Rachel Wagner
I think I’m the movie really does offer a lesson in terms of what are we just inverting instead of transforming? And I want to invite my fellow scholar practitioners in the field of student affairs to think about what if what if we just replaced with different cosmetics or inverted but not truly transformed, that needs to be transformed in our work?

Heather Shea
Welcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I’m your host of today’s episode Heather Shea. For those who are not familiar with or haven’t seen the Barbie movie, we are going to be discussing themes on today’s episode. If you haven’t seen it plan to add or plan to, please know there are going to be spoilers ahead. And whether you loved it or hated it. This movie has broken all kinds of box office records including the biggest opening by a female director and the highest grossing movie of 2023. And like other pop culture phenomenon, I’m thinking Twilight and 50 shades. Barbie is going to be a topic of conversation on our college and university campuses with students this fall. In fact, one of the grad students who works in my office has already written a blog post about it, which I’ll send a link to. And in a session this morning with our prevention offices, peer educators, I asked how many people had seen the movie and nearly every single hand went up. And yet, there’s a lot to unpack. So we’re going to be discussing all of these complexities with our panel today. Before I welcome our guests, let me provide you a bit of background on the podcast. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations make a contribution to the field and our restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays and you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. And you can stay tuned to the end of the podcast for more information about our sponsor. As I mentioned, I’m your host for today’s episode episode Heather Shea My pronouns are she her and hers and I am broadcasting from the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the three fires confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples, otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home to Michigan State University where I work as the director of WSS the office Advancing Women and Gender Equity. So thank you to the three of you for joining me this episode about the Barbie movie. Before we get into our discussion, I’d love for each of you to give us a brief intro and share how you come into this conversation today. And I’m gonna start alphabetically with Alex. Hi, Alex.

Alex C. Lange
I almost responded Hi Barbie like that is that is where we’re at today, everybody. Pleasure to be with you all today. My name is Alex Lange, my pronouns are they them. I am an assistant professor of higher education at Colorado State University where I also coordinate the higher education leadership PhD program. I am dialing in today from the industrial and current homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and ute nations and peoples. And I think even thinking about the Barbie movie and thinking about settlers and land use thinking about sort of how even the idea of Barbie land is sort of this idea of a pristine sort of land but yet had to come from somewhere had to come at the cost of some people. And so I’m excited to sort of dig into this conversation today. I’m also really excited to talk about this today sort of like a budding emerging movie buff. I think I’ve seen 23 films in theaters this year. It’s becoming like one of my newer like intense hobbies. So yeah, excited to talk about it today.

Heather Shea
Thank you for joining us, Alex. Keith.

Keith Edwards
You’re next alphabetically. I was wondering. Yeah. Hi, everybody. I’m Keith Edwards. I’m usually in the host chair. I get to be in the guest chair today. My pronouns are he him his and I’m coming to you from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota on the ancestral homelands of the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. I love how Alex already already did and often, almost always, maybe not always, but often brings in and land acknowledgement and added meaning and I try and do that myself. So thank you for for teaching me that Alex. I do lots of things speaker consultant and coach keithedwards.com. I recently wrote a book about men, which is right there unmasking and authentic masculinity and so I was paying particular attention to Ken and Ken’s and what’s going on for them in this and I saw it with my partner and my two daughters and conversations with them and different takes. And so which I was gonna see. But I am not a movie theater goer I love when they come out at home and you can watch them on your couch and make your own popcorn and pause when you need to go and things like that. So, but Heather said, Well, you get to talk with these folks. And I was like, Alright, I’m going to a movie. Let’s go. Let’s go. So I’m super excited. I have so many thoughts, and I can’t wait to talk about it with these amazing folks.

Heather Shea
Awesome. And Rachel, secretly I read your Facebook post about this movie and was like, Oh, my gosh, I have to do a podcast about this. And I need Rachel Wagner to join us. So thank you for sparking that and welcome. Welcome back.

Rachel Wagner
First, Sure, thank you for inviting me. I’m Rachel Wagner, she hers pronouns. I live and work and pray and play on the rightful homelands of the Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee and the United kids who are Band of Cherokee, and as an uninvited guest on Turkey homelands. I think a lot about what are my obligations and responsibilities to care for and practice, the teachings and the values of the Cherokee peoples. I invite you to do the same from your location. I think how I come at this, so I am an associate. Professor in Higher Education and Student Affairs at Clemson University, and Clemson, South Carolina. I am a gender scholar. And I couldn’t turn it off. I very reluctantly went to the Barbie movie. I don’t really have an attention span for movies. Anyway, that’s not how my world works. But my wife and my work bestie were like, just come. And so I did and afterwards I ranted to Dr. Natasha Croom, about all the ways in which I was frustrated by the messaging and the movie. And she was like, Yeah, this is why we can’t have my things we can’t I scholarship as critical scholars, sometimes it’s difficult to take in contemporary media. And so but I have certainly had a vibrant and rich series of conversations with both family and colleagues about it. And so I do think that it is a an abundant source of thinking and hopefully, strategy, strategizing for transformative change. So I’m excited to talk about that.

Heather Shea
Yes, I love that. I think that’s a great kind of place for us to kick this off and start so first impressions. I knew from the beginning, really nothing about this movie, I had seen the logo and the picture, and I knew I was in it. But other than that, I didn’t know what it was about. And Alex, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you saw it opening weekend. Tell me what did you think it was going to be about? Were you excited? You know, tell me a little bit about your first impressions.

