J.R.R. Tolkien says in his famous essay “On Fairy Stories”, “Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.” He also repeats it similarly in his poem “Mythopoeia”:
Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
These quotes have informed so much of my thinking about creativity since I first read them many years ago, and they came to my mind this weekend as I was watching the film Barbie for a second time. Creativity is a theme all over this film, but one particular way it explores this is in the relationship between the creator and their creation.
Not Just a Toy
Perhaps the most obvious way creativity is explored in the film is examining Barbie as a tool of imagination. Barbie is first and foremost a toy, and toys are designed to be played with by children. They are physical catalysts for engaging the imagination.
Barbie, of course, is a specific kind of toy—a doll that represents a physical adult woman. In this sense, Barbie in all her plastic glory also represents an idea, or rather many ideas, about femaleness and womanhood and female bodies.
As we are all probably aware, that combination of imagination and idea over Barbie’s 60 year career has led to a complicated and fraught legacy. As Madeline Muzdakis writes, “To some, her plastic blonde locks and impossibly cinched waist are symbols of all the wrong messages society sends to young girls. To others, Barbie is an outlet for creativity—in fashion, careers, and role-playing the social scenarios of families and friends that children notice all around them.”
Director Greta Gerwig shows that she is very aware of this complicated legacy in Barbie, and the film self-consciously explores these ideas.
Barbieland
First off in the film we have Barbieland, the home of the Barbies and the Kens. In Barbieland, women run society and everything is perfect and nothing ever changes—that is until Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) starts having irrepressible thoughts of death, her feet go flat, and a patch of cellulite appears on her leg. The other Barbies tell her she’s “malfunctioning” and that she needs to go see Weird Barbie (Kate MacKinnon) to get herself straightened out. Weird Barbie (who is hilariously always in the splits and has a weird haircut and crayon on her face because she was overplayed with) reveals to Barbie and us the audience that what happens to the dolls in Barbieland is influenced by the girls that play with them in the real world. Tolkien would probably call them little sub-creators.
To fix herself, Barbie finds out that she will have to travel to the real world to find the girl playing with her. And so she sets off—with Ken (Ryan Gosling) later in tow—to go to the real world.
The Real World
Turns out, there’s a little bit of a problem. All the Barbies in Barbieland think that, just by existing and empowering young girls, they’ve solved all the problems of feminism in the real world. Barbie thinks she’s going to be greeted with praise, thanks, and hugs. But when she finds her girl, Sasha, now a high schooler, she instead gets an earful about how she’s set feminism back 50 years because she’s been making women feel bad about themselves ever since she was invented with her unrealistic beauty standards and impossible talent.
If you step back for a second and think about it, that’s a whole lot to lay at the feet of a plastic doll. But I think it’s a testament to the power of creativity, fantasy, and imagination to shape reality. We literally change our world by the ways that we play and imagine.
Patriarchy and Horses
There’s another interesting way Barbie explores the power of ideas in the segment of the film. While Barbie is off looking for Sasha, Ken (who is just a pretty male accessory with the job of “beach” in Barbieland) wanders around and discovers that men have a much different role in the real world—they are more respected, they occupy most of the leadership roles, and they do cool stuff like drive big cars and ride horses. This, Ken discovers, is “patriarchy”, and he rushes back to Barbieland flush with a new sense of purpose.
If you’ve watched the film, you know the reason Ken latches on to patriarchy is that he feels neglected, under-appreciated, and overlooked by Barbie. His whole existence is to be her side-piece and yet she can’t even see him for who he is. So he fills this aching need with toxic male power.
Watching these scenes made me realize, perhaps for the first time, how much a system like patriarchy is also a fantasy, an imagining, a construct made up by people that has gone on to shape reality. To be fair, so is the matriarchy of Barbieland. So is racism. We as humans create social constructs that elevate some of us above others for the sake of power and feeling important.
Meet Your Maker
While Ken is off remaking Barbieland into Kendom, Barbie discovers that the one whose choices are impacting her is not Sasha, but rather her 40-something mother Gloria (America Ferreira), who nostalgically swiped one of Sasha’s old Barbies as she was getting rid of them. Gloria, who is an executive assistant to the board of Mattel (all men btw), has also been casually sketching designs of Irrepressible-Thoughts-of-Death Barbie, Cellulite-All-Over-The-Body Barbie, and Crippling-Shame Barbie as an outlet for her own struggles as a woman approaching midlife and struggling to maintain her relationship with her angsty daughter. A little later in the film, Gloria delivers a barn-burner of a monologue about how impossible it is to be a woman.
In one sense then, it is Gloria that is Barbie’s creator/maker, using her to process her emotions and feelings.
Invited to Co-Create
However, that’s not the end of things, because in the climax of the film, Barbie meets (the ghost of?) her ultimate Creator, Ruth Handler, actual creator of the Barbie doll. Barbie meets Ruth earlier in the film while exploring the Mattel building but doesn’t know who she is. Later, when Barbieland has been saved from the patriarchal plans of the Kens, Barbie doesn’t know what her place or purpose is anymore, and Ruth shows up to take her for a walk.
As they talk, Barbie expresses that she might want to be human. Ruth warns her that being human can be messy and confusing, and we humans create things like patriarchy and Barbie dolls to try to make sense of our confusion. And then there’s mortality—at some point, like Barbie began to experience early in the film, you die. But Ruth tells her that being human can also be beautiful.
Barbie says, “I want do the imagining, not be the idea” and wonders if that’s okay.
Ruth: You don’t need my permission
Barbie: But you’re the creator, don’t you control me?
Ruth: I can’t control you anymore than I could control my own daughter. I named you after her, Barbara, and I always hoped for you like I hoped for her. We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they’ve come.
Barbie: So being human’s not something I need to ask for or even want…it’s something I just discover that I am?
It’s this scene that really brings the whole film together for me, and takes me back to those Tolkien quotes at the beginning. In Tolkien’s belief, and mine, we are creative, we fantasize, we dream, we imagine, because we are made in the image of the ultimate Creator.
The film seems to resonate with this idea, because Barbie realizes that, to no longer be the idea, just impacted by the imaginings of others, to be an imaginer herself, she has to become human, with all that means, both good and bad, beautiful and ugly, joyful and hard. And she is welcomed into that with joy by her creator, Ruth.
In the same way, I think our Creator freely and joyfully invites us into creative partnership with Them. I don’t think God desires to control us or force us to do anything, but offers us the free, loving choice to be fully human, and to join in the work of imagining as a liberating and life giving act for others and the world.
Not bad for a movie about a plastic doll.