Sunday School | Barbie

Introduction

Happy Mother's Day. I hope you're doing well, and you can live with a little bit of darkness. We may turn the lights on at different points if it's not too much of a difficulty, but when we do the clips, I definitely want you to be able to see it, and this is good.

So what we're gonna do this morning, this is all new. This has nothing to do with what we've been doing in the New Testament for months and months and months. We're gonna watch a couple of clips from the movie Barbie, and then we're gonna talk about it.

And I will tell you on the front end, some of you may be coming in thinking, like, I love that movie. I hope he's not mean to it. Or others of you might be coming in thinking, Oh, yeah. Let's go. Let's rag on that film. So I'll tell you on the front end, I'm a fan of the film. Okay? So those of you that are going be disappointed with me for that, I'll tell you why as we go. I think it's a very insightful film.

But when I watched it, I was very alarmed by the opening scene. I didn't, I watched it with some fellows and we went to Belize. On the way back, we're on the plane, and there's movies on the plane, and one of the fellows suggested I watch Barbie. And I'm like, alright. I'll watch Barbie. I hadn't seen it. I really hadn't heard much about it other than that it came out the same day or the same week as Oppenheimer, and everything's a big deal.

But I went into a very, very blank page. And the first three minutes, the opening scene, I was horrified. I said, in the world are they saying? It's somewhat become cliché these days to say that someone has, quote, said the quiet part out loud. And the opening scene of this film is saying the quiet out part out loud. It is admitting what other people know, but that you're not supposed to acknowledge, you're not supposed to admit to in public.

The opening scene is absolutely that. And when I saw it, when I knew only the first three minutes of the film, what I did not know but was very eager to know is: are they bragging or are they confessing? There's a way to talk about what you've done with a sense of shame and embarrassment and repentance. That's what we're confessing. And there's a way to talk about what you've done with a sense of arrogance and bragging.

When I watched this opening scene, it was so overt. I think it punches you in the face so powerfully. But I didn't know, were they relishing the evil of it or were they confessing it? From that moment on, I was gripped. I wanted to know where are you going with this? What is it that you're saying?

The theme that we're going to chase through the film here, it continues through the movie multiple times. It reemerges over and over again. I think it's the most important thing in the film. However, it is far from the only theme in the film. There may very well be other themes that the story chases that are more important to you or that resonate more with you, and that's fine. There's no argument about that.

I do think that the movie is surprisingly complex and nuanced and thoughtful and insightful. And maybe it's surprising all those things because it's very playful. It's about a Barbie doll for crying out loud. Right? And it's Margot Robbie and what's his name? Ryan Gosling. And it's, you know, so it's meant to be entertaining, and it is those things. But in a very entertaining way, it approaches some very, very important things.

It's pretty nakedly, I would suggest, a social critique. It's an evaluation of our particular cultural moment. And you might agree or disagree with one or more themes. You might agree with this, you know, with the producer's message over here, but disagree with their message over there, and that's fine. And like I said, there may be things in the film — it might be that the things that I will choose to focus on here are disappointing to you because there are other themes that you like better or that you think are more relevant or more important to your life, and that's fine.

So it won't be— this is not comprehensive. I don't have that much time to unpack the film. But the thread that I think is so obvious in the opening scene is important to me. I think it's important to our culture. It's frankly, I think it's absolutely stunning that they address it as they do. Like I said, I think this opening scene is a punch to the face. And I'm honestly really shocked that there has not been more written about it.

As I've just sort of read some of the commentary, I haven't seen the approach that we're going to take this morning, which baffles me because I think it's so self-evident. Okay? So what we're going to do is we're going to watch — it's about three minutes. We're going to watch the opening scene. We'll talk about it, and then we'll watch another scene. We'll talk about that. We're just going to kind of walk our way through it. Okay?

This would be a little bit easier for you if you had the context of having seen the whole film. How many of you, is that true? You've already seen the whole movie, Barbie? Okay. Lots of you already have, but then a handful haven't. For those of you who haven't, I still think the excerpts that I've selected for you are still going to kind of help you follow at least this theme, but it does leave a lot behind. The film addresses it.

