Abstract
Rejecting critiques of the final line of Greta Gerwig's Barbie as a bioessentialist classification of gender, we engage with the Deleuzian concept of becoming to argue that this final line is not only gender inclusive but gender expansive, particularly within the current political moment. Challenging settled, hegemonic gender identities through the unsettled and dynamic possibilities of becoming, we explore how this dialogue can be interpreted as messaging to promote bodily autonomy for all by focusing on the essential role of reproductive and sexual health as necessary for liberation. Despite Barbie exemplifying white feminism and commodifying liberatory messages into a product, the audience and their connections with the film's messages generate the possibilities of liberating white feminism from its self-imposed limitations through becoming and deterritorialisation.
‘They’re right, you know, you’ll never in a million years guess the final line of Barbie’ (@JayHulmePoet, 25 July 2023). By repeating this refrain, film critics and opening weekend moviegoers generated an intense, palpable buzz across the social media landscape by intentionally withholding the specific dialogue. Barbie (2023) ends with Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) having made the decision to leave Barbie Land for the Real World. With her pink Birkenstocks and natural hair and makeup, Barbie walks into an office building for what seems to be a job interview. As Stereotypical Barbie walks towards the reception area, the camera maintains its gaze directly on Barbie. An off-camera receptionist asks Barbie her name, and she responds with ‘Oh, um, Handler, comma, Barbara’ – our first indication that she is not Barbie anymore. As the unseen receptionist asks Barbara what she is here for, the camera moves in for a closeup on Barbara's face as she excitedly says, ‘I’m here to see my gynaecologist’. We argue that the final line of dialogue is more than just a surprising joke and is, instead, a generative line of flight from the limited imaginings of female empowerment portrayed in the overview of Barbie Land.
In interviews about Barbie's now widely discussed final line, Greta Gerwig has said: With this film, it was important for me that everything operated on at least two levels. I knew I wanted to end on a mic drop kind of joke, but I also find it very emotional. When I was a teenage girl, I remember growing up and being embarrassed about my body, and just feeling shame in a way that I couldn’t even describe. It felt like everything had to be hidden. And then to see Margot as Barbie, with this big old smile on her face, saying what she says at the end with such happiness and joy. I was like – if I can give girls that feeling of, ‘Barbie does it, too’ – that's both funny and emotional. (Ryan, 2023: para. 5–6)
Stereotypical Barbie is introduced as the doll who can be anyone and do anything, and she can do this on her own. The Narrator (Helen Mirren) says that Barbie has ‘her own money, her own house, her own car, her own career’, signifying that Barbie is liberated from the constraints of domesticity. In a line dripping with irony, the narration highlights that for the Barbies in Barbie Land, ‘all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved … At least that's what the Barbies think’. To those watching the film – or living in the Real World – patriarchy, inequality and oppression of people marginalised for their gender and/or sexual orientations persist, often with deadly consequences. It is not just the Barbies who are unaware of the continuing harms of patriarchy. An ongoing critique of the feminist movement is that feminism is no longer needed, as liberal feminists argue that women have reached gender equality while far-right conservative political and media commentators argue that the subordination of women is a ‘natural’ division. To those who experience and understand gender and sexual oppression as continuing conditions of patriarchy, the irony is clear – the equality that some feminists claim to have achieved alongside the continued subjugation of oppressed groups under patriarchy highlights the failure of the empowerment narrative promoted by white feminism. In Barbie Land, the Barbies pursue their career interests and daily lives without patriarchy as the organising structure of their thoughts or behaviours. While the Barbies are not limited by the violence of patriarchy, the film replicates ‘representation’ as a symbol of liberation. That is, if Barbie owns her money, house, car and career, then she must have achieved equality within a capitalist system.
