Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part One

Polaroid Barbie camera (camera)

“And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,”

-Revelation 20:2

Articles in this Series

Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part One

Christian Reflections on the Barbie Movie – Part Two

Introduction

A few weeks ago, I had the unfortunate time watching the Barbie Movie in cinemas. It was an experience roughly analogous to having a wet cat dragged slowly over the nape of your neck, given that the cat was also brandishing its claws. However, in writing this review (mainly consisting of theological and philosophical reflection), I do not seek to lament or explore the psychological intricacies of this feline sensation. I fully recognise that in writing a review for a movie as especially pink, vibrant, and tongue-in-cheek as this one, I risk the labels of “Puritanical”, “bigot”, “fun-hater”, or other fallacious bullets contained in the liberal barrage. I will gladly accept the first: the Puritans were excellent theologians. I will deny the second and third while simultaneously wondering if those who utilise these terms have taken an elementary class in informal logical fallacies.

In the first section, I will briefly summarise of the plot of the movie (from my memory, so incomplete and perhaps inaccurate) and hopefully not risk the breach of any copyright laws. In the second section, I will seek to provide a theological framework from which we ought to approach our viewing of media.

The third and fourth sections will be in the next article. In the third section, I will critique the feminism permeating the Barbie movie, showing how it is perhaps more nuanced than expected, and provide some Biblical teaching against feminism. In the fourth section, I will evaluate the existentialism in the movie and provide the only alternative, namely the Biblical alternative. The conclusion, as the name suggests, will conclude. Let us proceed.

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Why The Left Hates Private Wealth

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Much of the hostility toward private wealth comes from the same impulse: hatred of its ability to insulate the citizen from the will of the state. Money empowers resistance; it gives one the ability to buy some gold coins, for example, and thereby hold a measure of independence from the monetary monopoly of the state; to send children to a private school and avoid the brainwashing of the public education monopoly; to open a foreign bank account and provide oneself with protection against legal confiscation schemes. Propaganda alleging the immorality of inherited wealth is also a reflection of the assault on the family. Before he dropped into noumenal oblivion, Charles Reich wrote that private property “guards the troubled boundary between individual man and the state,” but that there is a new wealth that has replaced it, one dispensed in myriad forms by the state. Increasingly, therefore, “Americans live on government largesse – allocated by government on its own terms, and held by recipients subject to conditions which express ‘the public interest.’ ” People who are thus described are more likely to be compliant servants of the authorities than are those who earn their living by giving value to private citizens who prize what they have to offer.

Idols for Destruction – Herbert Schlossberg

The Irony of the Pride Flag

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

EPHESIANS 2:1-3

The Irony of Christ’s Trial1

The soldiers plunged the crown of thorns into Jesus’ head, undoubtedly rendering a skin-piercing agony. They placed Him in a scarlet robe, handed Him a scepter, and with malicious sarcasm, they hailed Him. They struck Him and asked Him to prophesy who had done so (Matt. 27:27–31; see also Mk. 15:16-20; Lk. 22:63-65, 23:9-11; Jn. 19:1-16). Later, on the hallowed ground of Calvary, Pilate hammered the sign above Jesus’ head that read “’Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’”. When asked to change what he had written to something less offensive, perhaps something less prone to misinterpretation, Pilate did not oblige (Jn. 19:19–22).

All of this harmonious cacophony served as a terrible yet joyfully juxtaposed irony. Those involved in Jesus’ trial knew not what they did, as our Lord prayed with dying breath (Lk. 23:34). But what they did was, in one sense, accurate. They crucified the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:8) but also crowned Him. They placed Him, the true King of kings and Lord of lords, in a scarlet robe (Rev. 17:14). The one prophesied to be the ultimate and true Davidic King who would shatter rebels with a rod of iron was handed a scepter (Ps. 2). The one asked to prophesy who had struck Him would be in a little while struck by His Father for the sins of His people (Is. 53:4). The one who hung on the cross as bystanders walked by and gazed at the sign above His head will, at the end of time, be rightly hailed as the King of the Jews by knee-bending humanity (Phil. 2:9-11).

