Gerwig continued by discussing the insight of Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler. She realized that children didn’t want to pretend to be mothers with baby dolls but rather wanted to pretend to be grown women. Gerwig sees the magic of her Barbie movie in infusing the long-running doll brand with modern ideas of feminism and patriarchy.
Margot Robbie, who stars in and produces the Barbie film, also shared her thoughts on the complexity of Barbie as an icon. She acknowledged that Barbie has been both ahead and behind her times but has always evolved. Robbie believes that the movie is the next evolution for the character.
Despite the success of Barbie at the box office and its award nominations, Gerwig’s next project will be adapting C.S. Lewis’ beloved fantasy book series, The Chronicles of Narnia, for Netflix. However, the Barbie phenomenon is far from over. The film won the Golden Globe’s new award for box office achievement and received several nominations for the SAG Awards. We’ll have to stay tuned to see how it fares at this year’s.