The failures of empowerment through career achievement and property ownership are underdeveloped in the film. Barbie accepts the premise that the Barbie doll is designed to empower little girls and expand their beliefs about what girls and women are capable of achieving. Another interpretation of the Barbie doll is that she can only exist in a world unburdened by patriarchy within the fictional Barbie Land. In other words, Barbie serves as a representational escape from a lived experience entirely structured by the explicit and implicit violence of patriarchy, and this escape is only accessible to those who can afford to buy a Barbie doll, a Barbie Dreamhouse, a Barbie Corvette and enough Barbie clothes for multiple costume changes throughout the day. The inability to imagine the unimaginable – a world without capitalism and without patriarchy – constrains the possibilities of liberation presented in the movie. An essential aspect of liberation is the ability to own and control one's own body free from the oppressive violence of patriarchy (Latimer, 2021). For us, liberation is not about transforming into another state of being – from unliberated to liberated. Instead, we propose to understand bodily autonomy in the film through the lens of Deleuzian ‘becoming’. To understand the possibilities generated through the concept of becoming, we argue that becoming provides a line of flight from the restrictions of structured, hegemonic identities to the freedom of unsettled, on-going processes of infinite possibilities.
First, we will provide a brief overview of becoming: a Deleuzian concept which understands all things to be the product of perpetual movement and shifting dynamics. Next, we introduce Reproductive Justice, a framework integrating theory and praxis, to elucidate the ways in which bodily autonomy and reproductive control are essential to the conditions necessary for liberation, which exemplifies the refusal of settled, hegemonic identities and ways of being complementary to the refusals of states of being within the concept of becoming. Then, we will deconstruct the mise-en-scène, dialogue and story structure to follow the connecting thread of the message of bodily autonomy as essential for liberation. In this section, we use the work of Deleuze and feminist interpretations of Deleuzian theory, specifically by Hannah Stark and Clair Colebrook, and their interpretations on becoming within the concepts of The Body and The Self. Finally, we end with a discussion of how a feminist Deleuzian perspective might help us reframe the final line of the film as an inclusive, empowering message about the essential nature of personal reproductive control in the destabilisation and deconstruction of patriarchy.
Becoming
Becoming is process, transformation and passage emergent from the middle of reconstituting relationships between heterogeneous things, specifically two things which have no connection. Amaleena Damlé describes the Deleuzian process of becoming as having ‘no past, future or even present, because there is no history [. . . but] is a matter of transversal, or geographical linkages’ (2014: 47). Critically, becoming is not a process of beginning nor is it a process of ending, meaning there is no focus on becoming a specific form or reaching a specific destination. Instead, becoming is always already in process and continues through this movement or passage refusing representation and never attaining a final form. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze says ‘a becoming is always in the middle; one can only get it by the middle’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 323). That is, there is no origin; there is no destination; there is only what Hannah Stark describes as ‘the novelty that is generated when heterogenous things enter into relation and become other than they were’ (2017: 25). Stereotypical Barbie's becoming is not her transformation from a doll into a ‘real’ woman but is, instead, about what is made possible through refusal: refusing to return to a literal box in order to be sent back to Barbie Land, hands restrained by the men on the executive board; refusing to remain Stereotypical Barbie whose days are spent being pursued by Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling); and, as the focus of our analysis, refusing to explain her final state of being.
Discussions on social media surrounding the film's final line have focused on the meaning of Barbie's final physical form. One discussion centred on the potential essentialist nature of having Barbie go to the gynaecologist – the implication being that the doll (Barbie) became the woman (Barbara Handler) because she now has a vagina. With Gerwig's decision to immediately cut to the credits following the final line and the close-up on Barbara's smiling face, the refusal to explicitly address the question of what Barbara visiting the gynaecologist means as a representation of ‘human’ or ‘woman’ reflects a Deleuzian refusal to provide a definitive answer to the audience. In one thread on X (formerly Twitter), users discussed their varying interpretations of the scene (see Bonest Phillips and Scarf, 2024, for more on the film and social media):
I just kinda felt like the distinction was between ‘idea’ vs. ‘real human’ not necessarily a ‘real woman’ (even if that is what they said) [c]uz really she was a human from the moment with the old lady when she started feeling emotions, cuz that's what made her real. (@WalkerRainge, 25 July 2023) im ngl when i heard that i thought barbie got bottom surgery. (@lesbianmanifold, 24 July 2023)
These tweets reflect the Deleuzian impossibility in which a paradox of the socially determined representations of gender can never be realised. Critical to the understanding of becoming is that representations are a reflection of Being whereby Being is.
