The Barbarity of Consciousness1

This paper is an existential-psychological unboxing of the recent Barbie film. Is this really necessary? Would Sartre and Beauvoir deem an analysis of something so shallow worthy of consideration? Or would they say that this is where dignity goes to die? This film is about the consciousness of death, but also, a vicious comic criticism of our cultural superficiality and the absurd ways we try to escape consciousness of death.

As Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra plays (with awesome gravity), the film starts off with the quote:

Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls…. Always baby dolls…. Until Barbie.

Thus the film is inaugurated with the grave pronouncements that “Barbie changed everything. Because Barbie can be anything, women can become anything. Girls can grow into women who can achieve everything and anything they set their minds to. Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved. At least that's what the Barbies think.”

Of course this is said with tremendous irony, since Barbieland is a pink fantasy devoid of the struggles and agonies of reality, and the vicissitudes of real human beings and bodies. Pregnant Barbie was discontinued for being too weird. From the beginning we see that the perfection of Barbieland is cartoonish, even as everyone seems to live in incessant bubbly joy and recurring euphoric girls' nights.

This cartoonish celebration of inanity continues until minute 13, when Barbie asks, “You guys ever think about dying?” Then everything grinds to an abrupt halt. And what happens when Barbie begins meditating (or obsessing) on death? Reality interrupts the cartoonish irreality. Her waffles burn, her milk spoils, she falls off her roof, her shower turns cold, her feet flatten, and her breath becomes yucky. This induces panic, perplexity, and revulsion. It requires immediate resolution. Actual life entails accident, failure, imperfection, suff