Let’s eat Bar­bie! A jour­ney through one doll’s wry reinventions

The vast, reflex­ive irony of the inter­net has fall­en on Gre­ta Gerwig’s Bar­bie like a hun­gry zom­bie on a fresh hunk o’ human. What a camp, meta­phys­i­cal feast! She appears to be a per­fect uma­mi blend of salty piss-take and sweet faith­ful­ness to her icon­ic lin­eage – just look at the ​“Do you guys ever think about dying?” part of the trail­er. That drop of exis­ten­tial chaos exquis­ite­ly coun­ter­bal­ances the kitsch mag­nif­i­cence of it all. This Bar­bie has hit every screen ready-meme­able, cre­at­ing the Bar­bi­e­ma­nia we behold now in our homes and streets, still with a week to go before release.

But ever since her birth, a plas­tic Aphrodite who arrived ful­ly and per­fect­ly formed, swept by Mattel’s mag­ic to our Earth­ly shores, Barbie’s image has been con­tin­u­ous­ly par­o­died, sub­vert­ed and repur­posed – on and off screen. Her 1959 debut advert alone sug­gests why she’s spawned so much satire. It exhibits her styl­ish mag­net­ism, but also the bad vibes at Barbie’s core that we’ve begun to yawn at now she’s being fab­u­lous­ly reclaimed. The unreach­able ideals she embod­ies, the con­sumerism she dri­ves, and her cloy­ing gold­en-girl per­fec­tion cry out to be caricatured.

The Simp­sons, ever a zeit­geist-barom­e­ter, con­verts Bar­bie into ​‘Mal­ibu Sta­cy’ – a con­stant fix­ture in the car­toon, but most specif­i­cal­ly explored in the 1994 episode Lisa vs. Mal­ibu Sta­cy. Lisa excit­ed­ly unbox­es her new talk­ing doll, only to be hor­ri­fied when she pulls the string and Sta­cy purrs anti-fem­i­nist catch­phras­es includ­ing ​“Think­ing too much gives you wrin­kles!” Frus­trat­ed that her fel­low eight-year-olds don’t share her out­rage, Lisa tracks down Sta­cy Lovell, the doll’s cre­ator, deter­mined to plead her case and make a Mal­ibu Sta­cy with sub­stance, pos­sessed of ​“The wis­dom of Gertrude Stein and the down-to-earth good looks of Eleanor Roo­sevelt”. The result­ing ​‘Lisa Lion­heart’ doll almost total­ly bombs, foiled by the Mal­ibu Sta­cy executives.

Inspired by pub­lic out­rage about the Teen Talk Bar­bie range – rolled out in 1992 utter­ing pret­ty sex­ist phras­es – one scene of the episode, in which a doll talks like Spi­der-Man, makes ref­er­ence to stunts pulled by the Bar­bie Lib­er­a­tion Organ­i­sa­tion. Draw­ing atten­tion to gen­der stereo­types rein­forced by these toys, the group swapped the voice­box­es of Bar­bi­es and GI Joes, then returned them to the shelves of toy shops across the US. The result was dolls yelling ​“Ven­gence is mine!” and action fig­ures squeal­ing ​“Let’s plan our dream wedding!”.

Such sub­ver­sive stunts involv­ing Bar­bi­es pros­pered with the birth of YouTube. Mark Cope and Car­lo Moss cre­at­ed the hit series The Most Pop­u­lar Girls in School in 2012, recent­ly described by one wiz­ard in the com­ments as ​“What Eupho­ria wish­es it could be”. Self-described as ​“South Park meets Mean Girls”, MPGiS uses Bar­bi­es to con­vey the obscene soap oper­at­ic exploits of the in-crowd at the fic­tion­al Oak­land High, Kansas.

YouTube has also allowed for the redis­cov­ery of ear­li­er sub­ver­sive Bar­bie con­tent – Super­star: The Karen Car­pen­ter Sto­ry, in which Bar­bie plays Car­pen­ter, bat­tling anorex­ia, spi­ralling towards her sad demise. Todd Haynes’ 1988 debut fea­ture is made with a full cast of Bar­bi­es and minia­ture sets, spliced with footage of Car­pen­ter her­self. Mat­tel protest­ed Haynes’ use of Bar­bi­es unsuc­cess­ful­ly, but the Car­pen­ter fam­i­ly ordered every copy of the film to be destroyed after tak­ing Haynes to Court and win­ning because he hadn’t obtained music licens­ing. It can now only be found grainy and boot­legged in dusty cor­ners of the web – being for­bid­den fruit just adds to its cult appeal.