Being is molar; Being is that which is always already constructed. Being reflects our hegemonic identities. Therefore, all representations or resemblings are Being. From a Deleuzian perspective, then, the desire and attempts to reconcile Barbara's physical characteristics with her embodied experiences are entirely related to a state of Being rather than to the process of becoming. Barbie becomes a representation or a resemblance of a woman. Becoming, as a process and passage, rejects the entire premise of Barbara's physical characteristics or achieved status of hegemonic femininity as the point of focus. Todd May argues that ‘[b]ecoming-woman is the subversion of perhaps our most fixed stable identity: our sexual roles’ (2003: 151). We argue that the refusal to explain Barbara's final scene, particularly the final line of dialogue, signifies innumerable possibilities. Although representations by their very nature cannot be a becoming, the audience enters into the final scene in the middle. It is clear that the scene is occurring in the Real World sometime after Barbie decides she can no longer remain Stereotypical Barbie, but it is not clear how much time has passed, where we are located geographically or why Barbara is with Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). The audience arrives in the midst of some ongoing process, an attempt to imagine the unimaginable, to capture and represent a process that cannot be captured or represented. We argue that this refusal of capture and representation supports the closing dialogue as a line of flight.
Becoming is distinct from other conceptualisations of transformation as there is no identity or state of being that is produced through the process of becoming. What is essential, then, is simply that which is created during the changing relational dynamics between points of difference. Colebrook describes that one of the ways that ‘life’ becomes is ‘through thought (through words, concepts, ideas, and theories)’ whereby a ‘body becomes what it is’ through desire and the relation between those desires, not simply becoming through assigned classification (2002: xv–xvi). Deleuze and Guattari wrote explicitly about ‘becoming-woman’ which rejects the framing of being – as in, a fixed being or state – and instead reiterates that ‘becoming produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself [. . .] not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes’ (1987: 238). Stark describes the disparity between the molar – that which is ‘subjects, objects, or form that we know from the outside and recognize from experience, through science, or by habit’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 303) – and the molecular – that which ‘has not congealed into an identity; it remains a vibrant and shifting molecular collectivity’ (2017: 26) – whereby the ‘aim of becoming is to undermine the molar and to become the molecular’ (2017: 26). In Barbie, the process of becoming is not about Barbara transforming into the hegemonic representation of a ‘real’ woman. Instead, by observing the representation of a process of becoming throughout the final scene, the audience is provided a line of flight to escape the hegemonic constraints of their identities and ways of being. That is, the final scene provides a glimpse of the possibilities of refusal through which they can reject the limitations and restraints of hegemonic ways of Being for the always already in progress process of becoming. Liberation emerges from the refusal.
Since becoming recognises all of life as a constant process of shifting and movement, ‘becoming offers feminism something extremely useful: a way out of essentialism’ (Stark, 2017: 37). Specifically, ‘becoming-woman is not an imitation or parody of woman but is directed at opening new affects, and new ways of thinking and being’ (Stark, 2017: 40). The restrictive understandings of gender – the bioessentialist arguments of ‘womanhood’ and narrow constructions of what is ‘acceptable’ for women to do or be – have only served to perpetuate the violent conditions of oppression and to undermine the conditions necessary for liberation for all (Schippers and Grayson Sapp, 2012). Thus, focusing on process rather than identity or classification liberates feminism from the limitations imposed by specific characteristics. In the next part of this article, we apply this understanding of becoming as we examine the ways in which Barbie exemplifies becoming as essential to the film's narrative on the conditions required for liberation. We explore the relationships between becoming, The Body and The Self.
