MEDIUM RARE

Barbie Mattel is 60 years old, would you believe? Oh, well, in Barbieland you can be anything you want, such as being a Ken rather than a Barbie. The movie “Barbie” begins at the beginning: “Since the beginning of time –” In the US where Barbie and “Oppenheimer” ruled the box office in that order, it was labeled the “Barbenheimer” blockbuster. That two very different movies were running neck and neck for the fans’ time and loyalty – one to a doll, the other to the people who made the atom bomb – it was the frivolous one that had the edge, but what did you expect? This is Hollywood. Barbie is fun and fiction and its running time is one hour shorter (two hours versus three). If Oppenheimer was fueled by the theme “war never again,” Barbie’s creators opted for an existentialist point of view: Existence is essence. I went to watch Barbie fully expecting to be the oldest in the audience, but that was precisely why I ventured out on a rainy night: I’d hoped to see a flock of Barbie fans decked out in signature candy pink, and I was not disappointed. I met a bunch of them in the ladies’. If Barbie is a senior citizen with four generations of followers, her admirers are teens and ladies of a certain age who probably grew up playing with or wishing for a Barbie doll. I know one young mother who swore her daughters would never fall prey to the doll’s charm, but sooner or later she had to swallow her words. Which mother can bear to see her pretty little girls crying over a toy she cannot play with? The original Barbie is white, Caucasian, born a blonde with blue eyes. But as the world grew more sophisticated and women learned to be “empowered,” Mattel had to keep in step. Thus Barbies of different body types, sizes, skin tones. Many years ago, Mattel fashioned a Filipina Barbie dressed in Filipiniana. It was our in-house movie reviewer who convinced me to give Barbie a go (anyway, I stay away from war movies): “Critics say it’s a smart work.” By a woman director, no less. Imagine if the job had been given to a man?!