Alex C. Lange
Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned right before we recorded like, so there was this deal with Fandango to go to a Barbie blowout party on the Wednesday before the movie was officially released. And a good friend of mine, Carmen Rivera went with me. On that journey, it was the week I was doing an intensive teaching, but I was like, I don’t care how I’m going to see this movie. And that is, in part because this movie has had my attention for a little over a year now. So that first minute and a half of the movie that sort of tribute to Space Odyssey 2001 was actually a teaser trailer back in December. And then there’s stuff about this movie coming up before and I’ve like, come through the trailer like I perhaps a little obsessed with this movie one could say and when you saw one of the first trailers before we really get into the meat of any of the plot points or anything like that, there were allusions to the Wizard of Oz there were allusions to several kinds of cultural products. So that really interests me because I’m really interested in what happens and when, when we sort of use existing cultural products to make meaning of current cultural products right. So I I’m so excited. I really thought this movie was going to be about gender in some way. Did I think it was going to radically be about gender? No. And I was just a bit delayed it also because of Greta Gerwig, I have to say, as a fan of her two previous movies that she’s written and directed ladybird and her interpretation of Little Women, right, I think she’s really interested in relationships between and amongst women, particularly mothers and daughters, which I think happens less in this movie. But overall, I was really excited about this movie. I’ve seen it twice since I’m going one more time before I referenced it a lot in my student development courses for some different reasons. And we’ll get into that. But I think I, I should say from the get go, I’m very conscious Mattel approve this movie? Yeah, right. Like that is part of the key of any of the critique or anything I’m going to say after this because, yeah, Mattel allowed themselves to be made fun of for having an all male boardroom, right, like Mattel allowed certain things to happen in this movie. And I know we’re going to talk about later, but I have a feeling Greta Gerwig was a little bit more subversive than perhaps Mattel allowed her to be, but also still reigned her in that particular moment. So overall, I thought it was gonna be about gender. I think it’s definitely about gender in many ways, and we’ll get into that. But I think it’s actually more about the limits of gender, and really, honestly, about the limits of white progressivism, but we’ll get there. So that is my beginning tech.

Heather Shea
I love it. So Rachel, you said that you saw it reluctantly. And so going in, what did you think it was about? What were your first reactions impressions as you were leaving the theater?

Rachel Wagner
Yeah, um, you know, I hadn’t heard much about it. My wife’s really the pop culture scholar in our household. And so she probably was more informed about it. I hadn’t seen the trailer that Alex was mentioning. And I’m not a huge movie goer. Mostly cuz I just can’t sit still that long. Which is, right. And I, I didn’t have Barbies. We couldn’t afford that when I was growing up. And so that was, it doesn’t really hold a cultural sort of touchstone for me, or like, any kind of sense of nostalgia. So I was going, Why do I have to go to this, and I’m confident that it’s, it’s gonna have some things about gender, it’s not going to have any kind of class analysis. And that’s really where I’ve been preoccupied for probably the last eight to 12 months. And the, the fact that there’s a lot of things about Mattel as a company and as a corporation, that I’m troubled by so I went very reluctantly like, I don’t know if I want to give my money to this. Um, and, and I do think it was a strategic move to get Greta Gerwig I think she brings some indie cred. So that it’s not just, you know, dismissed as a two hour commercial for the brand. And visually, it was stunning. Like, I did appreciate that leaving the theater I. I don’t necessarily. I didn’t necessarily appreciate the humor. I thought that the satire was mild at best. I was really frustrated by a lot of the messaging, but the aesthetics of it, I found incredibly compelling. And so I didn’t fall asleep in the movie, which is rare for me. And I think that’s about the visuals, so and probably my indignance to a degree but yeah, that’s how I left the theater.

Heather Shea
Thanks, Rachel. Keith as you said, this app my request and I was like, Hey, we have to talk about this. We on this episode. So thank you for doing that and for your taking your partner and your daughter so I’m curious what your impressions were.

Keith Edwards
Well, first, my my 30 year old daughter went with her friends which was an on their own just a new thing. So and she came home and I was like, How is it I hear nothing but good things because I don’t talk with Rachel enough apparently. I hear nothing but good Good things. And she just sort of smirked and said, you’ll really like it. I’m not talking about it with you. I’m not saying anything. I’m not giving anything away. But Dad, you will like it. And I was like, oh, okay, I’ll wait and for three months, but it’s on streaming, and then the chance to talk with with all of you about it. We went out and saw the movie. It’s interesting, because we never had our reason I never Barbies. My sister never had Barbies. And I think there was a class thing. We just didn’t have money for that. And I think my feminist mom probably did wasn’t in two Barbies, for lots of reasons. And my toys were whatever you could find at the auction of whoever had died in the county. That’s where we got things. And my kids don’t really know about Barbies, because we made a really conscious decision not to do Barbie, mainly for the unrealistic expectations of beauty. Body blonde, white sort of setting that up. We didn’t really want to sort of imbue that so we’re very intentionally not done Barbie for that reason. But they of course get exposed to Barbie, they go to a friend’s house and they have Barbie. And my partner played with Barbie when she was a child. And the part she really connected with was weird Barbie, because she cut her Barbies hair, and she broke it. Like she had like, that’s what people who actually played with Barbie, I think. And so her she was just delighted that they give sort of life and voice to this Barbie that had sort of been not kept in that. So it was interesting. My 11 year old wanted to see it again, because it was too much going on. She did she was like I didn’t I got to see it again. Because I didn’t I didn’t catch it. I didn’t get it. And I want to understand that. So she’s like, I don’t have an opinion. I want to see it again to sort of catch all of that, which I certainly get and the 13 year old who saw it again. I don’t think she’s over the moon about it. But I think she thought some of those things were funny. I didn’t see it as a critique of way, progressivism. I thought it was movie about patriarchy. That was my walk away. I don’t think it was about feminism. I think it was about patriarchy. And the way that patriarchy was ruining Barbie and the Barbies life, and ruining Ken, and Ken’s life, and when they’re walking through Venice Beach or whatever. And Ken gets a taste of power. It’s delightful. And he wants more of it. And then he gets it. And it’s just unsatisfying, which I think is many men’s experience. Like I write Ooh, power. That sounds great privilege. That sounds great. And then I have it and it’s unsatisfying. And what really struck me and I pulled out my phone, which you’re not supposed to do. Sorry, Alex. And I typed it into my phone, because I didn’t want to forget it for this conversation is I just saw Ken, desperate for connection. Just desperate for connection. And what he went from in this yearning for connection was competition. But he didn’t, he wanted to live in the house with Barbie. And he took it over. And that was unsatisfying. But what he wanted was connection, what he wanted with the other cans was connection. And they ended up in a war. And I think that was such a, such a clear point that his yearning for connection, and then his move toward that just got manifested into competition, and then violence and a dance off and you know, things like that. But I just like how much masculinity is men yearning for connection, and then competition. And I’ve had some really deeply personal experiences in the past couple of weeks where I have seen a yearning for connection turn into competition and adversarial and hurt and pain and anger and aggression. And then I just see this yearning for connection. So that was really had my attention and a whole bunch of other things. We’ll see how we do.