Reproductive justice
Reflecting the longstanding resistance work of Indigenous women, women of colour and trans people, the term Reproductive Justice was coined in 1994 by a group of Black women, who named themselves Women of African Descent, as a response to the continued prioritisation of the reproductive perspectives and concerns of middle-class and wealthy white women (SisterSong, n.d.a). These women decided to enshrine their core values and mission in the Reproductive Justice movement after being routinely excluded from the primary political agenda of the Reproductive Rights movement which did not integrate or address the needs of women of colour and other marginalised people. Combining frameworks of Reproductive Rights and Human Rights, Reproductive Justice serves as a theoretical framework which enables the understanding and analysis of interlocking power systems – particularly within the United States – as the foundation and catalyst for enacting political praxis in the fight for reproductive liberation. In 2023, during what should have been the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade (1973), Atlanta based Reproductive Justice organisation SisterSong reiterated the demands of the Reproductive Justice founders as the human right to: 1) own our bodies and control our future, 2) have children, 3) not have children and 4) parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities (SisterSong, n.d.b).
The histories of reproductive oppression are often understood as being inextricably connected to the intersecting identities of the subject. In the United States, the sterilisation of Indigenous women and forced reproduction of enslaved women reflected the convergence of politics through a divergence of tactics for reproductive control to maintain the structures of white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism (Ross and Solinger, 2017). Reproductive Justice, then, is ‘an amplifying organizing concept to shed light on the intersectional forms of oppression that threaten Black women's bodily integrity’, with a perspective that no one has liberation if the most marginalised people are not liberated (Ross, 2017: 291). Early on in Barbie, we are presented with a Barbie Land that seems to be portraying itself as diverse through the inclusion of Barbies of different races, abilities and body sizes. However, this ‘inclusivity’ does not extend beyond a superficial representation of diversity. In one review of the film, Selina Tran (2023) highlights that the film features ‘a plus-sized Barbie, pregnant Midge, a Black president Barbie, a Barbie who uses a wheelchair, [and] a South Asian Barbie who wins a Pulitzer’, while noting the absence of additional racial or ethnic representations. The perfunctory default to limited inclusive representation in the film – and the related critiques about which groups were represented and which groups were not – is one of the clearest examples of how the film fails to move beyond the limitations of white feminism. Rather than decentring whiteness, Barbie reproduces the same ineffective strategies common to white feminism: ‘diversity’ and ‘representation’ instead of a legitimate and substantive rejection of the power and privileges of whiteness as the necessary conditions for liberation.
The adherence to white feminism contributes to the weakness of the liberatory message that the film claims to promote. In the ‘Destroy Barbie’ scene, where Stereotypical Barbie and Sasha meet for the first time, Sasha confronts her by stating: ‘You represent everything wrong with our culture. Sexualised capitalism. Unrealistic physical ideals . . . You set the feminist movement back fifty years. You destroyed girls’ innate sense of worth, and you are killing the planet with your glorification of rampant consumerism’. This exchange is particularly interesting when considered within the context of the product placement and Barbie-branded merchandise that coincided with the release of the film. The film prominently features Mattel branding and General Motors vehicles – including a car chase scene that plays like a Chevy commercial in the middle of the film. The branded products were not limited to direct product placement in the film. Mattel's online store sells more than eighty products in their ‘Barbie the Movie Merch’ section (Mattel, 2023). Other companies launched Barbie-branded items, including nail polish (OPI); clothing (Zara, Barefoot Dreams, Posh Peanut, Forever 21, Balmain, Hot Topic, Pac Sun, MeUndies); jewellery (Little Words Project, Kendra Scott); shoes (Birkenstock, Superga, Crocs); bags (Beis, Aqua); pet accessories (Canada Pooch, Gap); and games and toys (UNO, FUNBOY) (Burack, 2023; Vargas, 2023). One article notes that Mattel partnered with more than a hundred brands during the promotion and release of the film (Anderson, 2023). The impossibility of capitalism and liberation coexisting generates an insurmountable barrier for the film – Barbie, the film, cannot escape the capitalistic system that created it, regardless of the intentions of the filmmakers.
