Window shopping in barbie land: the kinetic and aesthetic pleasures of Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the kinetic and aesthetic pleasures of girlhood in Barbie. Through technologies of glamour and consumerism, Barbie invites spectators to window shop in a dazzlingly spectacular pink, shimmering and youthful landscape. Gerwig’s transportive camerawork, flowing choreography and glossy special effects allow spectators to visually and kinetically immerse themselves in a girly world of shimmering fashion, fun automated toys and candy coloured plastic architecture. This spectacular experience of window-shopping orients spectators to feel kinetic empathy with the delights and difficulties of consumer girlhood. I argue that the film both upholds and gently questions these pleasures as Barbie recognises the limits of her consumer power.

KEYWORDS:

• Barbie
• window shopping
• consumer culture
• film aesthetics
• girlhood

The world of Barbie Land in Barbie (2023) is introduced as a dazzling, brand-saturated, feminine and youthful consumer landscape. This article explores the aesthetic and kinetic pleasures that are available to spectators, activated by the film’s transportive camerawork, spectacular mise-en-scène, flowing choreography and glossy special effects. I contend that these various aspects of film form orient spectators to move through the visual landscape of Barbie as window shoppers, and that this orientation is constructed as both a source of post-feminist pleasure and a site of gentle critique. Thus, I suggest that window shopping in Barbie Land is a process marked by contradiction. Though Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) confidently declares that “everything I bought and own will totally inspire you,” all is not as it initially seems in Barbie Land.

The connection between cinema spectatorship and window shopping has long been noted in film and media studies (Giuliana Bruno 2002; Mary Ann Doane 1987; Charles Eckert 1978; Anne Friedberg 1994; Jane Gaines 1989). Bruno (2002, 79) summarises the basis of this link: “An heir of department store phantasmagoria, […] cinema historically moves in the arena of spectacular image trafficking. Like the tourist and the shopper, the film spectator is also in many ways a ‘consumer’ of images.” Indeed, Friedberg (1994, 89 and 68. See also Suzanne Ferriss 2007) writes of the film screen “as a mobile display window” that “implies a mode of consumer contemplation.” In the contemporary post-feminist context, media theorists have discussed cinematic window shopping specifically in relation to fashion films, video games and television series. This work often tangles with the troubling duality of these texts: they provide both fun and pleasurable visual spectacles, that simultaneously function as sites for the perpetuation of capitalist consumer culture (Ferriss 2007; Samantha Colling 2017; Louisa Stein 2009). Barbie similarly occupies this double territory. Its commodity-saturated mise-en-scène is outrageously spectacular and fun, with its confectionary colours and sparkles, childlike play on architectural scale and dimension, exaggerated slapstick comedy and Busby Berkeley-esque dance sequences. At the same time, this branded aesthetic landscape feeds into a seemingly endless array of merchandise such as makeup and clothing aimed to appeal to a range of consumers, particularly young girls and women. These commodities can orient users to participate in “consumer-driven, hyperfeminine, glamorised body projects” (Mary Celeste Kearney 2015, 265). While Barbie includes representations of the pressures and difficulties of feminised commodity culture, these critiques do not ultimately interrupt the pleasures and enticements of the shop window.

In Barbie, the representation of consumption and window shopping is both feminine and youthful. While Barbie does not exclusively focus on teenage characters, it certainly is a film concerned with the idea and feeling of girlhood. For while the Barbies are primarily played by adult performers in their 30s and 40s, Barbie the icon represents and signifies a particularly youthful femininity (Catherine Driscoll 2002). Indeed, in an interview with the home improvement and design channel HGTV, Gerwig (HGTV 2023) clarifies:

… if you were a little girl who liked Barbie, there was a memory of looking at her behind the box, in a toy display, and [having] that feeling of wanting everything inside of the box. And I think keeping that fantasy in the forefront of my mind and thinking about “what did the little girl want?.” [was important]

In this statement, Gerwig suggests that the window shopper’s gaze in Barbie is not just feminine, but also youthful; it is aligned with the notion of a little girl peering into the box on the shelf and desiring its contents.