Heather Shea
Reactions.

Rachel Wagner
Yeah, I appreciate that. Because I didn’t necessarily see Ken, as being desperate for connection, although I get I can appreciate that conclusion, because I do think that there are elements of that in there. I really thought it was kind of a clumsy attempt to invert the male gaze. And I’m, and I think that I’m making Ken the object of a feminine gaze and really tying his subjectivity to whether or not Barbie acknowledged him saw him. You know, that that is what he existed. For I think that it was trying to teach the viewer about the dangers and the pitfalls of existing as a woman as a as an object, but it was not executed in a way that I think maybe conveyed that effectively to the audience. But, I mean, I give them props for at least trying to go to what is that Foucault? i All right. Um,

Heather Shea
that’s fascinating. Alex, do you wanna?

Alex C. Lange
Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that connective point. And I think that you know, part of this is, you know, a movie also, I think both of the, you know, you have Margot Robbie, stereotypical Barbie and Ryan Gosling Beach Ken really talking about I think Rachel’s right, I think this sort of the inverse, they’re trying to demonstrate the inverse of sort of these typical gender dynamics. The challenge with that is that it is not that Barbies wield their power in the same way that men have done under patriarchy in the real world, right, like, and so it’s sort of not a perfect flip. And so I can see the I appreciate that sort of piece about connection. And I think there’s also a sense of just like, well, these Kens were just made in relations to Barbies. Right? So it’s sort of this old school, sort of biblical interpretation of what women are to men in some ways. Yet, that is not what the Barbie shows to do with not what the Ken’s or what the men of the real world have done. In some ways, so. But I think there’s a lot to dig into there as well. And I think, horses

Keith Edwards
I think what you’re both pointing to remind me of another thing was just the binary nature, right and fully from one power structure to another power structure. And there’s so much space in between and other options and see, and another thing and what could this look like it was sort of like, well, Barbie has control over can let’s flip that, that. I don’t know. It’s just, that was a little simplistic. Yeah. But I’m also I’m also reminded that perhaps the highest grossing movie of all time use the word patriarchy, like, two dozen times, and has really for a lot of a lot of, you know, 13 year olds, really explain what that means in an imperfect way. For us. But that’s a that’s a there’s we’re talking about the culture moment and the ubiquity and the the money and the things, that’s gonna be a hard thing to undo. And it kind of delights me when I see so many people are so mad about this movie, because it’s saying patriarchy is talking about these things. And I’m just like, yeah, that’s, it’s gonna be really hard to put that back in.

Heather Shea
So what I think about that message, right, and you’ve kind of the, you know, started unpacking exactly what the what the feminist kind of perspective on this might be. Never before this movie came out what I have ever in a in any of my wildest dreams considered Barbie to be a feminist icon, right, or the Barbie movie to be making a feminist statement. And I think there’s lots of questions about whose feminism and feminism’s certainly are there to discuss. But when I think about, like, what was Greta Gerwig trying to accomplish? Why is she trying to make this a feminist? Like feminist manifesto? I’m curious about to what extent the movie aligns with perspectives around feminism. And again, who’s feminism? You know, what are we? What are we exactly mean by that? Because I don’t think as many times as patriarchy was said, I don’t think the word feminism was said I could be wrong. So that was that was my

Keith Edwards
memory. I could be wrong about that, too. But yes,

Rachel Wagner
or racism, or intersectionality or class. So I do think that yeah, it’s, um, I really like Alex’s take on this is a challenge to white progressivism. I mean, it literally is a sort of liberal feminism. dreamscape of you know, a sort of separatists environment where men are adjunct or naughty, I would even say secondary, but maybe tertiary. And, and that’s not, you know, to go back to, you know, keys point about the inversion. That for me is not an inversion of patriarchy, versus changing the cosmetics of it, but you haven’t actually done anything new, the hierarchy is still present. When I think about the opposite of patriarchy, I think about a world that’s built in flat, reciprocal, interdependent ways. And there wasn’t a vision of that in Barbie land. And that’s what I think was the most trusted, frustrated about the missed opportunity of that. And, you know, I do think that it at least opens up space to ask the question of, because that, you know, I’ve seen a couple of folks on tik tok or whatever. Talk about a sense, you know, Barbie land is a feminist utopia. Right? Not even close. That’s not my feminism. That’s not how I think about the world we all deserve. But I do think that, okay, if it’s trying to excavate the world we have, but like, inverted to surface it to people’s attention. I think that was her intention.

Keith Edwards
Can you talk a little bit more about the world, we think we do deserve, like, tell us more about this vision. Right? I’m so excited about it.