Barbie exemplifies white feminism and the commodification of liberatory messages into a product. However, the audience and their connections with the film's messages create the possibilities of lines of flight, an initiation or catalyst for deterritorialisation. Although much of the discussion of Barbara's gynaecological appointment has centred on questions of Barbara's human anatomy or whether the final line is making a bioessentialist classification of what it means to be a woman, we have a different interpretation of the meaning of and possibilities created by this line informed by this Reproductive Justice framework. The loss of reproductive rights and trans rights in the United States has inspired groups that have often been silent on issues of reproductive healthcare into action, with multiple states voting to enshrine abortion and contraceptive access into state constitutions and with people actively fighting for access to gender-affirming care. Therefore, we argue that the film's use of the term ‘gynaecologist’ must not reflect bioessentialism but, instead, can be understood as a political statement reaffirming the necessity of controlling one's own body and reproduction as a foundational – not peripheral – condition for autonomy and liberation for all.
Becoming and the embodiment of self
Barbie's narrative arc from doll to human is seemingly not a representation of the process of becoming, but instead reflects a transformation of Being. However, the film successfully exploits and subverts stereotypical narratives of character self-actualisation as one of the primary messages of the film. Our first introduction to this particular Barbie, happily defined by the narrator's classification as ‘Stereotypical Barbie’, could be best described as ‘living her best day, every day’ – she wakes up rested, looking perfect and (literally) floating through life. However, our first indication that things might be amiss can be found when our protagonist brings her dance party to a screeching halt when she casually asks the other Barbies, ‘You guys ever think about dying?’ – a question so inconceivable in the daily perfection of Barbie Land that Stereotypical Barbie must immediately retract it in order to restart the party. As Barbie is saying goodnight to the other Barbies from her bed, she, unprompted, states that she is ‘definitely not think[ing] about death anymore’ – indicating that she is definitely still thinking about death.
The next day, the malfunctioning of Stereotypical Barbie continues as her morning routine shifts from perfection to the complications of the human condition: bedhead, bad breath, cold showers, burnt toast and spoiled milk. Stereotypical Barbie perseveres until she finds herself unable to walk as her perfectly arched feet have flattened. Her fellow Barbies convince her to seek the wisdom of Weird Barbie (Kate MacKinnon) if she wants to go back to her life of perfection. From her house on the outskirts of Barbie Land, clearly denoting her as an outsider, Weird Barbie informs Stereotypical Barbie that due to her thoughts of death a portal has opened between Barbie Land and the Real World. If Stereotypical Barbie wants to return to her perfect life with pointed feet and cellulite-free thighs, she must travel to the Real World and close the portal. Stereotypical Barbie is resistant to the idea that she has done anything to contribute to the portal opening between the two worlds – preferring instead to believe that the little girl playing with her in the Real World is responsible for the glitches she is experiencing in Barbie Land. However, Weird Barbie is clear that it takes two to open the portal.
The requirement of two heterogeneous things – in this case, Barbie (the doll) and Gloria (a human) – needed to open the portal reflects the requirement of two heterogeneous things needed for the process of becoming to emerge, as becoming emerges from two different things in a relationship with one another. It is through this sequence in the film's first act that we see our first representation of a Deleuzian becoming process. We are meeting Stereotypical Barbie in a middle – it is just an average day in Barbie Land where she has been living the same perfect day every day for an indeterminate period of time. At no point in the film do we learn Stereotypical Barbie's ‘origin story’ of how she came to join Barbie Land. Instead, it is as though the Barbies have always been. In fact, even Barbies that have met an end through discontinuation in the Real World are in the process of a becoming by transitioning out of the centre of Barbie Land into the haven of Weird Barbie's house on the edge of the town. Weird Barbies are created when someone in the Real World plays with them in ways that reject the perfection of non-Weird Barbies by cutting their hair, drawing on them or modifying them in ways outside of their intended perfect appearance. However, Weird Barbie is not a representation of another state or identity to be achieved. We argue that Weird Barbie is an attempt at imagining the unimaginable – the possibilities that exist in a life which refuses the hegemonic constraints of perfect femininity.
