakes to find himself in a new day.
Soon after the movie came out, people began talking and writing about “Groundhog Day” as a stellar illustration of samsara, the cycles of rebirth in Buddhism. Phil, in his endlessly repetitive journey toward enlightenment, turns back before his ultimate reincarnation to help others achieve the same. In Buddhist terms, he has become a bodhisattva, able to reach nirvana but delaying it to care for other humans. Ramis, a Jewish student of Tibetan Buddhism whose mother became a Buddhist, affirmed the similarities.
But it wasn’t only Buddhists who saw religion in “Groundhog Day”—Christians and Jews saw parallels to their faiths, too. In short order, the movie became a clergy favorite, talked about in sermons and watched repeatedly by congregants. In 2003, “Groundhog Day” opened MOMA’s film series “The Hidden God”: Film and Faith, which featured such directorial masters as Ingmar Bergman (“Winter Light”), Robert Bresson (“The Devil Probably”), Roberto Rossellini (“Stromboli”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (“Magnolia”). Before “The Hidden God” opened, a competition broke out among the 35 film critics tasked with producing the catalogue: almost everyone wanted to write about “Groundhog Day”.
Which brings me back to “Barbie”. After her existential crisis begins—with the question, asked aloud mid-dance, “Do you guys ever think about dying?”—Barbie experiences her first bad day. Advised by Barbieland’s resident guru, Weird Barbie, to go to the Real World—aka Los Angeles—she sets off in her pink Corvette. Ken goes too, but only because he’s a stowaway. The car is only the first vehicle in Barbie’s long journey to reality: she and Ken must ride a boat, a rocket ship, a snow mobile, a bicycle and a camper van to reach Los Angeles. Once there, they use a seventh form of transportation—roller blades— to travel along the Santa Monica-Venice Beach path.
After discovering the un-Barbielike aspects of contemporary society, Barbie finds the source of her existential crisis—Gloria, an overworked mother and Mattel employee who has projected her discontentment onto her childhood Barbie doll. (Gloria also has an inconsequential Ken-like husband, whom I hope will be featured in a sequel called “Kenough”.) Restored to her stereotypical self, Barbie returns to Barbieland with Gloria and her daughter Sasha but finds it in macho disarray, thanks to Ken’s discovery of real-world patriarchy, beer, black leather couches and horse-themed artwork. A restoration follows, but afterwards Barbie chooses to return to Los Angeles—this time as a person. Transformed from doll to woman, Barbara Handler (she takes the last name of her creator, Ruth) re-enters the real world the same way Phil Conners does: enlightened, compassionate, and touched by the divine.