The Case for Ken — Barbie Doesn’t Understand Sentience
Continue past the semi-colon only if you have seen the movie (and you should as it is really well made) so spoiler right from the top; Barbie is a cultural organism, Corg, that becomes human. In science fiction a Corg wanting to be human is nothing new, take Moriarty of Star Trek for instance.
The movie does a good job of explaining the bidirectional relationship between Corg and humanity with much the same take as this blog:
Culture is, after all, humanity’s best shot at modifying original programming. Culture is programming not stored by DNA and not subject to evolutionary constraints other than it must be created and accepted by humans.
The movie also has an excellent demonstration of the power of relationships to promote sentience. Barbie introduces Ken to the real world and Ken challenges Barbie to change and grow.
So other than Barbie’s unrelenting cruelty to Ken, they are a good couple and have been together since 1961. Barbie leaves Ken to become a maker instead of made but sentience doesn’t work that way. Both humans and Corg are equally programmed, equally sentient, and trading immortality for genitalia does not make Barbie any more “real” than it can immediately make Pinocchio good:
Thinking about his life as a puppet, “he said to himself with great complacency: ‘How ridiculous I was when I was a puppet! And how glad I am that I have become a well-behaved little boy!’ ”
Barbie is a film written by a very successful couple that recently had their second child together. Nor does Ken having been “made” to love Barbie somehow invalidate their relationship — most men are to some degree created to love women.
Perhaps Barbie’s problem with Barbieland and Ken is it’s simplicity — the real world is more complex. However the film goes to great lengths to show that humans mostly live in their own simplified worlds very similar to Barbieland. The corporate world shown in the movie is just as cartoonish and simple as Barbie’s, even to the point of it’s leaders being unable to get past a turn style just as Alan cannot get over a fence in Barbieland.
Or is it that Ken and Barbie are infertile? Well the movie downplays this but Alan and Midge are married and already have a son Ryan.
The message seems to be that Ken needs Barbie but Barbie doesn’t need Ken. Certainly you can buy a Barbie without a Ken — he’s an accessory. Some researchers believe marriage has asymmetric benefits for men and the movie has Barbie kiss Ken good night every night so she can then have “girl’s night” with the other Barbies.
But Barbie apologizes to Ken at the end by saying “every night didn’t have to be girl’s night” and again this is a movie written together by a successful couple just having a second child.
So let’s put forward a different interpretation: Barbie doesn’t have a happy ending because the war between the sexes has consequences (war in general does and Hollywood doesn’t always fully represent that wars can’t be won — just relatively less lost).
“See you on the beach” is a war reference and the Kens lose control of Barbieland by fighting among themselves; outmaneuvered by the better organized Barbies. Barbieland stays a pure matriarchy and the real world stays a patriarchy in which, as is explained to Ken, men are just smarter and less open about it.
However Ken and Barbie’s relationship is a casualty of this fight for dominance. The “ordinary” Barbie that might have been able to live peacefully with Ken is rejected by a capitalist society where it’s more profitable to always be selling to one side or the other of the conflict.
Not to mention the benefits for an oligarchy obsessed with splitting the class they rule by any means — gender, race, religion, geography, immigrant status, age, beauty, educational, number of children, birth control, gender control, …
Changing from doll to human won’t automatically make Barbie any less of a product anymore than it automatically made Pinocchio a well-behaved little boy. If she wanted to really change then finally loving Ken was her best shot.
“Real world Barbie” is just another in a long line of Barbies selling better than ever while forever keeping their romantic options open. On the other hand it’s hard to keep a good Ken down, he might still ride in on a horse one day to sweep human Barbie off of her flat feet.