Headscratchers / Barbie (2023)

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Midge's pregnancy

• So dolls don't have genitals in this universe but Midge can still get pregnant? How does it work?
  • She's the doll infamously made to have a belly carrying a baby. She was made this "weird".
  • She also seems to be eternally pregnant, with no sign of her ever giving birth, so in this universe she always has been pregnant.
  • Is it possible that Midge could simply remove both her belly and her baby like her real world counterpart? It could go in line with the doll mechanics that the Barbies have.
    • Then she’d have a baby, but then there’s still that plastic belly piece. Even Dr. Barbie would be too grossed out to do something with it.
  • Well, we know Barbie began having irrepressible thoughts of death when Gloria began playing with her and projecting them on her. So maybe whoever was playing with Midge wished her to get pregnant?

Boxing Barbie

• What is the purpose of Mattel putting Stereotypical Barbie in a box? Is going inside a giant Mattel box a safe and quick alternate way of getting back to Barbieland, or is it something more sinister?
  • Presumably something to the latter effect. When you put a toy "back in the box" it usually means that that toy can no longer be played with. So perhaps permanently putting Barbie "in a box" was a way to cut the connection between Stereotypical Barbie and the toy being played with to close the rip in reality that was happening. It may have just ended with Barbie being stuck in the box forever to seal up the hole.
  • On the flip side, it was most likely just framed as sinister to distract from Ken's bubbling plot line at that point. Keep in mind the box is apparently a "normal" thing to a Barbie (and possibly Ken) as she's waxing nostalgic when she stands in it. Taking that option still wouldn't have been a good thing for Barbie though, as she'd just be sent back without any answers, solutions or growth from her new thoughts.
  • Actually, it is more related to the difference between voluntarily returning to Barbieland and being deported to Barbieland.
  • Possibly, going back in the box means erasing her knowledge of the real world.
  • Putting her back into her original packaging seems to be equivalent to restoring a robot to factory settings after it Grew Beyond Their Programming - it would turn her back into a freshly manufactured Stereotypical Barbie who doesn't have cellulite or think about death.

Barbieland's population

• If each resident of Barbieland has a corresponding doll in the real world, why is the population of Barbieland so small, and why do all of the residents look different from each other? Shouldn't there be millions of Barbies and Kens, many of whom look exactly alike?
  • A possible idea could be there are multiple Barbielands, with this one being the one connected to Los Angeles' population and having the strongest connection to Mattel's empire and therefore being the only one with a connection to the real world (and even then it's a convoluted and long gateway)
  • Out of universe, it would make the film look too cluttered to have millions of characters.
  • The film didn't discuss this too much, but Barbieland is filled with "Ideas," not dolls. Different types of dolls, even if there are hundreds of them, still can converge on the same "Idea", i.e. with every Weird Barbie being represented as one single Weird Barbie even if there are millions of different types out there. Every Barbie doesn't have a counterpart in Barbieland; rather, every sort-of discrete concept of a Barbie has a single representation in Barbieland that is a representation of all Barbie dolls that embody that concept.

Existential crisis crisis

• Stereotypical Barbie's existential crisis stems from the person playing with their doll being sad and depressed, but this is treated as something that's incredibly rare and has almost never happened. Surely it's not that uncommon for someone to play with a Barbie while being sad, so these kind of existential crises should happen all the time.
  • The issue probably more stems from the fact that it's an adult doing the playing, with all of life's implied baggage on display. Definitely more a complex sadness than what a child would likely be bringing to playtime, and unlike a child, the person's sadness is in part triggered by the play session(s).
  • Still, with tens of millions of Barbies in the world, and many adults collecting them as well, surely it's not that unusual for a sad adult to play with one?
  • Possibly Gloria working for Mattel as a designer who was actually drawing Barbie as weird and depressed gave her more influence than a regular person would.
    • I think it's because Gloria was actively projecting her feelings onto Barbie that caused the effect.
  • The film doesn't go into it, but it does state that Stereotypical Barbie must also be partially responsible for the portal. It's never addressed what that might have been or why Barbie had enough awareness to connect with Gloria as Gloria connected with her, but something about this particular Stereotypical Barbie reached out to the Real World as Gloria in the Real World was reaching out to Stereotypical Barbie. Weird Barbie expressly states it takes two to open a portal, which would be an extremely rare occurrence.