Rachel Wagner
I know, I, I was thinking because Heather had asked us to contemplate, like how can we engage students critically thinking about this movie without necessarily leading them down a path of like, you know, just repeating our individual analyses? And yeah, and I think the question of this movie had an opportunity to remake the world sans patriarchy, what would that look like for you? Right? And, and maybe there are ways we could prime folks to be able to think about that in incredibly expansive ways. And I think there are ways you can nuance it and say, remake the world sans patriarchy, and maybe sans gender. Um, and what would that look like? How would it feel? Right? How would it feel to wake up in a world and know that everyone around you has had their needs met, psychologically, materially, right? meaningfully that they’re doing, they’re taking up work and projects that are life giving? What would it be to wake up in a world like that?

Keith Edwards
Where you wouldn’t have to fight for connection? You could just ask for it or

Alex C. Lange
where things are not conditional, right? on who you are, where you’ve come from these kinds of pieces, right? And I think, you know, I think this movie huh, do I want to say that? We’ll see. Um, you know, I think this movie is trying to be like the old headlines of everyday feminism.com, which I found a really great and powerful resource for me as I was coming into feminism, right. So that’s not a dig at Everyday Feminism. But it is to say that this movie, I think, is talking feminism, but I don’t know if it’s doing feminism, right. I think it has some signals and flares of what is happening. And part of that, right, I think, you know, I’m a nerd. So I was like, let me do some research before we have this conversation today. And part of this is like Ruth Handler who was featured in the movie is as the creator of Barbie, you know, wanted a doll that could be anything for a girl or a woman to imagine herself in our current world. Right? That’s why there’s a president Barbie played wonderfully by Issa Rae. Who, because we have a president, right, like so part of this is that in some ways, Barbie is limited by our own current formation of society. Right. So in some ways, I think Rachel’s right that like, in many ways, this movie could have radically reimagined the world that we are in and yet part of Barbies challenge is Barbie is not about a laboratory. Consciousness. Barbie is not about like, breaking out of and thinking in brand new ways, perhaps weird Barbie is and maybe that’s a particular avatar to talk through a bit more. But that, in the confines of Barbie Barbie only exists to be a current astronaut who goes to the moon and not a new galaxy, because we can’t go to new galaxies as humans yet, right. So like, there is this constraint that is working in but it didn’t have to. But yeah, I think this is the mantling of this movie, right that like, there are particular constraints around it that have to abide by certain rules, which come from patriarchy, and oppressive thinking, right.

Rachel Wagner
So yeah, I didn’t even do the real world, Alex, because, I mean, like, parts of the real world did it do you know? And this is taking the southern hemisphere who’s actually producing Barbies in factories? Correct? Yes.

Alex C. Lange
Like California was a particular choice, right? Like, this movie could have gone class anywhere in the world, when we sort of have that wonderful montage of going from Barbie lay into the real world, right. But it chose a particular place, a particular set of people to focus on and I think in some ways, it my one of my main things about this movie sort of conceptually, is that Gloria And Sasha so America first character and Greenblatt’s character, I thought actually deserved much more time and could have actually been the vehicle for this conversation, right? I am most in some ways annoyed at America Ferrara’s monologue scene, because it is the sort of talking feminism moment, right? Can we actually have spent time with America for a character to understand how feminism does and does not currently appreciate her experience in the way this movie is trying to talk about feminism, right? So she, I could have seen a world where we spent maybe not to extend the movie on the part of the Rachel, but to think about for 15 and 20, more minutes spending more time with America for Earth character to understand how this beauty standard has affected her like, right, she’s doing a lot of telling at us. But rather than I think the power of film in particular, is the showing of these experiences that then could make that monologue actually feel like a culminating points rather than a launching point of sort of what her character was experiencing and talking about. And part of why I say this movie is really sort of a fantasy of the limits of white progressivism is because in Barbie world, all you got to do is say the right thing, right? Part of it is that America Ferrara, in this in this wonderful montage scene that ends with this mess, scene that I will say I laughed at quite hard, the guitar playing scene between all of them. But part of it is just oh, I just kind of stick a person, I got to tell them exactly what’s happening in the world. And once I do that, they’re gonna realize and immediately come to my perspective. And that is just not how liberatory thinking works. Right. And part of that is, again, I think, all of these pieces that are trying to, I think this movie tries to be substitutive on a lot of things all the same time. And I wonder if it had just picked one or two things to be substantive about if the things might have been different?

Heather Shea
Or those parts weren’t the parts that were cut, right, like, I think about 20 minutes, and how powerful that would be, potentially so.

Keith Edwards
So I was super, can I just say about that monologue. I was super excited about it. Because I you know, I don’t want the spoilers. I’d read snippets. And I heard you know, for many people that was like their stand up and cheer moment. And I was like, Oh, she’s talking a lot. This must be it. I’m so excited. And I was like, Oh, what the double bind of feminism like that was? That’s the thing. And I in the moment, I was like, well, let’s, let’s hear Ken talk about his double bind. You’re all about all the trappings of, you know, pressure masculinity. And I wasn’t even hopeful. I just kind of yearn for that. And then I was sort of sharing that on our drive home, and I and I said, but I’ve had a lot of learning about that to get me to be, well, of course, duh. Like, that was mine. And a lot of people haven’t had that experience. We had a conversation, Mamta Accapadi said that was a moment. Her disappointment in that monologue was a moment of her own privilege and all the learning she’d been able to do and know and read and things like that. And so, I think that for me, that was sort of a letdown moment. But I think for for many folks that It was an aha moment. And I appreciate the aha moment for those folks who want its offers.

Rachel Wagner
I think there’s definitely an epistemic privilege around having having an analysis that goes beyond that monologue. I mean, Dr. Accapadi get on there. I do think, though, that it’s still a monologue that’s rooted in choice feminism. It’s, it’s, it assumes individualist values. And that’s not that’s not intersectional. And it’s certainly not the value system for I would offer most of the world. And so that’s why I think, you know, Alex’s point about a sort of fantasy of progressive as white progressivism is so well taken. Because, and then let’s not even get into the ending and her leaving Barbie land and landing in a gynecologist office. Again, it’s like, we’re gonna foreground this individual choice as the sort of liberatory aim of this narrative. And sorry to cut you off. No,

Heather Shea
no, no, no, that’s good. That’s, I want to get into that piece, in particular. And I want to go also to this idea that this is already becoming a cultural moment. And positively or negatively,

Keith Edwards
just wait till Halloween. It is.