Since her beginnings as a fashion doll in 1959, Barbie has traded on the youthful, feminised consumer fantasy noted by Gerwig. Her status as consumer and shopper has always been emphasised, generating the implication that both she and the little girl who plays with her “can be made happy if only she wears the right clothes and owns the right products” (Marilyn Ferris Motz 1983, 219). Gary Cross writes that Barbie initially shifted attention away from play that rehearsed the maternal activities of homemaking, and instead provided girls with “an education in consumption” through costumes and accessories that stage activities like grooming, shopping, and attending parties (Gary Cross 1997, 173). Similarly, Jacqueline Reid-Walsh points out that for a considerable period of time, “Barbie was presented as a consumer instead of a homemaker—indeed, there was no kitchen in her house” (2008, 270. See also Frederika Eilers 2021; Sherrie A Inness 1999; Motz 1983; Karen Orr Vered and Christele Maizonniaux 2017). Miriam Forman-Brunell concurs, noting that even though Barbie’s wardrobe has evolved and expanded beyond her “1960s ‘suburban shopper’ outfit with matching accessories and appliances, she [has] nevertheless maintained her devotion to goods and dedication to gadgets” (2009, 308). And while Barbie has taken on maternal and domestic roles throughout the years, complete with fully stocked kitchens, laundries, cookbooks and cleaning supplies, she nevertheless “could never be stripped of glamour,” nor her “longstanding investment in consumption” (Marlys Pearson and Paul R Mullins 1999, 251–252). These contradictory meanings are perhaps inherent to the Barbie doll, primarily because she embodies “changing feminine ideals as well as [perpetuating] traditional notions of gender” (Miriam Forman-Brunell 2009, 305).

Additionally, as Kim Toffoletti (2007, 64. See also Friedberg 1994) has shown, Barbie is also a descendent of the department store mannequin, a “quintessential modern emblem of consumerism, femininity and artifice” that invites the window-shopper’s gaze. Barbie similarly invites a shopper’s gaze that “demands product after product” (Motz 1983, 128). Indeed, Gerwig’s film acknowledges this link when we are first introduced to Stereotypical Barbie’s Dream House, as she selects her outfit for the day. In the centre of her wardrobe, there is a featureless pink figure—a mannequin—wearing a pink gingham dress, glittering costume jewellery and a matching oversized hair bow. The wardrobe’s doors are made from clear, thick Perspex, evoking the aesthetic of both the glass department store window and the plastic vitrine of a Barbie doll box. A mere moment after this outfit disappears from the closet, another magically replaces it with a flurry of magic sparkles, suggesting that the fantasy of the shop window is one of endless consumption and maintenance of the glamorous body. As Friedberg (1994, 65. See also Gaines 1989) notes, the shop window, with its enticing displays and its glassy glint and glimmer, is a site “for visual intoxication, the site of seduction for consumer desire.” This visual representation of the wardrobe-as-window in Barbie emphasises that it is a product display rather than a space for the private task of dressing, orienting spectators to the position of window shopper early on in the film. More specifically, the use of sparkles and the colour pink, alongside the playful costume jewellery and whimsically oversized hair bow, suggest a particularly youthful and feminine instance of window shopping in Barbie’s shop window/closet.

This emphasis on a youthful and feminine mode of consumption continues throughout the film, which employs cinematic techniques that invite spectators to window shop in its shimmering and girly landscape. Colling (2017, 4) suggests that in post-feminist teen girl films, elements of film form like camerawork, spectacular mise-en-scène and choreography can encourage a sense of kinetic empathy with, in the “late capitalist commercial Hollywood” context, “how girl feels.” A close reading of film aesthetics can reveal how these films “[produce] affectively charged experiences and in turn how this creates restricted and gendered notions of fun” (Colling 2017, 15). In Barbie, these elements of film form conspire to offer a sense of excitement, possibility and play in the process of window shopping in a fantastical girly world. The flowing, transportive camerawork and spectacular mise-en-scène often seen in window shopping films develop a sense of excitement in the possibility of seeing something surprising, glamorous, or over-the-top (Colling 2017; Friedberg 1994). Indeed, transportive camerawork encourages spectators to move through a vast array of brand-saturated consumer landscapes as window shoppers. In scenes set in Stereotypical Barbie’s Dream House, the camerawork includes panning, tracking and tilting shots to guide spectators as they move through this space of richly textured designer clothing and furniture, bejewelled accessories, gleaming appliances, and Barbie’s dress, which is suddenly covered in magic sparkles that flitter about as she swishes her skirt.

Ferriss (2007, 54) argues that window shopping in genres like the fashion film often contain scenes that can function as a “moving shop window or a kinetic substitute for flipping through the pages of a magazine.” The montage sequence in which Stereotypical Barbie and Ken (Ryan Gosling) travel from Barbie Land to the Real World provides an excellent example of this. As they travel, they traverse a variety of terrains, from flower fields to snowfields. Wipes mark the transition between each Barbie Land setting, mimicking the sense of catalogue or magazine pages being turned. In each location, Barbie branding adorns every vehicle they ride, drawing attention to the commodity on display. Meanwhile, the use of painted backdrops and two-dimensional prop vehicles that look like cardboard cut-outs creates a tactile atmosphere of childlike play and playacting. Each scene in the montage is more outlandish, spectacular and surprising than the last: in one moment, the pair are at sea in a bubble-gum pink motorboat; in the next, they are travelling through outer space, with Barbie sitting on a tiny rocket ship, smiling and posed as if in a magazine spread. These elements of playful spectacle, glamour, and surprise in window shopping represent consumer girlhood as fun and exciting. Spectators are invited to experience these pleasures aesthetically and kinetically.