Older Ken

• If the residents of Barbieland live forever, why is Ryan Gosling's Ken visibly older than the other Kens, with wrinkles on his face? Shouldn't all the Barbies and Kens be eternally in their twenties?
  • There's the possibility Ken is a unique/one of a kind model, maybe even a one saved upon neglection like all the other failed models.
  • It is also possible the Kens are meant to represent various time periods of the dolls, so stereotypical Ken would be an older look version based on what you think of when you think of Ken and how long Barbie as a whole has been around. This would also explain why despite being a visibly older Ken he doesn't look as old as Sugar('s) Daddy Ken.
  • This is simply a consequence of casting a man in his 40s to play Ken, in universe it's likely not meant to mean anything significant.
  • You're ignoring the existence of Sugar Daddy Ken who looks to be around in his 60s (played by 58-year old Rob Brydon). Older Kens can exist.
  • A theory popular on Tiktok is that this is a dig on Hollywood's tendency to pair old male actors with very young actresses (whereas casting an older actress opposite a younger actor is usually frowned upon). Usually, this is done to make the actor seem more youthful. But this time, Gosling's age sticks out.
  • You may as well ask why the Barbies and Kens are all adults at all. They were designed to look a certain way. Ken debuted in 1961, when it wouldn't be seen as unusual for an older man to be the love interest of a younger woman.

Overthrowing Barbieland overnight

• How was patriarchy able to spread so quickly in Barbieland (a country with a female ruling class, and plenty of Nobel Prize winners to boot), with seemingly zero resistance?
  • This is explained in the movie with a comparison of how European colonists spread smallpox among Native Americans. In both cases the disease was completely unknown and foreign to the native population, so they had no natural defenses against it.
  • So basically the Kens started acting with classically toxic masculinity, and since the Barbies had absolutely no concept of what it truly was they just rolled with it as a new thing? Wonder if it was even presented as a great thing, since one of the Barbies claims something like "It's like a vacation for my brain, every day".
    • well she was brainwashed into thinking it was a “great thing” to not have to use her intelligence for anything, but she didn’t really mean it.
  • Apparently, warfare is not a widespread concept in the world of Barbieland, otherwise there would be military interventions against the Ken uprising.

"Where do they sleep?" "I don't know."

• It's lampshaded in the movie, but where DO the Kens (and Allan) sleep?
  • Maybe on the ground? Think of it, when a child isn't playing with their dolls, where do they place them? On the floor. So since the Kens don't have a house (and therefore, a bed), they sleep on the ground. But really they don't have to sleep at all (and neither should the Barbies for that matter).
  • As suggested elsewhere, Barbieland is not literal, as in each doll has a corresponding human counterpart playing with them in the real world, but it represents ideas. Since the Kens are just accessories to Barbie, it's a representation of how the little girls don't think of the Kens as actual people who would have homes of their own, since they just exist to be accessories to a Barbie.

Nobel Prize

• Why do the Barbies have a Nobel Prize (named after Alfred Nobel)? Why not an Ada Lovelace (or similar prize)?
  • It's shown that the Barbies do have some limited knowledge of the real world. Maybe when Mattel uses Barbie in some specific real world way that knowledge bleeds over.
  • It also makes for a bigger You Go, Girl! message from Mattel's POV. They promote Barbie as an epitome of female empowerment, and from their perspective it's more empowering to make it in a man's world because that's beating the odds. It could also show how short-sighted their MO is if they couldn't bother to think of a prize for the dolls to win named after a female scientist.