The first act of Barbie reflects a structure of becoming as described by Stark as ‘not about the point from which something originated or the point at which it arrives’ (2017: 25). We are witnessing the becoming of something new as Stereotypical Barbie malfunctions. None of the other Barbies (including Weird Barbie) have ever seen the physical and psychological shifts that Stereotypical Barbie is experiencing, further contributing to Stereotypical Barbie's distress. The malfunctioning is a glitch which reflects a new arrangement of heterogeneous physical, psychological and experiential shifts. With no clear cause, Stereotypical Barbie's malfunctioning simply is within this moment. Deleuze and Guattari elaborate further on this process by articulating that the process of ‘becoming produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes’ (1987: 238). That is, while Stereotypical Barbie's malfunctioning is used to move the plot into the second act, her becoming is already in process when the audience meets her.
This is further supported through Stereotypical Barbie's reluctance to leave the known world of Barbie Land and go to the Real World. Weird Barbie presents Stereotypical Barbie with an illusion of choice where a pink high heel represents staying in Barbie Land and returning to her old life and a beige Birkenstock sandal represents the first step on her journey into the Real World. Stereotypical Barbie quickly selects the pink high heel, expressing an explicit desire to return to the way things were. This is particularly poignant when considering the Deleuzian insistence that the process of becoming is not about being or identity but rather about the becoming that already is, as Stereotypical Barbie is experiencing the physical and emotional discomfort of an existential crisis which prohibits her from simply remaining Stereotypical Barbie. Although Stereotypical Barbie does not recognise her current experiences as being indicators of her emergence in the middle of the becoming process, she is not able to stop or reverse this becoming – she is already in the midst of a transformation. This is highlighted when she argues that she should not be the Barbie who goes to the Real World by countering Weird Barbie's directive with ‘I’m not Adventure Barbie. I’m Stereotypical Barbie. I’m like the Barbie you think of when someone says, “Think of a Barbie”. That's me’. Colebrook describes Deleuze and Guattari's critique of identity as a rejection of the concept that ‘“we” have a fixed identity or being that we then engage with through ideas’ (2002: xvi). Specifically, Deleuze and Guattari are pushing back against the notion that an identity is and is understood through its difference in an established system of structure. Instead, for Deleuze, difference is always already different, and difference is different within itself – thereby providing endless possibilities.
The film's construction of Stereotypical Barbie has been to situate her entire sense of self within her identity as Stereotypical Barbie. In her evaluation of herself, Stereotypical Barbie is comparing her identity with an established structure of identities – the other Barbies in Barbie Land. Stereotypical Barbie indicates an internalisation of this belief that her identity is defined through her difference from other Barbies – Stereotypical Barbie when compared with Adventure Barbie – as opposed to a Deleuzian understanding of difference as inherently different simply because there is difference. Deleuze's concept of difference is exemplified through Weird Barbie's insistence that Stereotypical Barbie must be the one to complete her journey into the Real World to close the portal between the two worlds, as the other Barbies – regardless of their identities – cannot do what is required of Stereotypical Barbie precisely because the two Barbies are different. This conflict is essential in Stereotypical Barbie's metaphysical journey of deconstructing her assumed identity. Since Stereotypical Barbie is already in the constant process of becoming, this desire to return to the way things were is already an impossibility. And by the time she is confronted with the ultimate decision to leave Barbie Land for the Real World forever in the film's third act, it is clear that there never was a ‘way things were’, even before Stereotypical Barbie's malfunctioning.
