Why Is the Barbie Movie So Popular?

The Barbie movie is a huge hit. Not just with critics, but also with the audiences, especially young audiences. In some ways, this is not that surprising, given the enormous global promotion the movie got and the ongoing nostalgia for anything Barbie-related. On the other hand, neither the ad campaign nor the nostalgia explains why the Barbie movie has become not just a box office success, but also a cultural reference point that people keep on rewatching. Another explanation has to do with the ways in which the film paints a picture of the psychology of Barbie's decisions that is relatable to all generations.

The Barbie nostalgia is, in any case, limited to the first couple of minutes of the film, where we get introduced to the almost painfully pink world of Barbieland, where every day is perfect. But no matter where you were hiding recently, you probably knew these images from the trailers and posters anyway. The problem with Barbieland from a narrative point of view, is that it is difficult to put together a feature-length story arc in a perfect world. After all, what kind of conflicts and dilemmas could there be in a world where every day is perfect?

And here the film employs a surprising twist of making Barbie face decisions that make her relatable to all of us: decisions where she has to choose between something extremely familiar and something unknown. What is even more surprising is that Barbie faces such dilemmas not once, not twice, but three times. First, when she needs to choose between staying in Barbieland and going to the Real World to fix things. Second, when she is facing the dilemma of going back to the box or not. At the end of the movie, the choice between living in Barbieland and living in the Real World.

The structure of these three decisions is extremely familiar to all of us. We face decisions of that kind, between something we know and something entirely unfamiliar. When you contemplate getting married, having kids, getting divorced, taking a new job, moving to a different country or city, or even an apartment, all these decisions have the same structure. You know one option very well. You know the disadvantages, but also the advantages. And you only have some very faint ideas about the other option.

How do we actually make decisions of this kind? Here, we have a fair amount of findings in the psychology of decision-making and they all point in the same direction: given that we have no firm information about one of these options, it is imagination that plays a significant role in these decisions. You imagine yourself in your new job in an unknown country and see how that feels. Of course, imagination is not a particularly reliable guide to how things actually are, which makes these decisions not exactly rational.

But rationality is not the point of these decisions either. It is not even clear what would count as a rational decision in these contexts. When we make these decisions, we imagine our future selves in these situations, but the future self is, to a large extent, the product of exactly the decision we are making now. In some of the most important decisions we make, there is no right or wrong decision. These decisions mold your future self.

And this is exactly the way Barbie makes her grand decisions between Barbieland and the Real World. Her first decision, with allusions to the Matrix-esque blue pill versus red pill dilemma, turns out not to be a real decision as she has to go to the Real World to fix things. But in her other decisions, she faces the choice between something that feels familiar and cozy (the box or Barbieland) on the one hand, and something scarily unfamiliar and not at all cozy (the Real World) on the other. She consistently chooses the unfamiliar option, and, in the dramatic climax of the movie, does so very explicitly with the help of her imagination.

On a very simple level, the main narrative challenge of a film about Barbie is to make Barbie relatable to the audiences of today. The problem is that Barbie's life is perfect, but our lives are far from perfect. How and why would we then relate to Barbie's ideal life? And the surprising solution to this narrative puzzle is to make Barbie face decisions we all face and struggle with them the way we struggle with them. This psychological complexity may not be what many spectators went to see this movie for, but this is a big part of what makes this film an unlikely audience favorite.