Barbie's new name

• At the end of the movie, Barbie gives her name as "Handler, {comma}, Barbara" when the doll's official name is Barbara Millicent Roberts?
  • It's a Mythology Gag and Adaptational Name Change at the same time. The doll line was named after Barbara Handler, the daughter of Barbie creator Ruth Handler.
  • She's not Barbie anymore so she's not going by the full name of Barbie.

Barbies don't care about Kens?

• In the film we see that Barbies are NOT interested in the Kens. Not even as close friends! But there are some Barbies that are shipped in pairs with their Kens, there are even some Bride Barbies with respective Kens at the groom! So, why there aren't any Barbies willing to spend some time with their Kens?
  • There are some. Physicist Barbie seems quite close with "her" Ken. And Stereotypical Barbie does value Ken as a friend even after all they've been through.
  • It's a result of the 'female empowerment' message Mattel wants to push. They preach that women can do anything and be anything, and don't need a man, so the Barbies' programming is to reject the Kens' advances to therefore make them seem independent and empowered.
    • This ignores the fact that we clearly saw a Barbie who seemed very interested in her Ken. She ran straight to him when he said he missed her.
    • It also plays into the idea that "Barbie is a character, Ken is an accessory" the movie is trying to push, blatantly ignoring decades of lore that depicts Ken as Barbie's equal with his own friends, family, and occupations.
    • There are multiple different Kens though. The main Ken in the movie was just into Barbie and beach.
  • We don't see that none of the Barbies are interested in the Kens, our focus is on Stereotypical Barbie and she doesn't have any feelings for (Beach) Ken. The implication is that it's because Gloria never had a Ken so seeing them as a couple was never part of her game, and it never became part of Barbie's personality.
  • The Barbies care about the Kens. They just don't think about the Kens, because they don't think about anything.

Water

• If the water in Barbie Land isn't real, where do the Mermaid Barbies go when they're underwater?
  • Probably an undersea themed version of the dreamhouse neighborhood. When they’re above water it looks like they’re on a stage lift system so their community probably just has a plastic water “ceiling” with the lift being the main entry/exit point.

Barbie Doll Anatomy Pt. 1

• If Barbies and Kens all have Barbie Doll Anatomy, and Stereotypical Ken and Barbie don't have any idea of what they'd even do if Ken were to "stay the night", then why would Stereotypical Barbie know what a vagina or a penis are in order to tell the construction workers that she and Ken have neither? She's very clearly stated she's not Doctor Barbie, who would have knowledge of human anatomy. She didn't even know what cellulite is.
  • Barbie dolls are played by young girls who know what vaginas are before they learn about sex and cellulite.
  • But the construction guys were making sexual advances on Barbie. Surely she must've known about sex, otherwise she wouldn't have pointed out her lack of a vagina to turn them off.
  • Seconded. Barbie doesn't seem to know about sex, but does know about double entendres, and that they relate to genitals?
  • Even if somebody factually knows about sex, they can still be clueless about certain implications due to their lack of a sex drive. Plus, Barbie is disinterested in Ken, so she simply didn't connect the dots. When it came to the construction workers, they straight up catcalled her and left no ambiguity to their sexual intent, thus Barbie could work out what their intentions were.
  • Barbie has also had Gloria projecting her thoughts onto her. Gloria obviously knows about sex since...well...she has a daughter, so Barbie would now subconsciously have an idea the longer Gloria projects onto her.