Becoming and the creation of self
As Stereotypical Barbie struggles to make sense of the Real World and the patriarchy which structures it, her first substantive interaction is the aforementioned ‘Destroy Barbie’ scene with Sasha. Representing another shift in the becoming process, Stereotypical Barbie is devastated upon learning that the world she thought the Barbies had created in the Real World does not exist. Her devastation reflects distress that the identity she had believed to be her was, in fact, not her and never was her. Gerwig's construction of the exchange between Stereotypical Barbie and Sasha further challenges Stereotypical Barbie's understanding of her own identity as Stereotypical Barbie. The challenges to Stereotypical Barbie's identity as she perceives her identity as who she is leave her in a state of vulnerability and compliance when confronted by the Mattel security forces who take her in Black SUVs to Mattel's corporate offices. To send Stereotypical Barbie back to Barbie Land, the corporate executives of Mattel want Stereotypical Barbie to get into a human-sized Barbie doll box, complete with white twist ties to attach her to the packaging – a manifestation of keeping Stereotypical Barbie in her predetermined box, both literally and figuratively. However, as the twist ties begin to tighten around Stereotypical Barbie's wrists, she jumps away from the box, immediately shifting the tone of the room from pleased to concerned. Stereotypical Barbie is no longer compliant. While evading the executives who want to send her back to Barbie Land, Stereotypical Barbie stumbles upon a room with Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman) at a kitchen table on an isolated floor. The decor used in this scene is particularly jarring when compared to the austere, modern design of the Mattel corporate building. The kitchen cultivates an environment of warmth and home, presenting the birthplace of the idea of Barbie within the context of a family, not a corporation.
At this point, Barbie is unaware that this older woman is the creator of Barbie. Ruth offers tea to Stereotypical Barbie, and in the process of handing her the teacup their hands touch, directly mirroring The Creation of Adam from the fresco in the Sistine Chapel. As Stereotypical Barbie – the created – takes the teacup, her fingers brush against the fingers of Ruth Handler – the creator. In this moment, Stereotypical Barbie's ‘thank you’ takes on a double meaning. The music for Billie Eilish's ‘What Was I Made For?’ plays softly in the background during their exchange. This scene is structured so that the thank you represents a common courtesy as well as gratitude for the existence of Barbie. Although this scene in the moment is designed to be understood as a complex exchange of gratitude, we read it as part of a Deleuzian deconstruction of identity. That is, while Ruth Handler may have created the idea of Barbie, Stereotypical Barbie does not represent an acquired or assigned identity. Ruth tells her that she ‘looks different’, further signalling that Stereotypical Barbie is different. The identity of Stereotypical Barbie is the epitome of the concepts of territorialisation and deterritorialisation, whereby ‘the very connective forces that allow any form of life to become what it is (territorialisation) can also allow any form of life to become what it is not (deterritorialization) (Colebrook, 2002: xxii). That is, the very forces which produce ‘Stereotypical Barbie’ are the same forces which move Stereotypical Barbie away from ‘Stereotypical Barbie’. Brian Massumi states that there ‘is no form of forms, there is the event of events: a coming to pass through comings to be; the world as becoming’ (2002: xxv). The film constructs a reflection of the self and the origin of the self as separate from an achieved status, and instead reaffirms becoming as perpetual movement outside of states of Being.
In Barbie's transition from Stereotypical Barbie to Barbara Handler, she has a conversation with Ruth Handler in a liminal space outside of both Barbie Land and the Real World (see Connolly, 2024, for more on this scene). In a callback to the kitchen scene, Eilish's ‘What Was I Made For?’ once again plays in the background, signifying Stereotypical Barbie's awareness and reflection of the self as being separate from her identity as Stereotypical Barbie, as both a doll and an idea. We argue that this song is used as an indicator to the audience that Stereotypical Barbie is not what she seems to be, and her onscreen journey represents that which is possible when we refuse the limitations of our achieved and ascribed statuses. In this space of transition, Stereotypical Barbie does not look, sound or behave like the Stereotypical Barbie we met at the beginning of the film. Wearing a simple yellow dress with a gold heart necklace, Stereotypical Barbie confesses that she is not sure she knows what she wants or where she belongs anymore. Again, we see the film's use of deterritorialisation; although still technically Stereotypical Barbie, the forces – whether Ruth Handler or Mattel – that previously constructed Stereotypical Barbie are the same forces which determine that she is no longer Stereotypical Barbie. In fact, Stereotypical Barbie says ‘I don’t think I have an ending’, to which a miraculously appearing Ruth Handler responds ‘That was always the point. I created you so you wouldn’t have an ending’. Interestingly, Ruth refers to herself as the ‘inventor of Barbie’, not the creator of Barbie. This word choice seems intentional given the explicit mirroring of The Creation of Adam in Stereotypical Barbie and Ruth's initial meeting. One reading of this distinction is that an inventor produces the idea of something while a creator produces the material existence of something, indicating that Ruth sees Stereotypical Barbie as an idea of what a life free from domesticity could be – an attempt at imagining the unimaginable – whereas a creator would be responsible for producing the dolls and accessories attempting to make that idea a reality. Stereotypical Barbie goes on to say that she ‘doesn’t really feel like Barbie anymore’ and ‘Maybe I’m not Barbie anymore’, reflecting her ongoing existential crisis of Being while in the midst of becoming.
