Barbie Nation
Greta Gerwig topples Christopher Nolan at the box office, painting Hollywood hot pink while breaking records for a woman director.
For the record: Greta Gerwig won Barbenheimer.
The Barbie writer-director nearly doubled rival Christopher Nolan’s receipts for Oppenheimer at the domestic box office last weekend, collecting an eye-popping $162 million to his $82.4 million. In doing so, Gerwig became the first woman in her position to make that much money over a three-day span. She bested the beloved blockbuster bros Nolan, Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One) and Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), as well as a horror flick that I’ll never see (Insidious: get it away from me!!!) and pleasant-seeming Pixar family fare (Elemental) to which I’d take my toddler if she were old enough. All told, how did an original, whimsical, deeply wacky, girl-power confection about a famous doll that people love to love (and love to hate) manage to get actual butts in movie-theater seats … in this economy?
It started with Margot Robbie, who had long craved a piece of Barbie’s intellectual property. Babylon aside, in choosing material the actress-producer boasts solid commercial and artistic instincts — the best move she’s made yet was to approach Gerwig for Barbie, then get Mattel on board to give her the freedom to make the movie she wanted to make. The Elder Millennial auteur and sometime actress, herself a name brand, brings ample credibility to a project that could have wilted in other hands. After she and partner Noah Baumbach collaborated on his low-budget Frances Ha and Mistress America, Gerwig went solo in the mid-2010s to write and direct the feminist coming-of-age hits Lady Bird (total ticket sales: $79 million stateside) and Little Women ($219 million worldwide). Barbie, co-written with Baumbach, offered Gerwig an irresistible opportunity to level up in her career while staying true to herself. Like Sofia Coppola but warmer and weirder, her vibe is unapologetically female and downtown cool. She casts well. She cares what women think. She knows how to humanize a polarizing plastic toy and render her endearing to skeptical parents who would sooner stream Cocomelon on continuous loop than buy a Barbie that reinforces unrealistic beauty standards. The AP’s Lindsey Bahr reported: “Women drove the historic ‘Barbie’ opening, making up 65% of the audience, according to PostTrak, and 40% of ticket buyers were under the age of 25 for the PG-13 rated movie.”
They wore 50 shades of pink en masse — think the Eras Tour, only a movie ticket is cheaper! — and helped turn each screening into An Event, conjuring now-distant memories of the crowds for the Sex and the City movie, the Twilight franchise, Bridesmaids and other women-led cultural touchstones. I wore a denim jumpsuit (the look: A Chico’s Kind of Day Barbie) to catch the Saturday-night show at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco, where the long lines included lots of men, some wearing fuchsia and others sticking to neutrals. On the screen next door, Oppenheimer, a three-hour spectacle about the physicist who developed the atomic bomb, played to another packed house. Here’s Lindsey again:
“Oppenheimer” audiences meanwhile were 62% male and 63% over the age of 25, with a somewhat surprising 32% that were between the ages of 18 and 24.
Both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” scored well with critics with 90% and 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively, and audiences who gave both films an A CinemaScore. And social media has been awash with reactions and “takes” all weekend – good, bad, problematic and everywhere in between – the kind of organic, event cinema, watercooler debate that no marketing budget can buy.
I Barbenheimered, but not on the same day — that’s too much movie, even for me. On Friday afternoon, I bought a ticket just as Oppenheimer was beginning. Color me shocked to discover every seat filled, at 1:30 p.m., when otherwise a moviegoer would have the whole place to herself; in a post-pandemic world, theatrical attendance numbers are down, and streaming is King. Nolan still believes in CINEMA and chose to release his latest passion project the old-fashioned way. If you haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet, you’re in for a ride: While hewing close to his Pulitzer Prize-winning source material (American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer), Nolan does not direct a rote biopic. He applies a thriller’s pacing to what could have been a tedious effort, expertly cutting between the creation of the bomb and the trial that led Oppenheimer to lose his security clearance. The action is all men in suits talking to one another, with Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt relegated to the sidelines, playing tragically supportive props to Oppenheimer’s American dream-slash-nightmare. (The sex scenes are unintentionally funny: Who knew?) And yet! I relish long movies filled with meaty Oscar bait and ideas to chew on. Nolan delivers and pulls a nuanced, off-brand performance from Robert Downey Jr. that feels like the actor playing a character other than “Robert Downey Jr.”