Alex C. Lange
Everywhere. Oh, my gosh, it’s gonna be so much. It’s gonna be

Keith Edwards
the tail. This year.

Heather Shea
I think, you know, on our college, university campuses, how many fraternities are going to rename themselves the Mojo Dojo coffee houses, right? And give them these ideas?

Rachel Wagner
Did you see the picture from P town? No. There is a picture of Ken’s Mojo house and one of the houses in P town and had a big decorative banner. No Barbies allowed. Yeah, we can’t have nothing nice.

Heather Shea
Yeah.

Rachel Wagner
Drop it in the show notes.

Heather Shea
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So as we talk to students, though, right, like there’s, there’s going to be conversation there already is conversation among students. And I think, you know, we’re recording this episode. Right at the beginning of the fall 2023. Semester, this movie was the moment of the summer. And so what do we do with this? How do we, you know, both engage students in conversation also help them kind of critically analyze it, not tell them what to think, but kind of move through conversation, because that is something I would love some additional help with. I mean, I work in a women’s center, right. And we have been talking about the Barbie movie, I feel like almost non stop since it came out. And it’s, I think it’s an opportunity. And also, there’s a really interesting kind of thing to unpack there. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. What do we do?

Keith Edwards
I mean, I just, I don’t have deep thoughts. I just think it’s, it’s meeting them where they’re at. You know, like if patriarchy is a new awareness, and they don’t understand the male gaze and seeing Ken and Barbie have a different experience watching on the sidewalk is an aha moment, then great, and engage there. If they’re frustrated with the lack of liberation feminism, then, awesome, let’s engage there. But I think I think one of the things that we often do as educators is we engage in the conversation we want to have, rather than what the student the learner is not wanting, right? Because I think we can we can challenge a nudge, but where are you engaging with that? And I think, just my small and my 13 year old and my 11 year old, I can’t have the same conversation about this movie with them, because they’re very different places. One is just trying to like what just happened from like, a plot perspective. And the other is like, okay, I get it. I understand. But what is some of this? And these are some good examples. I’ve not had those experiences yet. But yeah, meeting people where they’re at and seeing where you can move from there’s sort of my first thought.

Heather Shea
Alex, Rachel, what are your thoughts?

Alex C. Lange
Yeah, I think I mean, one, I think we’re particularly I mean, we’re at a time in higher education where we are competing with so many things attention wise students for student learning and development, right like we are competing with online courses, we are competing with Tik Tok. So in some ways, we use cultural products like Barbie to entice people to our programs to our discussion. Right. And, you know, I think one thing I always say from my learning with Sherry y is to think about Barbie as a movie as a third thing, right, this thing that we can interrogate that is separate from all of us, that we can sort of create shared meaning about in some way. So I think there are ways to sort of be like, like, right use this to our advantage to sort of help people entice people to discussions and forums, but I think it’s just not about having a one off thing. Now, let me be very clear, I’m also calling I’m actually kind of thankful that we Twitter is in some ways, or X has died in some ways, because I’m sure if it had the same popularity did a year ago, the Barbie syllabus would be floating around somewhere, I’m sure there is a Barbie syllabus somewhere. But that’s not the intensity I’m looking for either. I’m thinking about late. No, I used to work with the intercultural aid program at Michigan State University. And these are students who design roundtable discussions about different topics each week. So let’s talk about like, you can have a whole theme semester about Barbie, beginning with the kind of world we want to live in. What do like relationships look like? What does genuine apology look like? You know, I think the thing that rubbed me a little dickie in this movie as well, in addition to the speech was like, Kenny never really apologizes for almost like up ending Barbie land, right? Not for the Barbie land was perfect, or our utopia or anything like that to begin with. But like this idea that there, that sort of the restoration of the harm never really occurred, it just happened. And so how I think there are several ways to use this as a vehicle to talk about more liberatory worlds to talk about more interdependence to talk about all of these pieces. And I think it’s key saying like, it’s really about sort of like finding where students want to lead the conversation with as a way of sort of meeting them in that space to really talk about these things in a meaningful way.

Keith Edwards
And then pushing it from there.

Alex C. Lange
Right, exactly.

Rachel Wagner
Yeah, I, I love both of those. And in addition to the sort of visioning that I was talking about earlier, I think, with students and with colleagues, problem posing and fairies approach to what does this remind you of? How does this How did you know what did you have a major reaction to? How was that similar different than your experience? And beginning to interject? A ways in which asymmetrical power systems or maybe influencing folks reactions to pieces of what was in the movie or not in the movie is, is always a fertile place for conversation. Um, I also think that you could start from disciplines, right, so I’m thinking about students in health science, or nutrition science, or any really, biological science, pre med pre health advising field, talking about the ways that food was addressed in the movie, she never eats, except, and it’s a joke. And so she’s taping this empty milk carton back and, and body image and what that says about women and relationships to food, for instance, I think, from a disciplinary lens, you could come at very different pieces. So I think that could be a starting place for conversations and to invite folks to take a and an inquiry stance on how does your your school work schoolwork in your discipline? Troubled problematize a firm or extend the messaging and these pieces? I think that could be very interesting to