As Stereotypical Barbie and Ruth talk about the impact of Stereotypical Barbie no longer being Barbie, Stereotypical Barbie is, once again, confronted with the reality of death; however, this time, Stereotypical Barbie's thoughts of death are met with acceptance rather than the anxiety she experienced earlier in the film. In perhaps one of the most Deleuzian exchanges in the film, Stereotypical Barbie tells Ruth, ‘I want to be part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that's made. I want to do the imagining. I don’t wanna be the idea’. This exchange is a direct rejection of identity as destination, and instead argues that life is the process of becoming and becoming is what life is. As Barbie attempts to make sense of this reterritorialisation, she asks Ruth if she gives Stereotypical Barbie permission to become human. Ruth responds by clarifying Barbie does not need her permission. Stereotypical Barbie realises that ‘being human's not something I need to ask for or even want? I can just . . . It's something that I just discover I am?’. We argue that Stereotypical Barbie's indication of ‘I am’ is not a reference to an ending and nor is it a reference to a specific identity – in this case, human. Instead, ‘I am’ is a reference to the experience of the process of becoming. The goal of Stereotypical Barbie's transition here is not to become human but rather to recognise that she is in the midst of the perpetual movement and process of becoming. As Stereotypical Barbie recognises and accepts that life is not about a specific identity or sense of self, Ruth tells Stereotypical Barbie to take her hands, close her eyes and feel.
Conclusion
Barbie's final line reflects a powerful message in the current political moment. In the United States, Roe v. Wade (1973) being overturned the year before Barbie's release served as a radicalising moment for many people who had previously ignored the legislative attacks on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. With a film that brazenly names, attacks and destroys patriarchy in Barbie Land, it seems only fitting that the final line represents one of the essential rights necessary for liberation: the right to own and control one's body. A Reproductive Justice framework can be used to contextualise this dialogue within the larger project of liberation for all, meaning that people should have the right to have a child, to not have a child and to parent the child they do have in safe and sustainable communities. To reference a gynaecologist, a healthcare specialisation focused solely on reproductive and sexual health, represents a closing political remark that is simultaneously shocking and funny. The buzz surrounding the final line ensured audiences would be talking about it – on social media, in think pieces and with each other. To understand the political message of the film, one only needs to go back to the film's opening sequence. Under the violence of patriarchy, mandated motherhood and domesticity have long been used as tools of oppression and control. To challenge this narrative during a time of loud political opposition to feminism and LGBTQ + rights in a film accessible to all people has the potential to have a profound impact on its audience. A significant weakness of the film is Gerwig's refusal to reject the limitations of white feminism in the messaging. The celebration and promotion of mass consumption, while being mildly critical of Mattel, coupled with the continued focus on the ability to choose – a career, a partner – without an additional explicit push for liberation outside of capitalistic goals and values, limit Gerwig's ability to imagine the unimaginable. Regardless of the intentions of the filmmaker, we argue that not only is this final line inclusive but it generates a line of flight to redirect the audience away from settled, hegemonic identities towards the unsettled and dynamic possibilities through the process of becoming as a means to liberate white feminism from its self-imposed limitations.