Barbie Doll Anatomy Pt. 2

• Why do Kens have nipples? It's stated they have Barbie Doll Anatomy but that includes lacking nipples, which Beach Ken and Rival Ken clearly are shown to have, and during the Beach-Off one of the Kens gives another a titty twister. It wouldn't have been that hard to have their nipples covered, and would have made Barbieland seem more immersive.
  • All female dolls/Barbies in the movie are shown to have breasts; it would make sense that female Barbie dolls in the movie also have nipples on those breasts, so why wouldn't the male dolls have nipples too? Human males have them too even though they never use them for their intended function (feeding a baby). It's not like either the male or the female dolls ever use nipples for this intended function, because... Barbie Doll Anatomy itself, actually: in Barbieland there is no pregnancy/childbirth as it is in the human real world (as is lampshaded when it's pointed out that having a pregnant doll makes no sense at all). In other words, in Barbieland nipples don't have the reproductive function they have in the real world, therefore they don't fall under Barbie Doll Anatomy.
    • Except it also wouldn't have made sense for the barbies to have nipples, since while barbie dolls do have breasts they lack nipples as well.
  • During pre-production, a lot of concepts were thrown around to make the Barbies and Kens more doll-like, including hands with fingers that don't move, plastic-like makeup, and hiding the Kens' nipples to resemble a real Ken's chest (the Barbies, of course, would never be shown topless). All of these experiments ended up being Unintentional Uncanny Valley and were scrapped. So the short, practical answer is that nippleless live-action Kens just looked too weird.

Horses

• There were some Barbie dolls that came with horses, and those horses didn't seem particularly masculine or patriarchal... so why does Ken associate horses with masculinity or patriarchy?
  • Because he has a childish view of it, he could've chosen motorcycles, or other things associated with masculinity. But chose horses.
  • One of the books he checks out from the school library is about how men and horses rule the world.

New outfits

• It's made clear that re-entering Barbieland gives you a new, pretty outfit, so why are the Mattel execs still in their black suits rather than pastels?
  • It's possible the Mattel execs have a technique/ability to refuse that outfit change, possibly because they didn't want to their uniform... well, uniforms.
  • I really doubt, in all the decades, a black suit has never been released for Ken.
  • Possibly it doesn't apply to males, since Barbie is for girls.

Police

• How come the police let Barbie and Ken go and keep the clothes they stole?
  • Since the Mattel Corp is aware that Barbie Land is a place and Barbies escaping is a thing that happens, it's possible the police (especially or perhaps specifically police near the trailhead to Barbie Land) are aware of this phenomenon too, and let them go after it was confirmed that they're dolls. There could be some legal reason they can't prosecute the dolls as persons, some concern with Mattel meddling in police business if they pursue prosecution, or maybe even just confusion with what exactly to do with the dolls since encountering them is still a very rare event.
    • That could explain why they were let go, but not why they were allowed to keep the clothes. The clothes belong to the owner of the store, not the police. Perhaps the owner by then has discovered the Barbieland clothes and decided they were worth more than the clothes stolen?
    • The store owner was present while they were booking them and said to let them keep the clothes. It's implied they allow it because she's so attractive in them.

Barbie apologizes to Ken

• At the end of the film, why does Barbie feel she owes Ken an apology for allegedly taking him for granted? She was nothing but nice to him at the start of the movie, even concerned and by his side when he injured himself. She only becomes stand-offish and annoyed with him after he sneaks into her car, startles her, and invites himself along on her trip to the Real World.
  • Because she and Ken are officially boyfriend and girlfriend at the start of the movie, yet she does not treat him as an equal. She does not let him sleep over at her house, and specifies that it is Barbie's dreamhouse, not Ken's. None of the Kens have houses, so that fact is rubbing his second class status in his face. She also says it's girls night, every night. That implies that she will never spend any night time with him.
  • She could also mean that she did not realize how strong Ken's feelings were for her. Until she started channeling Gloria's feelings, she had no basis of comparison of what it was like to feel longing for something she might never get, even if the longing she acquired was not romantic. Before, she seemed to assume that Ken's life was as carefree as her own, and she feels bad, as his friend, that she had not picked up on the fact that Ken wasn't so happy with his life.
  • Stereotypical Barbie can really be described as cordial at best to her Ken. She's about as concerned about him and his life as one might be with a neighbor they know casually, or with a coworker in an office job. Unless he's actively been hurt in front of her, like the beach incident, she barely gives him the time of day, especially considered to her other Barbie friends. And he's not someone she would seek out to talk about her problems with or spend time with unless she has to, even expressing annoyance when he tries to ask about spending more time with her. It's only when she steps into his shoes and experiences even a sliver of the sidelining and lack of acknowledgement that her Ken faced that she even began to understand that, even as someone she didn't have romantic feelings for, she was honestly treating him very poorly as someone who she supposedly considered a friend.