Alex C. Lange
see oh, yeah, I think like, I teach Student Development next semester. For instance. Like when I talk about self authorship in my classes, I usually talk about the three dimensions being the Whitney Houston dimension for her song, how will I know? Kacey Musgraves for the intrapersonal dimension, the Spice Girls for the interpersonal dimension, but I think part of the extension of this work is enrollment just went up, you just got a whole new. I have a lot of pop culture references in my in my courses. And you know, one of the things I think, actually is a good lesson from this movie I’m going to pull forward is that one could espouse and sort of, say critical world views about the world like Barbie, in some ways, has like this knowledge of like, oh, we fix everything in the real world, because we exist now. And like that our creation has changed this dramatically. And you can say all the right things, but you’re actually still pretty externally defined just because someone told you that was the case. And then she goes to the real world and sort of has this experience of like, Oh, that’s not how things necessarily work. Right. And so part of that is like her having to more internally define in some ways if you’re taking sort of the 2001 original and Marsha Baxter Magolda study, but they think they’re other scholars who have come through since to sort of talk about like how even being internally defined is about being interdependently connected to others, right. I think also, you know, the point in the movie where we sort of get to the matrix reference that weird Barbie does between the Birkenstock and the heel of like, which one do you want. And she immediately chooses the heel, which is a perfect example of what people do with cognitive dissonance. They don’t want to actually face it deeply. They want to resolve it quickly. Right? And so in some ways, right like that. And shout out to a friend group of mine of Ray, Tara, and Nick, who helped me test some of these ideas in our presentation, right when I did the thing about Barbie, but part of this is that there are some real lessons about human development in this movie that are really transferable to a number of contexts to really sort of dig into in a really fun, but meaty way at the same time.

Heather Shea
Well, what would you add?

Rachel Wagner
No, I just said, I love that.

Heather Shea
Good. Keith, what would you add anything?

Keith Edwards
I would just I’m stunned about the different musical acts and student development theory and so on. I think it’s, I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s brilliant.

Heather Shea
So there’s there’s a two concepts that I wanted to spend just a minute of time talking about, which is versus Alan, we haven’t talked about Alan at all yet. And I’ve seen some tiktoks that have kind of unpacked you know, Alan is read what does Alan represent is Alan the like, you know, person playing, you know, alongside you know, where what role does Alan play. And then we’ve we have talked a bit about weird Barbie but the fact that like, past is weird like that. That’s, that also kind of troubled me a little bit. So I’d love to hear any thoughts on either Alan or weird Barbie.

Keith Edwards
I’ll just share quickly. My partner love we’re Barbie really connected with that called her Barbie weird Barbie two decades before the movie. And so that really landed and resonated. And I just didn’t get Alan, I didn’t get it. I don’t understand it. I’m not sure what was going on there. So I’d love other people’s excellent analysis.

Rachel Wagner
I, you know, my wife and I were talking about Alan is a performance of non toxic masculinity. Right? And is supposed to be a juxtaposition against Ken’s within Barbie land. And I think that if I can, you know, force myself to go to this movie, again, probably wait until it’s streaming. We might write something about that. Because I do think that there is, you know, some folks have coded Allen as queer and I think, and I think that a lot of times, homophobia gets queued as masculine, right and hegemonic ways, at least. And so I can appreciate how people have gone there, but I don’t think that Alan represents a queer character. I think it it’s not a hegemonicly masculine character. And I think the queer character is Kate McKinnon and weird Barbie, and certainly in terms of queer is non normative. Right. And, and, and so sort of problematizing stereotypical Barbie right and and hegemonic Barbies. So and you know, I haven’t fully come to my analysis of that, because I might at first glance, I was annoyed that queerness was introduced as like, mildly revolutionary, and non normative and not as the like, disruptive force that I cherish. So, I kind of went that direction.

Alex C. Lange
No, I appreciate that point about Alan because I agree, Rachel, I don’t I think I’ve seen like a lot of tiktoks in particular that I’ve been like, Alan represents like, a queer, queer figure, or like, represents this figure that often is in solidarity with women, but doesn’t know how to express it in many ways. Right? And I think the non toxic presentation, right, because the idea of Alan when Alan came out as a doll, was that Oh, Alan just work can wear all of Ken’s clothes and he’s Ken’s buddy. And like, even like the idea that he’s Ken’s buddy. It’s like a wink, wink, nudge, nudge, they sleep together, everybody, right? Like that, like that is, you know, there are buddies that don’t sleep together, everybody that’s that. Sometimes it’s not a weak point. But I think this movie is a really interesting example of how queer aesthetics are used, because I think that’s part of the appeal of its production design that Rachel was talking about earlier, right? Like, this is a very colorful, a very vibrant, a very unapologetically visually presenting movie that in some ways is queerness abound, but there’s almost no queer person in it. And so that it, except I think weird Barbie is in many ways, doing a lot of non normative work all at once like she is. She is elder, she is the wisest, but she’s the weirdest and then she lost lives, like in some Castle, townhome, open concept design very far from all the other Barbies. Right? All day. Yeah. And I mean, like, you know, I perhaps once in my life, I could do those splits no longer, but I think that she, she’s, and then she becomes the haven for the Barbies, and the dolls who have not bought into the patriarchy that Ken has brought back, right, so like, she’s weird Barbie is doing a lot of work in this film. And let’s be very clear, Kate McKinnon is not an unattractive person to be playing weird Barbie either, right? So there’s still a particular like, visual conventional beauty standard still being used at the same time. That weird Barbie is sort of meant to be non normative in some ways. But also I love Kate McKinnon. And so like great character choice in many ways too at the same time.