The Opening Scene and Its Message

Laura Beth, let's do the first clip. Nope. Yep. Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls. But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls. The girls who played with them could only ever play at being mothers, which can be fun, at least for a while anyway. Ask your mother.

This continued until, yes, Barbie changed everything. Then she changed it all again. All of these women are Barbie, and Barbie is all of these women. She might have started out as just a lady in a bathing suit, but she became so much more. She has her own money, her own house, her own car, her own career. Because Barbie can be anything, women can be anything.

And this has been reflected back onto the little girls of today in the real world. Girls can grow into women who can achieve everything and anything they set their mind to. Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved. At least that's what the Barbies think.

After all, they're living in Barbie land. Who am I to burst their bubble?

Alright. Cesar, yeah, thanks, bro. So, three minutes. By this point, halfway through that, I'm like, where are you going with this? Okay? So I want you to think with me. What's the message there? And as you evaluate that message, I want you to think about a very, very standard advertising model.

The way it works is this. We have a before picture, and we have an after picture. Then we have the transition point. Alright? So the before picture is that life—well, what's the before picture, you guys? Drab. Drab. It is brown. It is boring. It is lifeless, it is insipid. Hello. It is motherhood.

And in the after picture, what's the after picture? Glamour. Wealth. Wealth. Have it all. You have it all. Opportunity. There's no more browns. Everything is color, everything is bright, everything is wonderful. And then, of course, as the narrator admits — at least that's what the Barbies think.

Right? So we're over here, everything's drab, everything's terrible, our lives are miserable, oppressive, boredom. Over here, everything's amazing, it's colorful, it's bright, and we're self-actualized, and we get anything we want. And in the middle, we only have to do one thing. What must those little girls do? What do those little girls do in order to leave the brown, drab, boring land, to enter into the bright, colorful world of happiness? What do you have to do?

All you have to do is kill your babies. Smash their heads against the rocks, and all this too can be yours. That is the first ninety seconds of Barbie, unless you say that they're not babies, they're dolls. They're babies. To those little girls, they're babies.

And the drudgery that they are very specifically described as avoiding is motherhood. Do you see why I'm saying that the movie begins: they say the quiet part out loud? When I watched this, I paused the movie and I turned to the fellow I was sitting next to, and I said, what? Where is this going? Like, and again, the the question that seized my mind was, are they bragging or are they confessing? Are they saying, hey, listen, this is how it works. Like, motherhood is boring, it's terrible, it is drab. Career, profession, da da da, is colorful and wonderful. All you've gotta do is kill your babies. It's worth it in the end. Stay with us.

Or, as the narrator begins to hint, are we beginning to be a little circumspect about the decisions that we've made? So now, for the rest of the film, I'm paying attention. Where are you going? What is your message? What is it you're trying to say? You with me? You with me so far? Okay.

Now, the film goes on. The movie is going to step away from this a little and explore all sorts of other themes. In fact, I'd love especially for those of you that love the movie, what would you say—not related to this—are some of the other important themes in Barbie?

Women are more powerful. Women are more powerful than men, at least in some spheres. Right? There's a huge theme, is the power struggle. Lots of they do a lot of work to invert it. Right? So if you don't know the story, within Barbie Land, the women rule and there are men there, but the men are? How would you describe the men in Barbie Land? Accessories. They are ornaments. What else did I hear? They are the women in other movies.

Okay. So the whole thing is designed — there's this very, in Barbie Land there's this inversion where the women are in charge and the men are not, and then they go back into, like, this world, into the actual world. And Ken discovers a world of what he calls patriarchy, which he thinks has something to do with horses. And when he finds out it's not so much about the horses, he kind of like, it kind of loses its luster. But nevertheless, they're exploring that whole theme of power and all those kinds of things.

What else? Any other major themes you see they chase? Gina? Self-identity. Self-identity. How so?