Dr. Barbie's reaction

• Hey, Dr. Barbie? Those flat feet Stereotypical Barbie had that you and everyone else was losing their minds over? You're a doctor, isn't it your job to analyze that?
  • That’s the joke.

Ordinary Barbie

• What does ordinary Barbie even mean as a product? Other than Barbie never being a mom the things Gloria listed are really abstract.
  • She means a Barbie doll that isn’t meant to be an aspirational figure, just an average person dealing with average things.

Wheelchair Barbie

• At the beginning of the movie, a Barbie who uses a wheelchair is shown dancing with everyone else. That’s cool and all, but where is she after Stereotypical Barbie returns from the real world and discovers that the Kens have implemented patriarchy? Did the Kens decide she wasn’t useful to them, leading to her being excluded from society, or something like that? But in that case, why didn’t she end up with all the other “outcasts”? Or is her disappearance during the second half of the film just a result of a lack of effort to incorporate her on the filmmakers’ part?
  • Maybe the Patriarchy gave her use of her legs back so she get them more brewskis?

The rift between worlds

• Was it ever explained how the rift between Barbieland and the real world healed? Seems like Barbie choosing to stay in the real world goes against what Mattel said had to happen for it to be fixed.
  • Didn't Barbie become a real person at the end? So in that event, she's no longer a doll occupying the real world and therefore not upsetting the balance.

The vote to change Barbieland's constitution

• If the big event that would cement the Kens' rule over Barbieland, and change it permanently into Kendom, was the Kens voting on a constitutional change, then couldn't the Barbies just... outvote them? There have got to be more Barbies than Kens in Barbieland. Conversely, if the Kens really were numerous enough to win a popular vote, then doesn't that make the Barbies the bad guys? Should President Barbie be impeached for being part of a program of voter suppression?
  • The Barbies were brainwashed around the time of the vote. Yes, they were freed, but the Kens didn't know that. Had the Barbies suddenly gone to vote without the Kens being distracted the Kens could have tried to reverse the brainwashing or perhaps gone to war with the Barbies.

Ken sneaking in with Barbie

• How was Ken able to get in without being discovered until he popped out unsolicited while on the bridge to the Real World? Did Barbie really not check the back of the car before departing?
  • If you live in a perfect fantasy land and the only possibly problem you're aware of is your own existential crisis that you're leaving to fix (without bringing any luggage), you don't really have a reason to even spare a glance toward the back seat.

Mattel

• Judging by Barbie's relief upon being taken into custody by agents of Mattel and her awe at stepping into Mattel Headquarters, it seems that at the very least, Barbies are aware of Mattel and regard it as an important, powerful, and benevolent force in their lives. After all, it does manufacture/create Barbies, as well as every physical object in their world. Is Mattel like God for Barbies? What exactly is that relationship like?
  • Barbie seems to know that she's a doll and that she's the first thing someone thinks of when they say "think of a Barbie", so Mattel may be viewed as like God, or perhaps Ruth Handler is the true deity.

Who knows about Barbieland?

• When the CEO learns that Barbie is in the Real World, he's shocked, but not surprised: his reaction stems from knowing the potential danger, not from the fact that Barbie exists as a living entity. Likewise, he immediately knows how she came to the Real World, how to get there himself, and, after arriving, he seems to know a number of details about how Barbieland works (such as knowing that the Kens couldn't have weapons). All together it implies that this has happened so many times before that the CEO is familiar with Barbieland—either personally or, perhaps, because this information is a "trade secret" given to every CEO. Some of the rank-and-file employees, like Aaron, seem to have knowledge that this could happen in order to recognize emergency scenarios, but even he's confused about Barbieland's physical existence, while Gloria, also a Mattel employee, is completely in the dark and initially doesn't believe such a thing is possible. Moreover, the FBI knows about Barbieland, implying that this information goes all the way to the federal government. How well is this information known, and who gets to know?

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