Heather Shea
Like I read something that she Greta Gerwig are really good friends or roommates or something like that. Like there was some like previous connection there. I too, did a little bit of research in advance and one of the things that I did was I went to when Mattel’s website. And I saw on their website that there’s actually a page called we are Barbie, the most diverse doll line in which is like, apparently a work that’s been in progress and was part of what Greta Gerwig was referencing. And this like, enthusiasm for doing this movie was it this has been something that they’ve been working towards since 2015. And yet there I like, we’ve already talked a bit about that, like there’s just, you know, the queer and trans representation in this movie is is it like again, maybe as you said, Alex, it’s because of Mattel’s like layers of approval. But, you know, let’s talk a little bit about the representation piece, or you know, around queer and trans identities and also around, you know, race and able bodied and size and all of all of the other things that I think they were trying to do maybe put too many things in at once. Love to hear a little bit of your thoughts on that

Alex C. Lange
I mean, this is maybe more of an insider joke. I will share the fact that they made the one trans woman who was playing a Barbie in this movie be the DJ I was like, wow, that actually is representing As shown right there, because a lot of trans women are DJs. Um, but otherwise, I think this movie, you know, for the most part really stuck to gender and not sex, right, which I think is actually the inverse problem that we usually have in cultural products like this. And that at the end of the movie brings it to this sort of like, gender then determined sex sort of Destiny piece here, that she’s going to the gynecologist and they think, you know, I hadn’t thought about it in that way until I saw sort of sort of the pre show notes and Rachel’s post because I have sworn off Facebook. But I think part of that is that. Yeah, again, usually we have an inverse problem. And this so this movie, in some ways, has done a lot of the inverse work of but I don’t know if it’s done it so cleanly, and I think that’s okay, ultimately, right. I don’t think this movie is trying to be the Great Awakening for anybody at all. And I think that, again, queer subjects us not many people at all, or they’re queer coded, but never named this tray and that could be the Mattel suffocation that could be a directorial choice that could be, we didn’t even think about this. But it does have an effect of sort of saying like, if Barbie truly can be anyone. There you go. I don’t know if she can be in this vision of Barbie.

Keith Edwards
To me, it was it was a huge missed opportunity around queerness and transness and gender expansiveness to show not just the binary thinking, not just the inversion, not just, it’s either this way or or, or the opposite of that way. That there’s so many more possibilities around gender around power around way we live our lives. There’s in between, there’s both and and I think there’s just so many opportunities there. For for expanding gender, for expanding ways of being for expanding ways of living your life for expanding ways of being in connection. And that’s not just for, for trans folks, or queer folks, but what do straight folks what do cisgender folks have to learn from queer and trans folks about more expansive ways of gender? I think there’s just so much learning possibility there to connect with authenticity from people who are breaking the rules. Why you don’t have to follow the A option or the B option. Look, you can you can figure this out for yourself, which I think is where I’m super excited. I think that was that was missing for me.

Rachel Wagner
Yeah, I saw the ending as a Okay, Barbie has a vagina. So she’s a real woman, and she’s going to their gynecologist, and aside from the turfy, achiness, around that trans exclusionary radical feminism. There’s also a way in which invoking the health system which which, or the health Industrial Complex has not been particularly kind affirming or useful for folks who are outside of the sex binary, but certainly outside of the gender binary, and, and frankly, who aren’t men? Because when you think about the ways in which, you know, women continue to be excuse excluded from medical studies or limited in foundational studies that are driving like how pharmaceuticals are prescribed? The I don’t know, one of the I think it’s prep, one of the HIV prescriptions. You know, Dr. Brett Williams has pointed out how those trials have excluded women as though women don’t get AIDS in particular, black women don’t get a so I think about just invoking the healthcare system. As as a final sort of this is the choice that she’s making. Um, I mean, there was a part of me that was excited that she wasn’t walking into the boardroom. Because I thought good job, not like continuing the capitalist narrative, right? Um, and and kind of, you know, pulling out the girl boss sort of thread that goes through what constitutes feminism in this world. But, um, but also really the doctor, so we’re gonna start there. Yeah, right. I do think that it was particularly repugnant, I think to folks who find themselves oppressed by gender. And, and I just didn’t understand the choice. I really don’t know what that part was trying to accomplish. I appreciate your point, Alex about usually, we’re on this sort of like essentialist determination that sec, drives gender, and now it’s inverting it to gender driving sex, I hadn’t considered that. And I think that that’s really illuminating. But again, it falls flat, right? Just inverting things doesn’t doesn’t really evoke change.

Alex C. Lange
Right? And it can begin something it can begin to spark ideas of what this looks like inverse perhaps. And maybe that’s for some people is an initial crack in the wall, right. And, I mean, it was also an interesting choice to me, because right before that scene, we have the scene with stereotypical Barbie, and Ruth Handler, right? Where I expected great, like, Ruth Handler, sort of hold that her hands and says, Let me show you what it means to be real. And honestly, truly, in my soul, the first time I watched this movie, I was like, Oh, God, we’re gonna see a bunch of sexism, right? Like I thought, like, Oh, this is about to be what happens. And yet, it is all of these moments of beautiful joy and connection between women. And like, that is what life in some ways could be differently. I think that was actually some of the most utopic work of the movie was to be like to be alive to be a person is about ultimately, having moments of connection and joy. And fun fact, all of that footage was requested by Greta Gerwig of the film’s crew. So like that is their families, their mothers, like women in their lives, right. It’s such a, like, when I saw that the second time I like wow, even harder, right? But all that to say that, like, I really thought the movie was like, Okay, we’re actually going to finally show you sexism because in some ways it blunt sexism in the real world, because I think this movie was trying to be appealing to a lot of people, in many ways, right? And so like, the joke about when she gets to the real world, and she sees sort of, I think it’s the sort of Miss America equivalent. And she’s like, Oh, that’s a Supreme Court or whatever. And like, we all laugh, because we know that’s not the Supreme Court. That’s not how things work in this world. And that was like, okay, they’re gonna finally do it here. But they don’t they make an interesting different choice, which I thought was fun, and then go to this choice, which I was like, ah, but there was just like, I was crying. I don’t need to keep crying. I could laugh it, but there was some may, perhaps something else to do there. Then that choice?