Therefore, even in the depraved mocking and evil actions of wretched mankind, there shone this peculiar divine irony of what was to be: salvation for mankind, wrought by no other than the King of kings. Based on this wrought salvation, if the soldiers had faith in Christ, as the centurion presumably did (Matt. 27:54), then this irony became actuated in their lives in glorious salvation, in the transfer from the arena of darkness into Christ’s kingdom (Col. 1:13-14). If the soldiers did not, then their actions only furthered their condemnation. The incarnate Word, full of grace and truth (Jn. 1:14), stood before them, and in their blindness, they rejected His gracious figure.

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Self-Awareness 0 Hypocrisy 1

The lack of self-awareness of some of the left is just gob-stopping.

Thus says the pink-haired woman who supported forced masking, vaccine passports and mandated vaccination that affected so many New Zealanders. We have just had two years of religious zealots such as her ruining our lives, livelihoods and our country’s economy all in the name of supposedly saving lives. But dare we on the right actually try saving lives by…I don’t know… stopping the murder of innocent babies, we are religious zealots who are taking people’s rights away.

The right to take innocent human life is no right at all despite what the demons from hell and their servants on earth might think on the matter. Interestingly enough, like so many of her ilk, she’s not willing to hear from the other side. Only those she mentions and follows can reply. Because there is no argument for abortion. You either are against it, or you are committed to an evil atrocity and both history and Christ will judge you for it.

Then we have our childish prime minister adding her deep ‘wisdom’ on the issue. She boasts of our country’s recent shame of turning the murder of innocent unborn children into a ‘health’ issue. Then without stopping to wash the blood from her hands, she sanctimoniously mounts her high horse to speak to the people. The overturning of Roe v Wade according to her facile approach is about the personal convictions of some robbing others of the right to make their own decisions.

Wow. Another silly leftist woman so full of hubris that she can’t see her own hypocrisy. How dare this woman lecture on this topic? How dare she talk about personal beliefs infringing on the rights of people to make their own decisions? You forced almost an entire country to get vaccinated, many against their will and at threat of the loss of livelihood with an experimental vaccine. Stop talking. You have no moral right to wax eloquent about not robbing people of their right to choose.

Thank goodness both these women are on the wane. The sooner they are gone from public life, the better for our country. God protect us from godless and meddling women.

The Besetting Sins of Intellectuals

One of the besetting sins of professional intellectuals as a class is believing that, because they have a particular depth of knowledge or strong ability in a given area, they can then generalize their narrow knowledge and ability into the notion of their own superior wisdom and judgement for life in general. Frequently disregarding the everyday, non-theoretical and mundane knowledge of ordinary people in the real world, central socio-political planning is taken on by the ‘experts’ – a particular kind of intellectual – as part of a broader intelligentsia who believe they alone are qualified to guide and shape society.

from “Ruler of Kings: Toward a Christian Vision of Government” by Joseph Boot

They’ll Believe Anything

A quote from That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis arrived in my inbox yesterday. If you haven’t read it or the rest of the trilogy, I highly recommend you get a hold of them. But back to the quote. One of the protagonists, Mark Studdock is being asked to write propaganda pieces for N.I.C.E (National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments). He suggests that the people who read the educated newspapers will not fall for the deception. Here’s the reply he gets from the butch Miss Hardcastle.

Why, you fool, it’s the educated readers who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem: we have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.

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Prayer, the Church and the Christian

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In my time attending fairly typical evangelical churches, I have noticed a pattern in public prayer. Those who pray about national or international situations do so with a distinctly socialist / left wing approach. The solution is always centralist intervention and control. This is the standard approach to prayer that is acceptable in most evangelical churches. Woe-betide anyone who steps outside of this script. It will be deemed as the terrible sin of ‘being political’. This is typical of a culture where secularism is by default seen as neutral and anything that challenges it is seen as religious.

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