The assistant character, like Ken, his identity is wrapped inside of Barbie. Then he works to find out that he doesn't have to identify with her. Right? So if you couldn't hear in the back, you know, the the star of the show is Margot Robbie, you know, is Barbie. And then Ken is Ryan Gosling, this is the what do you call it? Supporting actor, whatever you call, however that phrase goes. But his role is merely he exists as an appendage to Barbie. That apart from Barbie, and because Barbie rarely gives him the time of day, he doesn't know who he is.

And do we have an existence apart from someone else? So what is my self-identity? It's a major, major theme in this story. So the other thing that I noticed is that there's never any equality between Barbie and Ken. Right? There's never any working together, none of that. Thought. It's always one person on top and one person. Yes, that's exactly right. It's always a one-up, one-down relationship.

Now I do think Barbie, at the end of it, does the best job of bridging that gap. When Ken is unable to, Barbie steps in and does that for him and invites him to live independent, even as she is continuing to reject his romantic advances. So that's one of the major themes in Barbie Land: that frankly, the girls don't need the men. The girls don't need the guys. The women don't need the men. There's just that every girls' night out. I never made it to the end.

Okay. Oh, well, you'll make it to the end today. We're going to fast forward to the end. I'm going to show you the whole thing. So all I have to say, there's lots of stories, lots of themes. But throughout the whole thing, whatever else they're exploring, I'm a little bit like, yeah, yeah, yeah, get back to the point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get back to the point.

And there's lots of points, but this opening scene I found so galvanizing. I was watching that like I'm a detective. Like, are you going? And so we're going to skip ahead to stuff and give you guys a chance to see this. What do they mean about their own opening scene? And I think the best answer to that begins to crystallize when the creator walks on stage.

The Creator and the Question of Humanity

Now, in Barbie, who's the creator? Who's really, who is essentially the god character in this story? Do you remember her name? Ruth Handler. Ruth Handler. So in real life, Ruth Handler is the woman who created Barbie. Don't know if she created Mattel around Barbie or Barbie within Mattel, whatever it is, but Ruth Handler, portrayed by Rhea Perlman, she comes into the story.

And what has been going on for Barbie before she meets Ruth Handler, before she meets her creator, is she is in this matrix kind of decision where you can take the red pill or the blue pill. I don't know if you've ever seen The Matrix, but there's this famous scene where Neo is living in an artificial world, and he has the opportunity to leave the artificial world and its protections and the blissfulness of ignorance. And I think it's the red pill. Take it if he takes the blue pill, he goes back. Take the red pill, and he steps out of that into the actual world.

And that's essentially what's been going on throughout Barbie. She can leave Barbie land and come into the real world, or she can forget this ever happened and just go back to living her blissful life of ignorant plastic fakeness, but at least nothing bad ever happens. And so, as she's entering into, as she's kind of working through this decision, Ruth shows up to help her think about it.

And I want you to pay very close attention to what Ruth says because I think from the perspective of the producers of the film, Ruth is the God voice. Her voice is the voice. She is the reliable one. She is the trustworthy one. She is the one who lives outside of this world that we're looking at and critiquing. Okay?

So, in the climax of the story, when Barbie meets her, and Barbie is flirting with this decision, do I leave the fake world and come into the real world? It's not merely that she is considering leaving one world and entering another, but what she's really wrestling through is becoming real. Do I become, do I stay a doll or do I become a human being? Right? It's a very Pinocchio-esque moment.

Right? Pinocchio wants to be a real boy, or that Velveteen Rabbit longs to be real. This is that. Okay? So Ruth, the creator, and therefore the highest voice, before she makes the decision, engages her with this conversation about what does it mean to be human? What is the essence of humanity? Okay? This is really important.

So, we're going to just about another little bit, a minute or two of this and we'll comment again. Maybe I'm not Barbie anymore. You understand that humans only have one ending. Ideas live forever. Humans not so much.

For God so loved the world... — John 3:16

Humans make things up like patriarchy and Barbie just to deal with how uncomfortable it is. I understand that. And then you die. Yeah. Yeah. I want to be a part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that's made. I want to do reimagining. I don't want to be the idea. Does that make sense?