Heather Shea
Yeah. Favorite, and most cringy point, I think we’ve talked we’ve talked about some cringy points, but favorite parts of the movie if there was one for you, Rachel. Let you think. Well, Keith and Alex, respond if there’s if there’s anything that really stuck out for you. You named already I loved the montage moving, you know, from Barbie land to the real the real world. I thought those were great. And the Indigo girl scene. Right? Like, I was like, Ah, so, so awesome. That was that was a nice kind of nod. I thought

Rachel Wagner
I cringed at the the joke about smallpox. I don’t think death and erasure is funny of indigenous populations. And the fact that it preceded that monologue and not very many folks outside of indigenous authors are talking about it, I think is is cringy I too loved I mean, I’m a Indigo Girls person from the 80s. So I love that part. And I love the aesthetics, I the opening scenes. The picturesque quality, I thought was phenomenal. I could have lost any of the musical members but Yeah, I’m a killjoy.

Keith Edwards
For me, the moment I love more than any other was realizing that the tender memories were not the child’s but the parents. It on to rageous. Now, we remembering it, but that as a parent of 11 and 13, who are moving out of childhood and into whatever the happens next, that moment of that moment was mom’s memory, of connection, of play, and yearning for that was just so unbelievably relatable to me.

Alex C. Lange
The moment I will never fail to laugh at in this movie. So another fun fact about this movie, I’ve perhaps, again been a little obsessed with it. So the four girls who Barbie sees at the high school, right? They’re actually the names of the original Bratz dolls in that scene, but after they basically like, read stereotypical Barbie to filth, right, she’s like, crying outside. And she’s like, she called me a fascist, and I don’t even control the railways, or the means of commerce. And like, I die at that line. I think I laugh the loudest in my theater both times I saw that part. So this is one of my favorite just jokes of this movie. But I agree with Rachel, like the aesthetics are just gorgeous. Those rollerskates somehow looking immensely plastic but yet usable, incredible. Absolutely incredible. And I, I mean, the ken beach off scene will always be funny to me as well, because I’m just

Keith Edwards
laughing I was like, What is wrong with me? Am I 12? For the rest of my life?

Alex C. Lange
I mean, I I hope to be 12 at some point in my life, I think I’m younger than that. But yeah, it’s just visually stunning movie.

Heather Shea
Yeah, yeah. Well, we are nearing end of time we may have gotten over time. I am so grateful for all of your, your wisdom, expertise, bringing your perspectives to this, I’d love to hear some final thoughts. What are you leaving with questioning? Pondering? You know, our podcast is called Student Affairs. Now we kind of always end with this question. And we’ll go opposite direction this time. How about Rachel, do you want to give us your final thoughts? First?

Rachel Wagner
I think I’m the movie really does offer a lesson in terms of what are we just inverting instead of transforming? And I want to invite my fellow scholar practitioners in the field of student affairs to think about what if what if we just replaced with different cosmetics or inverted but not truly transformed, that needs to be transformed in our work?

Heather Shea
I love that. Keith.

Keith Edwards
Well, I I love that. And I think one of the things I’ve been thinking through this conversation is that we had a, an anti oppression, but not an intersectional anti oppression analysis just like a an anti sexism sort of peek in. And I’m always thinking that’s important. But what’s the liberation vision? And I think Rachel offered us for this that and I think maybe Greta Gerwig will do Barbie too, that offers that what what are all the possibilities? What’s expansive, what a different things look like. But I guess I was also struck about sort of the very Buddhist lessons about impermanence in the movie, and that change is inevitable, and you can’t hold it back. And just, that lesson keeps popping up for me again and again. But the change is going to be here. And if you just long for to go back to other times, how do you move forward with what is instead of fighting? What is

Alex C. Lange
I think, to add to the two sides of the triangle, that Rachel and Keith have already formed, I think, you know, for me, this movie is about the limits of what representation means. Right? And I think this is just the inverse of sort of what Rachel is offering. And what Keith is offering is that if we just sort of I think we think about this with college presidents and leaders all the time. Well, if we hire a woman, if we hire a person of color, if we hire someone with some marginalized background, that’s a great win, because we see ourselves represented in some ways. And I think that representation for those who’ve never had it, or have never experienced it in a critical mass, that is a really powerful thing. I’m never going to deny that to people ever. And, and representation does not get us liberation, right, like, in many ways just sort of says, We like everything that’s working currently, we just need to make people look different, or like, you know, political pundits will say, make it look like America or make it look like x thing rights. And that’s oftentimes, this is sort of been empirically talked about has been the people who are often the first in those roles, who then become the representatives, in many ways have had to adopt the perspectives, the abilities, the ways of thinking of those in dominant roles to get to that place, right. And so, you know, I think Greta Gerwig, is gonna be able to make whatever movie she wants to make now after that, so I’m very excited about that possibility. But I think this movie really demonstrates how representation has a place, but it’s not the strategy is not the win, ultimately, in any movement for justice or liberation.

Heather Shea
Can’t wait to have the citations and the transcript from this episode. Like moments of of just pure brilliant. So thank you for all of your time today for for jumping on this conversation during what’s a really busy time of the year. And I just, in closing, sending our heartfelt appreciation to our dedicated behind the scenes work of our producer, Nat Ambrosey. And also to the sponsor of today’s episode, Symplicity is a global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions, to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institutions, Symplicity supports all aspects of student life, including but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being student success and accessibility services. And you can learn more by visiting symplicity.com or connect with them on Facebook, I guess x and LinkedIn, Twitter and my script, please take a moment to visit the website and then click on that sponsors link to learn a little bit more. And while you’re there, if you’re not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please subscribe. And you can also view all of the episodes in our archives, which is growing up to 170 I think we’re at now episodes. And again, I’m Heather Shea thanks again to our listeners, everybody who’s listening and watching and especially to our panelists today. Make it a great week, everyone.