Barbie and the straight-to-DVD movie: pink post-feminist pedagogy

Abstract

As Barbie’s popularity began to decline across the first decade of the twenty-first century, the iconic doll underwent a makeover and became a maven of the straight-to-DVD sector. Across the movies produced since 2001, the narratives reflect an awareness of feminist criticism and seek to remediate Barbie’s particular femininity and the associated gender performance that has fallen into disfavor. Interestingly, these efforts are often facilitated by a movement in time and place that relocates Barbie from the here and now, as she plays the protagonist role in adaptations of classic works of fiction set in the past. Working with methods of textual analysis and informed by the history of literature for children, media studies, and feminist theory, we explore the complex composition of Mattel’s straight-to-DVD Barbie movies and consider how the adaptations intersect with feminist discourses. Looking closely at Barbie and the Three Musketeers (2009) in the wider context of the DVD series, we argue that the Barbie DVDs perform a post-feminist pedagogy and inculcate the post-feminist sensibility among young viewers and consumers worldwide.

Keywords:

• Barbie DVD
• Mattel
• DVDs for girls
• post-feminism
• post-feminist pedagogy

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers at Feminist Media Studies for their insights and suggestions which helped us refine and express our views more clearly.

Notes

1. We are aware that young boys also watch Barbie DVDs but Mattel’s marketing strategies explicitly target and address girls. Querying the implications for boy consumers is necessary but is beyond the scope of this paper.

2. The movies produced since 2010 feature stories set in contemporary times.

3. All figures here are in USD. Source The Numbers [http://www.the-numbers.com].

4. In considering Mattel’s adaptation in relation to its source material, we follow Christiane Pintado (2006). Although Dumas claims in the book’s prologue that his story is true to a historical source he found in a Paris library, his tale is already a rewriting of a fiction previously authored by Gatien Courtilz de Sandras, Mémoires de M. D'Artagnan (published in 1700) with inspiration from the Mémoires of La Rochefoucauld (first published in 1662; François de La Rochefoucauld 2006). The beginning of the film is quite faithful to Dumas, even though some episodes have been left out—Dartagnan in the auberge, for instance. As in Dumas’ story, the protagonist, Corinne, secures the musketeer job two-thirds of the way through the story.

5. Mignonne, allons voir si la rose Qui ce matin avoit disclose Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil, A point perdu ceste vesprée Les plis de sa robe pourprée, Et son teint au vostre pareil (…) (Pierre de Ronsard 1946 [1545]).