She continues, and Ruth responds, "She says, we mothers stand still so our daughters can see how far they've come." The reason I think that's important, you gotta remember Ruth's the creator. She's the god of Barbie land. And her answer is the answer.

And her answer is that mothers make sacrifices for the good of their children. They do not sacrifice their children for their own supposed good. Now, as the scene continues, you're going to need your eyes and ears to work together.

You're going to hear a question, and you're going to see an answer. What you're going to hear is a soundtrack, a song by Billie Eilish. The question she asks over and over is, what was I made for? What is the essence of being a human? Why was I made? That is Barbie's question: What am I here for?

The audible asks the question, but the visual answers it. So, as you're hearing Billie Eilish asking what was I made for, watch because the producers are giving you the answer in the visuals.

Let them work together. Listen to the question, watch for the answer. Ruth is about to tell you what in her view makes us human. I want you to notice what every single visual depicts throughout this montage. And think about those visuals against the backdrop of the scene where they smashed the babies' heads against the rocks.

Let's go.

Take my hands. Now close your eyes. Now feel.

What were the images of? Mothers and daughters. Come a long way from the opening scene, have we not?

What they are saying here, they're asked as the question is asked, what were we made for? The answer is we do not merely bear God's image, but we bear image bearers. This is who we are. We are the sorts of things that God has placed on the earth to bear more image bearers, which is absolutely true — which is fantastic theology — and it's stunning that the producers of this movie know it.

That scene is absolutely and unambiguously a repudiation of the opening scene. It is not a celebration of it. And so, though it started off for me in a way that was somewhat horrifying, I was amazed and shocked.

Now, I don't think — let me, I don't want to overstate the case — I don't believe for one second that the producers of this film are pro-life. I can't imagine that would be the case. And I don't know if they know how profound and how profoundly true their answer is, but there has been a very long history of the pagan world dreaming dreams and the people of God showing up to explain their dreams.

We saw Joseph do it in prison. We saw Daniel do it in the courts of Nebuchadnezzar. The pagans have their dreams, and the friends of God must explain them. But you guys, that is what is happening in this movie.

They are working — and maybe with more insight than I'm giving them credit for — I don't know. But what they are working out is that one of the absolute fundamental core premises of feminism in the modern era has become that the only way to preserve, maintain, or protect your right to self-determination is the right to kill your babies.

This has not always been true of feminism, and there have been parts of the feminist movement that are profoundly good and right. Men and women are both image bearers. Women have infinite dignity and should be treated as bearers of the image of God. Lots of things that we could say about feminism that I think are very positive.

But it has become the case in the modern era that the cornerstone of this movement is that we must preserve at all costs the right to kill our babies. And this movie is acknowledging that and questioning it in a way that’s far more artful and profound than I could ever do.

It’s possible you think I’m cherry-picking, and that’s not really what this is about. But if you’re there, and really if you haven’t seen it or thought about it, I want you to think about the very, very last scene, which we’re about to go to. One of the jokes of the film is that Ken and Barbie don’t have genitals, which you might recall. If you ever had a Ken or Barbie doll and undressed it, they were rather generic.

It’s a joke that runs through the story that Ken is trying to pursue this relationship, and the question is, to what end? What are you going to do if you get her? How does this whole thing work? In the very final scene, they bring that joke up one last time, but again in a way that I think is extremely profound and meaningful and very consistent with what I’m showing you here.

Final scene, and then we’ll give you a chance to interact.

So Barbie left behind the pastels and plastics of Barbie Land for the pastels and plastics of Los Angeles.

Thanks for the lift. You got this. I’m really proud of you. There you go. It’s close enough. You guys are the best. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Let’s do this. That’s a political statement. That’s appropriation, dad. We’ll be here when you’re done. Okay.

Hi. Name? Oh, Handler, Barbara. And what are you here for today, Barbara?

I’m here to see my gynecologist.

Alright, so that’s funny and that’s silly, but why does she need to see a gynecologist? She’s human, but she’s in the process of becoming human. She’s become the sort of thing that can have a baby.