Without a doubt, Barbie is the better film, the one that will resonate long after the hoopla dies down. It is a dizzying kaleidoscope of style and substance; an immensely entertaining feminist thinkpiece dressed up like cotton candy. Gerwig and her team astound in their attention to detail: Robbie sliding from the top floor of her life-sized Dreamhouse; her arched feet; her archival outfits! The filmmakers conjure a child’s imagination as they toss in winky adult references to The Godfather, Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” and “the country of California” (it’s a State but boasts the fifth-largest economy in the world). In Barbie Land, women totally rule, reflecting how young girls have played with the doll for decades, ever since businesswoman Ruth Handler invented her in 1959; prior to that, girls were given baby dolls so they could prepare for their future as mothers. But Barbie, a single gal about town, represented an alternate adulthood for pre-teen dreamers through the 1960s and beyond. Mattel debuted her Dreamhouse in 1962, twelve years before an American woman was allowed to open a credit card in her own name. Barbie ran for President. She went to the Moon. She proved that it was possible to be feminine and powerful, all at once. Gerwig, exposing cracks within this empowerment fantasy, plucks Barbie from her synthetic kingdom and drops her into the human realm, introducing the icon and her tanned himbo companion Ken (a hilarious Ryan Gosling) to a startling new concept: The patriarchy! As the flipped power dynamics blindside Barbie, who encounters only men in suits talking to one another in Mattel’s corporate boardroom, Ken feels inspired. He takes what he learns and returns to Barbie Land, leading a revolution amongst fellow Kens to replace the supreme gender and exert dominance. Ken Land sucks!!! It’s like a Big Ten frat house in dire need of sage-ing and disinfectant. When the sisterhood of Barbie conspires to regain control, they deploy textbook patriarchal methodology — they pit the Kens against one another, as men in the Real World have done to women who demand greater respect and end up competing for limited seats at the table of power. Soon, order is restored and both Barbie and Ken experience aha moments: She affirms Ken’s autonomy beyond his role as an accessory to her; he sheds his warlike stance (he thought patriarchy was “about horses” anyway); their world becomes a messier, slightly more equitable place. Progress!
A tangent: Growing up in suburban Chicago circa the 1980s and ’90s, I was raised in a matriarchal household. My mother — blonde, beautiful, brilliant — was Barbie incarnate, a breadwinning marketing executive for technology companies. (I take after my wiry, dark-haired father, who resembles Jerry Seinfeld blended with Craig T. Nelson! I’m very OK with that, and I was very proud of Mom.) My loving, neat-freak stepdad mostly worked from his home office and took over domestic chores that typically fell to women; I thought this was normal until I learned that it wasn’t, way back when I played Barbies at friends’ houses and noticed the traditional setups within. For untold hours during summer break, we let Barbie run wild. We even crimped her hair. (I can smell the Aqua Net as I type this.)
On Sunday, my friend Stephanie Block threw what just might be the Greatest Birthday Party of All Time. She enlisted master designer Robert Fountain to recreate the Dreamhouse in all its glory, complete with wall-to-wall pink decor, Lifeguard Ken roaming the premises and a large, plastic horse stationed in the backyard. Guests came and slayed. I spotted Barbies in frilly gowns and neon onesies and one sporting SAG-AFTRA strike garb. I ran into Grant Faulkner, the executive director of National Novel Writing Month and a fellow newsletterist, wearing Breezy Vacation Ken attire, the doll peeking out of his shirt pocket.
“I think we still have one foot in the pandemic, and people have a hunger to be together, and they want to be together at an event that’s bigger than themselves — that’s part of a global or national conversation,” he theorized of the internet-fueled Barbenheimer phenomenon, adding: “They were great films but it’s almost like they were random, like they were just sitting there and waiting for something to occur.”
Time will tell whether the likes of the Gerwig/Nolan showdown shall ever happen again. By releasing Barbie of all projects, did Gerwig cave to shameless commercialism and, like, completely sell out? Nah: She’s selling dreams. I hope she keeps taking big, creative risks. I hope she keeps her seat at the table. I hope she makes more room for women there.