In my family there is a tradition of watching a holiday movie while decorating for Christmas. However, this year when I went to look up the Grinch, a personal favorite of mine, we found that you had to rent it everywhere and upon looking up some other classics we found the same issue. In the words of my mother “then what the hell am I paying all these subscriptions for”, but then I remembered that YouTube has every single barbie movie available for free as playlists and that instead we could watch those, so I found and turned on Barbie in a Christmas Carol. I was very excited about this but to my surprise my mom was confused why I would want to watch a barbie movie, I on the other hand couldn’t understand how she barely remembered these movies that we probably have twenty dvds of in our basement. The movie was of course wonderful as all barbie movies are but it got me thinking about why we feel a pull to our childhood movies. Especially because just hours before my mom was excitingly asking me for the tenth time if I had seen beaches, a movie that would have come out when she was a teenager. When doing research I found a lot of people saying that we simply watch these movies to be transported back to a simpler time. This falls into the realm of escapism, which is a popular reason for watching movies, but the escapism has little to do with the actual movie and instead the environment in which we once watched it in that has little responsibilities or stressors. I think there is also a comfort in having our beliefs and behaviors reaffirmed. While many newer movies or movies catering to an adult audience try to make us stretch our thinking in views watching a movie like Barbie in a Christmas Carol that is teaching you to be grateful for your privilege and use that privilege to help others is a lesson people have already learn and feel comfortable being taught again.

I also think that one of the things that draws me and many other women in Gen Z to movies like the barbie movies is the lack of men. Frankly, men seem to be the driving force behind a lot of problems in our world on global and personal scales and when watching most movies there are a lot of men and often the male character is much more fleshed out than the female character and when you do see a movie that has a female as a main character a lot of the time that movie is about something in society oppressing women. But in the barbie movies men are only present to be a funny villain or to be a romantic interest, but the romantic interests are often left behind and discarded and not a part of the movies happily ever after. One of the barbie movies that exhibits this the most, and is also the most queer coded barbie movie, is Barbie and the Diamond Castle which starts with two best friends living in a cottage who do get twins as love interest but they quite literally abandon them to walk on a giant rainbow bridge together and then at the end when the twins offer to let them live in their castle they say no and go back to their cottage. In Barbie in a Christmas Carol specifically the only men are tiny side parts with a couple lines at most, the main character, her best friend, the orphan representing tiny Tim, the spirits, and the evil aunt are all women. So I think a big part of the pull of these movies is it offers media where you can actually avoid men.

Lastly, an interesting reason to explore the barbie movies is the weirdly complex barbie cinematic universe. It is well known that Barbie has many jobs but one of them is an actress and Actress Barbie is actually playing the main character in many of these movies. We know this because some of the movies had bloopers at the end of Actress Barbie, like Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper. Other movies like Barbie in a Christmas Carol are stories that the real Barbie is telling. Then there are movies like Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale and the Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures series that actually happened to the real Barbie. There are also tons of other barbie theories so definitely a fun rabbit hole to go down.

So, go watch your childhood movies! Especially if they are barbie.