And the thing has come full circle. It’s funny, it’s kitschy, it’s a joke. But do you see how perfectly consistent it is? She wants to be the sort of thing that can do what the opening scene thought was the death of life. It’s extraordinary.

Now, again, I don’t know that these people are all pro-life. In fact, I’d be shocked if they were. But what they are observing is what it means to be a human being.

And on Mother’s Day of all days, didn’t plan that, but just as it turns out, on Mother’s Day of all days, it gives us the opportunity to pause and to think: what does it mean to be human?

We are the sorts of things that are not only image bearers, but that bear image bearers. And these guys somehow have figured it out and presented a way to our hearts and our minds to consider—maybe freshly—what am I here for? What am I to do?

It doesn’t mean that all we get to do is have babies. It doesn’t mean that every one of us is going to have babies. Jesus didn’t father any children.

Okay? So lest you experience this as a limitation, what I am saying is that you have—does anybody think that Jesus’ humanity was in any sense diminished? Nobody thinks that, right? And so, can we acknowledge Jesus in His singleness, Jesus in His childlessness, is fully human?

We all agree with that much? Nevertheless, when God made us, and when He made us male and female, He made us to bear His image and to bear image bearers.

And these guys have figured out that that’s in fact the case. In a way that again, I think is profoundly insightful among a number of other things I say on the film that are true.

Alright. So that was a lot. And I wanted to present it. I’m grateful for your patience to listen. But I would love for you guys to interact. You may have comments about that, questions, agreements, or disagreements. The floor is open for about six or seven more minutes, and I would love to chase this wherever you want to go.

Yes, please. It’s even more insidious. The end message that you see in the beginning that wraps around of killing the babies is far more insidious because what it has done in our culture is, as a female, you can be anything. And if you’re a mother, you can’t have these things. It’s the opposition of it.

And so there’s so many 30- and 40-year-olds who are like, I don’t want to have children. I want to have a career. I want to be rich. I want to do this. I want to do that. So they are not even interested in having children to kill. Well, that’s right. That’s right.

And so, yeah, we’ve certainly seen, in the last twenty or thirty years, the earliest onset of motherhood in an individual’s life is much, much higher. Whereas it may have been the case that women might have their first—I don’t have the statistics, but let’s just make it up—in the sixties, the average age of the first childbirth is twenty-one, and today the average age of the first childbirth is thirty-one or something like that. There are some numbers. We’ve definitely seen that trend.

There is a character, and forgive me, I don’t know her name. Who is the Hispanic woman that drops Barbie off? What’s her name? America. America is her first name?

So her character, she has a great dialogue in the middle of the film, where she’s basically saying the bifurcation we’ve created is nonsense. Women should be able to have a job and a career or have a career but no children, or children with no career, do all these things.

And she walks through that we’ve created these formulaic answers that have to be the case, but it’s not really true. And what I really appreciate is that you do not need to be childless in order to self-actualize, right? That we can have holistic lives.

She’s a major human, not in Barbie Land, and she has a really great monologue where she’s working through those things, for sure.

So, yeah. Kelly? Think at a more meta level, like you peer in on the parent. Be a little bit louder, babe.

I was just saying, at an even more meta level, overriding above even the motherhood thing, is the idea of there being reality and then there being Barbie-ian. There’s a real world and there’s a fantasy world. And the real world says the real world is uncomfortable and painful and fallen, basically.

And so we think the solution is to go over here and create this fantasy world where everything’s perfect—or so they think. Only to find out that not only does this fantasy world become corrupted itself, it’s subject to the same decay that this one is, but it actually creates problems. The thing we created to be the solution creates pressures and problems on this Barbie, who’s stereotypical Barbie because the stereotype is what everybody...

Okay. It’s going to be hard for me to recapture all of that much for the tape, though. So let me see if I can, but let me try to briefly do it.

So Kelly’s saying, like, another meta angle to look at the film is through the lens of reality and fantasy. And the reality world is, we know, as we readily admit, reality is fallen, filled with broken people in a broken world trying to make things work.

