In this section, I aim at a twofold goal: to provide commentary on the opening scene of the Barbie Movie, thereby leading to a discussion of demeaning children and abortion, and to present a Biblical case for the role of men and women.
The trailer or first scene of the movie begins with a landscape shot, shifting to depicting little girls playing with dolls and prams. The girls sit on a barren, rocky landscape. “Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls.” says the narrator dramatically. Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, a symphonic poem named after Nietzsche’s nihilistic philosophical work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, begins to play and continues in the background. The narrator continues: “But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls until…”. The music crescendos. A giant Barbie dressed in a black-and-white swimsuit appears. She lowers her sunglasses, smiles at the girls, and winks. The next shot immediately depicts a girl shattering a doll with a different doll. Another doll is thrown into the air.1
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.
It’s been a while since we looked at education here at The Sojournal. As mentioned in the past, I am involved in the education system and have a real interest in improving educational outcomes. I’ve commented previously on the train wreck that is the New Zealand education system. Years of intervention seem to have done nothing to stop the slide. Now we have new entrant teachers voicing concern that an increasing number of children are unprepared for school when they arrive. They struggle to ‘concentrate or manage basic tasks like getting ready for lessons’. One teacher lamented that when she began her career she would have all her new entrants reading by the end of the year whereas now she’s trying to get them ‘into the mode of how to behave in a school.’
Mary Eberstadt is a Catholic author and social commentator who has written a number of great books including Home Alone America, How the West Lost God and her latest book, Primal Screams. If you have never read any of her work before, I’d highly recommend you grab a book of hers from the library.
Primal Screams has the subtitle, “How the sexual revolution created identity politics”. It’s well worth a read. She makes a number of interesting points throughout, but her comments on a section looking at the new androgyny were particularly interesting.
“The bedrock fact is that today’s women are continually given the message that they must perform like men – that men are the standard by which women should be measured.” Obviously, this disadvantages most women, because. unsurprisingly, women are not as good at being men as men! Most women, she rightly points out, cannot compete with men on male terms – ‘sexually, athletically, professionally or otherwise’. She suggests that our view of a successful woman has become the kind of woman how behaves most like a man, and a ‘beta woman’ is one who does not. Women who act like men are rewarded, and those who persist in traditional female roles – ‘marrying, raising a family of size, devoting time and talent to what used to be called domestic arts‘ are viewed with disdain.
As Christians, we ought to celebrate the distinctive designs of men and women and a woman’s special role as nurturer. We ought to challenge the secular paradigm that only one sex is needed and that success for a woman ought to look like success for a man. This is patently untrue and is a denial of creation design. God created Eve because he wanted women in his world. As male and female mankind images God. It is good and right for a woman to attend to the domestic arts and create a haven for her family as a wife and mother. We should celebrate this, and present the superiority of God’s design for families in our joyous, fruitful and serene family life.
It is no accident that feminists have succeeded in getting women treated “equally” with men, and now that women are no longer singled out for honor, the men around them just go with their lusts. The results have not been at all favorable for women. After decades of established feminism, the end result is that far more women, in their relationships with men, are treated like dirt.
In my daily skim of the news recently, I came across this article bemoaning the government’s response to COVID 19. Why? According to the Ministry for Women. the government’s approach favoured men and was likely to exacerbate gender inequalities.
How so? Well, apparently the ‘shovel ready’ projects benefit workforces that are dominated by men, whereas women tend to make up a larger component of industries such as retail, hospitality and tourism which have been hard hit. Now I don’t really want to get into whether the government’s response to the economic situation, that they by their actions have foisted upon us, is wise or not.
What I do want to look at is one particular quote in the article.
Impact of COVID 19 on Women in the Workforce
Professor Jennifer Curtin, the head of the University of Auckland’s Public Policy Institute is quoted in the article.
My concern about this shovel ready, Ministry of Works, nostalgic spending is that, what happens if too many women lose their jobs, then can’t find a job, and end up staying home and taking care of children?
I read this and thought. Wow, that could be great! Imagine that. An economic crisis that forces us to think about more than just money. An opportunity for families to see value in the home economy and the little lives there. But no, I obviously missed the point. Curtin continued.
Then we end up looking like we looked like in the 1950s. Back to the same old breadwinner model where the bread-winner was the guy.
It’s hardly an argument, but it seems that we must assume that if this economic crisis caused women to stay home and care for children that would be bad. Why? Reading between the lines Curtin might be arguing it is bad because it’s an old model, and gives men more power and women less opportunity to work outside the home.
What is Progress?
But what evidence do we have that the 1950s model was worse than the one we have today? From whose perspective are we making this value judgment? As a child, I appreciated the fact that my mother stayed at home and cared for me. As a teacher, I see kids starved of a mother’s love who could do with a more old fashioned hands-on approach.
Curtin herself, in questioning the budgeting process wants a gender-responsive system where government agencies have to explicitly ask who benefits from policies and address inequalities. Perhaps that thinking should be applied to our children. What benefits them? Would having Mum at home help or hinder their development as human beings? What does true social progress look like?
Well, the research is in. Having a Mum at home for young children, and being home for children when they return from school is best. If you are interested in reading further into this and are not concerned about the inconvenience it might cause your family should you be convinced, a place to begin would be Mary Eberstadt’s Home-Alone America. She looks into the impact that family-child separation has in a number of areas. The book investigates the impact of daycare, as well as other negative effects of typical modern patterns of family life. From obesity to mental health to STDs, our modern patterns of child-raising have wreaked havoc in the lives of countless children.
Unfortunately, as adults, we tend to focus on getting what we want, and the voiceless children struggle to get what they need. So when issues occur in the lives of our children, we don’t look at our lifestyles. Eberstadt notes that “the passionate desire to attribute today’s behavioural and mental problems to inanimate suspects…despite serious evidence to the contrary shows us how reflexively our society fastens on to some explanation, any explanation that does not involve parents.”
So while Curtin might disparage the return of Mums to the home as a result of COVID 19 as some kind of backwards step, perhaps a backwards step is what we need if we are to make positive social progress. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity pointed out that progress is not always forward.
We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
Photo by Jon Flobrant
Maybe we took a wrong turn in our approach to families and childcare. The explosion of mental health issues in children surely tell us something has gone wrong. Statements like Curtin’s devalue children and those who raise children. Implicit in her thinking is that to lose a job and be forced to be at home and raise one’s own children is a backward step. But perhaps these precious little eternal souls are more important than pushing paper from one office to another. Maybe, just maybe, heading back to a more 1950s arrangement might actually be a step forward for many families.
Let’s Think Holistically
Finally, might it not be worth thinking more holistically? Instead of focussing on whether men are getting a better deal, or women are being unfairly treated, I wonder what it would look like if we started thinking of ourselves in terms of households? What if we considered the household as one team? In a team, you have a captain, and you have people playing different positions, but every player has a role to play in winning the game. If we approached the family as a team rather than in an individualistic manner, what might change? What would it look like if fathers captained their families and considered the common good of everyone in their household?
