Column by Brent Woodard
Anglican/United Church
I went to see the movie “Barbie” with my wife. I enjoyed it and found it thought provoking. At one point my wife leaned over to me and whispered, “I don’t know what I’m enjoying more, the movie or listening to people laugh.” People in the audience were amused at comments the characters were making – naming female/male dynamics that normally don’t get named.
The movie shows the difference between living in Barbieland (a fantasy world) and the real world. Barbieland is an ideal matriarchal society where women (Barbies) hold prestigious professions like doctors, lawyers and politicians and where every day is a perfect day. Men (Kens) spend each day at the beach. That is their profession. A rupture comes into this fantasy world, and Barbie needs to go on a journey of self-discovery. She needs to want to know the truth of how things are. Ken also goes on his journey of self-discovery. It becomes, for both of them, a journey from immaturity to maturity. They are helped along the way by “outcasts.” These are women and men who don’t fit in, but help others be self-reflective.
The idea of living in a fantasy world is worth reflecting upon. Perhaps it is human to imagine a world where we have perfect looks, the perfect marriage, with perfect kids, a perfect career, perfect relationships, no medical or financial challenges and nothing that takes us out of our psychological comfort zone. Sounds nice, but how do we reconcile our fantasy world with the real world?
The movie also shows people falling under the spell of patriarchy (patriarchy means “father rules,” or “men rule”). It shows people literally waking up from under this spell. The idea of being asleep is worth reflecting upon. We don’t know we are asleep until we wake up. And, yes, we can be asleep to patriarchy. But we can also be asleep to an alcohol/drug/entertainment-based culture, an electronic device-based culture, a violence-based culture, a media-shaped culture, an I’m-entitled-to-consume-culture, some kind of ideology, conspiracy theories, our own childhood and societal trauma and conditioning, and so much more. It feels fair to say we are all asleep to something, we just don’t know it when we’re asleep. And we no doubt have defenses and resistance that make it hard to wake up.
Recently the scripture included a line from Paul that says, “you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” I find it interesting that he wrote this 2,000 years ago, and it remains a main task for humankind now. Like Barbie and Ken, we all need to keep on the journey of self-discovery, waking up, and wanting to know the truth about how things are.