Full dis­clo­sure, I’ve been avoid­ing this illic­it siren call for a while, fear­ing that it would be – for­give an old anorex­ic a juicy pun in bad taste – a bit close to the bone. But, though laced with deep­est irony, Haynes’ clas­sic treats its sub­ject with sen­si­tiv­i­ty. The unset­tling, dark­ly amus­ing use of Bar­bi­es means much can go with­out being said, for the sad­ness of Bar­bie is her squeaky-clean lack of agency. That is Karen’s tragedy too; she was adored and manip­u­lat­ed by her fam­i­ly, failed by the cal­lous pub­lic eye, and behold­en to her inter­nal sys­tems of nutri­tion­al dic­ta­tor­ship. Haynes pro­gres­sive­ly whit­tles away at the Karen Barbie’s limbs, con­vey­ing the grim nuances of the afflic­tion through bizarre body hor­ror, rid­ding it of A‑List glamour.

But before the inter­net, per­haps Barbie’s most well-known appear­ance came in Dan­ish-Nor­we­gian Europop band Aqua’s 1997 banger Bar­bie Girl. Both a lov­ing homage and a satire, its many innu­en­dos jibe at Barbie’s para­dox­i­cal smooth sex­less­ness and hyper-sex­u­al­i­sa­tion. Fit­ting­ly, Nic­ki Minaj and Ice Spice have remixed the old karaōke fave for the Bar­bie Movie sound­track. Minaj has long styled her­self as a Bar­bie for our times, chal­leng­ing the doll’s goody-two-shoes image and over­whelm­ing White­ness – her most die-hard fans are dubbed the Bar­bz, and Bar­bie fea­tures heav­i­ly in her songs (Bar­bie Dreams, Black Bar­bi­es, Bar­bie Tingz, Bar­bie Goin Bad), which, with their snarling ebul­lience, often toe a thin bub­blegum tightrope between tones. Plen­ty of artists have also embraced Bar­bi­ecore, a glee­ful­ly post-earnest trend – and not to for­get Dol­ly Par­ton, who was wit­ti­ly chan­nelling Bar­bie way before it was cool.

Lady Gaga, too, has had a crack at skew­ing Barbie’s chakras. She once bit the head off a Bar­bie on stage in Tam­pa, Flori­da, after reproach­ing the audi­ence: “…What I don’t appre­ci­ate is this hor­ri­ble excuse for a woman you threw at my stage!” Harsh, but she’s more of a Mon­ster High girlie.

This wild image is the inverse of the can­ni­bal dolls scene from 1968’s sex­ploita­tion extrav­a­gan­za, Bar­barel­la, adapt­ed by Roger Vadim from the comics by Jean-Claude For­est – in which Jane Fon­da gets munched by some freaky dolls. Bar­barel­la is des­ig­nat­ed as a Bar­bie-bur­lesque by name and appear­ance, but there are no overt allu­sions to the doll. Instead, she can be seen as a mad, grown-up sci-fi ver­sion of Bar­bie, whoosh­ing about the galaxy in her pink space­ship, slip­ping in and out of bonkers out­fits – the Jane Bond of a psy­che­del­ic future, hump­ing and dump­ing a pick n’ mix of Kens. Bar­barel­la endures uncan­cellable because it’s so camp, sil­ly and fun that to take it seri­ous­ly in any way is to kill a whole load of joy. It lam­poons itself, lav­ish­ly, before any­one else can get there and throw stones – as the Bar­bie Movie seems to be doing.

Bar­bie gets around – from meta par­ty­ing in the aisles of Al’s Toy Barn in Toy Sto­ry 2 to the 00’s Pyg­malion trip of Life Size star­ring Lind­say Lohan and Tyra Banks, her place in the col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion is a move­able feast, always ripe for rein­ven­tion. It’s lit­tle won­der that Mar­got Rob­bie and Gre­ta Ger­wig – two artists who delight in sub­vert­ing our expec­ta­tions – are next in line to chal­lenge the doll’s on-screen image.