They created this fake, artificial world as we do. We imagine things, we come up with solutions. Their solution is this artificial world. But the artificial world also breaks. Their perfect little land starts to grow its own cracks.

As Barbie is trying to make a decision, she goes into this world or into that world. We have to grapple with the fact that our artificial worlds don’t work either. Right? Which is to say that the whole film is a study of: there are problems, genuinely, and we devise solutions.

And the film is essentially evaluating the solutions that we’ve come up with. One solution is, let’s kill our kids and then we’ll be free. Another solution is, let’s create an artificial world. Another is, hey, let’s invert the power structures. Another is, another solution is...

And I appreciate the fact that we are solution makers, strategists. We all go through the day trying to find what lever should I pull to make life work. What’s the next move? They’re evaluating a whole bunch of those solutions and essentially saying, that was a bad solution, and that was a bad solution, and that’s not really going to work either.

And that’s a helpful thing to do as we critique our culture: to realize what are the strategies that I am doubling down on, but that ultimately will fail? That what Jesus offers us is a real solution. It’s costly, but it’s costly to Him above all. It can actually bring a real solution that all of our misguided strategies fail at.

Chris? I wanted to know if you saw the same sort of loud message from Ken’s side as well, even though as a side character.

I saw that both were going through their own individual narratives of what’s the yet foundational piece that they should grasp onto, which I think is their identity. From a Christian perspective, which again, I have no reason to believe that they have that same theology, but I think the affirmation that he needs to find his identity first.

Yeah. Only to be a representative of the light of the world, the salt of the earth, but also a leader of a house. How is he going to do this if he is so clung onto Barbie and saying, I am nothing unless you tell me to do something? Recognize me in some way.

Yeah. So the Ken character, I mean, he’s doing his own work. So Chris was saying, well, what about the Ken character? What should we take from him? What lessons might the film be offering us about Ken?

And I think the primary way—and I may be wrong, I’m not a film critic, for crying out loud—is that the primary way to view Ken is that he is the woman to Barbie’s man. Right? I mean, the easiest way to view Ken is: they’re inverting the character roles of men tending to be in power, women tending to be out of power, as the way they’re framing things.

And so Ken is portraying the feminine side of, like, being the accessory, being the one whose life is only connected to the man, that kind of thing. So they’re using Ken as a foil to help people see what might it look like if you see a typical power structure, you might just not recognize it.

By inverting it, they’re like, hey, it feels weird to you to see Ken like this. That’s how a lot of women feel every day. And so, that’s where he’s mostly a foil for how women experience their lives.

I was just affirming, like, the last scene especially, the interaction between Barbie and Ken that they have, that dialogue, and I thought it was really powerful to show that they seemed to agree that, yeah, he needs to first find his identity in himself first.

I was just representing that with what the gospel says—that we need to be founded in our image-bearing in Christ first, before we can be self-confident in our faith, in our lives, in our works, but also in the leader of the house.

Yeah. And I think what you’re doing there intuitively, Chris, is taking it one step further than they are capable of taking it because the best that Barbie can do is tell Ken, Don’t find your life in me. Find your life in yourself.

The sequel to Barbie is going to be Ken figuring out, well, that doesn’t work either. Ken is secondary to another person—someone higher than himself. That’s a—so that’s a give them credit for as far as they take it—but they’re trying to help Ken become an independent person, independent of Barbie.

But we’re not independent, and we’re not supposed to be independent. You are made for dependence. You are not made to be great. You are made to depend on someone who is great.

So Ken, who has a T-shirt that says "I’m Ken enough." I am Ken enough. I am Ken enough. No, you’re not. And neither are you. And neither are you. And neither are you.

Right? And so the best that these guys are able to do is say, be an independent self, but try that for a while. We’ll see how that works out. That’s not going to work either.

Right? But again, they’re taking it as far as they can. And you’re right, he needs to—Ken and Barbie and you and I—need to ground ourselves in a higher source. We...