Barbieque

Due to the biggest movie marketing onslaught in recent memory, the Barbie movie may be setting off Oppenheimeresque explosions in your unconscious as you remember your childhood experiences with the world’s most popular doll. Perhaps these memories are also stirring up some guilt or shame because of the way you treated Barbie. One of Barbie’s catchphrases was, “Anything is possible as long as I try.” Well, you tried everything, from head removal to romance simulation to roasting her over an open flame to forcing her to watch unspeakable acts involving GI Joe’s Kung Fu grip. Consider yourself absolved of all these transgressions and for turning Barbie’s Dreamhouse into a house of horrors. Everyone did bad things to Barbie, including the cast of the movie that now bears her hame. Constance Grady in Vox with a walk (and a sock) down memory lane. The long history of kids decapitating their Barbies and making them kiss. “Barbie was for ripping apart and putting inexpertly back together. She was for removing heads and limbs. She was for microwaving. She was for chopping off her doll hair. She was for doll orgies. She was an ersatz body whose purpose was to allow her owner room for experimentation.” Kate McKinnon explains, “I witnessed my sister and her friends do some stuff with those Barbies, and I think we all did.” Issa Rae is more blunt (as in blunt force): “It was a tool of aggression, too. My sister had a My Size Barbie, and I don’t know what it was, maybe because it was close to our size, but we f-cked that Barbie up.” (This is why I always preferred Stretch Armstrong. The whole point of the product was to stretch him to the point of serious injury. He even came with repair instructions. Alas, every attempt to make a Stretch Armstrong movie was abandoned prior to production, but if the Barbie movie does as well as expected, maybe there’s still hope.)