Barbie: Unseen But Heard

A Black Eyed Reviw of Barbie

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She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, is crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too

Tom Petty | Free Fallin’

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What I know about the Barbie movie without having yet seen the Barbie movie is that our American craving for the fantastical and the beautiful pitted against the real and the awful is as strong as it ever was. I don’t need to see it to know its theme: Don’t worry, moviegoers. You really are better than the sad, racist, sexist world perched outside your door. You are a magical human being. And as the credits roll in this darkened theatre, this squishy, lovely, its-all-gonna-be-okay feeling you’re having is all that really matters.

My favorite of all my mother’s paramours (though, sadly, she would never claim him as such) was Monroe. He was a dark, smooth-skinned man whom I have no idea how my mother met, but I was so delighted that she did. 

Monroe was my mother’s hang-er-on-er from the time I was twelve-ish to fifteen-ish. Though he as rudderless as a rowboat floating out at sea—jobless and missing his two front teeth—he was charming and persistent. He came to our table daily to share news of the world, often punctuating his words with a slap of his open palm on my mother’s white formica dining room table. 

“If he could just calm down a bit, we’d be alright,” my mother theorized about their possibly-never-courtship. “I just can’t have no man monologuing and smacking up my things to get his point across,” she would tell her friends who tried to sweeten him up for her. 

“But he’s a good man, Nada. Just passionate is all.” 

She would tsk. With the flip of her hand, she’d flick away their glowing references. “He can be passionate, but he can’t come around here beating on my tables. Just say what you need to say and if you can’t find the right words, then dang, maybe what you saying ain’t worth saying." 

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The Hollywood Reporter | Fans attend a dress-up 'Barbie' screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Mueller in Austin

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Monroe was the first movie reviewer I ever met who made it a point never to indulge in the pastime itself. “I can’t stand a movie theater. They make it too damn cold in there.” SLAP! SLAP! SLAP! ”And they charge you too much got-damn money.” SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!

My mother would quietly sigh, “Alright, alright. I don’t like going to see them either. But you don’t see me starting a protest about it.” 

From what I could gather, being just a kid and all, it wasn’t the movies that Monroe contested, per se, it was the industry in general. “Got-damn propaganda is what it is. They tryin’ to brainwash all of us.” SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!  

“Monroe,” my mother said slowly as if testing her voice, “you got one more time to slap my table. Slap it again and see what happens.” 

“You know they telling on they-self with that… umm… what they call it…” he said, searching for the words while patting his pants pockets for his pack of Newports. “Poltergeist. That’s it!” He lit his cigarette and leaned back from the table, I suppose to distance himself from the temptation of pounding it like a preacher pounds a pulpit. "The TV is sending this lil’ ole white gal messages and then BAM…“ he said, slapping his hand on his thigh (old habits die hard, but this was progress), “they got her!” 

“Who got her?” my mother said. 

“You know – they… they got her,” he answered with his utter unknowing. 

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Unlike the Marvelous Mr. Monroe, I love a movie theater. I love its icy air conditioned walls vibrating with surround sound. I love its cupholders and snack trays. I love stumbling out from its dark cave into the light of day after a matinee and feeling that the whole world is different than it was before I entered. I love wobbling to the car getting my sea legs with every step I take back into the real world. 

But like Monroe, I’m not above reviewing movies I don’t ever intend on seeing. I’m not above imposing embedded meaning and even conspiracies onto a script that probably doesn’t deserve it. I never saw Green Book, but I rolled my eyes with the best of them when I deemed it “some White savior nonsense” after watching the trailer with my husband. And when a friend asked if I’d seen Fifty Shades of Grey, I told her, “that movie’s made for White ladies. No Black woman’s interested in a movie about a White guy controlling any woman’s sexuality. That, my friend, is called Black history.” So I guess, like Monroe, I’m not above slapping some tables.

I’m not surprised that the Barbie movie is a phenomenon. We’ve all been so sad and weird and divided and anxious, so of course we’d find comfort in nostalgia. What does surprise me is how those who have harshly criticized it have been so willing to knowingly waste their breath and time fighting the inevitable. The movie exists because the heart of America wants what the heart of America wants. 

I’m sure that those who’ve critiqued its White feminist triteness are absolutely right. But don’t they know that being right doesn’t matter? Our divided country so often yearns for a yesteryear kind of hero who is White, female and supple: Scarlet O’ Hara from Gone with the Wind and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz at the tail end of the Depression. Disney’s Cinderella at the height of McCarthyism. Maria from The Sound of Music and Fanny Brice from Funny Girl during the Civil Rights movement of the 60s. 

Hollywood has always used the ideal-White-woman icon to soothe and encourage worried American minds despairing over a changing world. It has always been one of the first voices (besides the music industry) to calmly whisper, “See? Change is not so bad. We still got our girl! Here she is. There, there.” 

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But this new Barbie movie presents something new and different to process. She doesn’t just want to trick Americans into change. She herself seems changed for better or for worse, depending on whose watching. Unlike Scarlet, Dorothy, Cinderella, Maria and Fanny, this White beauty has Brown and Black friends, queer friends and even fat friends, too. 

In a country where the data shows that a full 75 percent of its White citizens have "entirely White social networks without any minority presence,” Barbie beckons: “See? No matter how “woke” this might seem, don’t worry. I’m still here. I’m still your best friend. There, there.” It doesn’t matter that there are whole groups of folks—some woke and some sleepwalking—that are having none of it. 

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Again, I haven’t seen the movie. I’ve only listened to the constant conversation it stirs, and with each rising voice I hear the palm of Monroe’s hand slapping my mother’s table. 

When I do finally see Barbie, my plan is to check whatever I’ve heard about it at the door. I want to sink into its pool without a single floaty. I want to allow myself to drown in its dream because, frankly, I can’t remember the last time I allowed myself to revel in the suspension of disbelief. I’ve missed that.

And though I might not catch her at a movie theater near me, I’m looking forward to inviting Barbie into my living room to calmly speak sweet words over the chaos of my heart: “Let there be light… camera… action.” My tired soul longs to see all that this light brings to life—stars, trees, and even the leviathans—and call it good. Very good. 

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