Beyond this experience of filmic pleasure, window shopping in film often translates to product tie-ins and merchandising that increases revenue for these film texts and the brands they collaborate with (Elizabeth Affuso and Avi Santo 2018; Gaines 1989). Indeed, one can purchase toy replicas of many of the commodities discussed above. The spectatorial experience of window shopping in the film is clearly and purposefully designed to inspire and tie into the purchase of Mattel’s vast array of products based on the film. Mattel engages in a process of continuous brand rejuvenation, brand collaborations and cross-media marketing strategies designed to give consumers “more and more reasons to buy deeper into the brand” (Mattel quoted in Vered and Maizonniaux 2017, 201). This is evident in the Barbie marketing campaign. Mattel produced a large line of goods based on the film, some of which were completely sold out at the time of writing this article. One can purchase a vast array of items, such as “Ken-rgy” coffee mugs, mousepads adorned with an image of Stereotypical Barbie’s face, a toy replica of the film’s Barbie Dream House and pink Corvette, Weird Barbie costumes, and President Barbie dolls. Further afield, Mattel has also collaborated with major makeup and fashion brands like Sephora, Chi, O.P.I., Cotton On, Zara and Fossil to produce Barbie-themed commodities like skincare products, swimsuits, nail polish, jewellery, candles and purses. The synergy between Mattel’s product lines and Gerwig’s production further demonstrates how cinematic window shopping can feed directly into consumer culture. However, while this commodity-laden landscape is presented as fun and desirable, the film complicates this by questioning the power of these consumerist pleasures.

In an interview with Abby Aguirre for Vogue Magazine, Gerwig (Abby Aguirre 2023, original emphasis) notes that psychologist Mary Pipher’s bestselling book about the diminishing self-esteem of contemporary girls, Reviving Ophelia (Mary Pipher 1994), was a key influence in making the film: ‘“How is this journey the same thing that a teenage girl feels? All of a sudden, she thinks, ‘oh, I’m not good enough.’” The influence of Pipher’s text can be seen in the way that Barbie points to the potential harms of feminised consumer culture. When returning home from the Real World, Stereotypical Barbie assures Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) that “everything I bought and own will totally inspire you.” But soon enough, Barbie realises that the consumer power she had once delighted in is tenuous, discovering that the Kens have swiftly and easily taken over Barbie Land to create a new patriarchal order. As the Kens take over, she becomes increasingly dejected and despondent in the midst of an “existential crisis” about the loss of her possessions and beauty, and thus her self-worth. Stereotypical Barbie throws herself to the ground, sobbing at the realisation that she has lost the prized belongings that once made her “pretty” and “perfect,” declaring that she is now “ugly and unwanted.” This brief sequence illuminates the limits of consumer girlhood, and how easily the social power and pleasure associated with it can be taken away. In this moment that narrativises Barbie’s crisis of confidence in her consumer power, spectators are invited to contemplate these difficulties and contradictions.

However, Gerwig’s production does not allow these moments of difficulty to outshine the fun of cinematic window shopping. Colling (2017) points out that oftentimes in post-feminist teen girl films, moments of irony or contradiction do not overpower the affective pleasures of fun and magic. Indeed, in Barbie, many of these contradictory moments are themselves interrupted by window shopping spectacle. For example, while evicting Stereotypical Barbie from her Dream House, now dubbed his “Mojo Dojo Casa House,” Ken flings her clothes out onto the street from the top floor as Barbie helplessly looks on in horror, weeping. As Ken tosses the clothes away, each outfit magically unfurls mid-air and the image freezes in close-up so that spectators have time to admire their sequins, feathers, silks and tulle. The name of each outfit—for instance, “Celebrate Disco™ Bell Bottoms” and “Ice Capades® Pretty Practice Suit and Dazzling Show Skirt”—is also included in the freeze frame. Even in this moment of Ken asserting his power, window shopping interjects and captures our attention. Despite the film’s narrativisation of these difficulties, and its gentle questioning of Barbie’s consumer power, window shopping remains a potent and durable pleasure throughout. Window shopping in Barbie Land is thus contradictory and marked by ambivalences of consumer girlhood, but its powers of over-the-top visual spectacle leave spectators with the intense impression of youthful fun, surprise and pleasure.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).