Barbie Meets Judith Butler
Deconstructing the panoptic naturalization of gender
A bit of cultural theory
Quite a subtitle, right? But you’re ready for it! ¡No problema! Bring on the cultural-theory speak! We can handle it!
We’ve talked about Derrida and the linguistic practice of deconstruction (“The Devil is in the Derrida, Parts 1 & 2,” 5 & 12 April 2023). We’ve talked about Foucault and the society-forming procedures of the Panopticon (“Visibility is a Trap,” 16 August 2023; “School Maze,” 30 August 2023). Now it’s time to take a look at some really interesting thinkers who put these theories and ideas into motion. Thinkers who come up with their own really interesting takes on culture and how it works.
I can think of no thinker more interesting to start with than Judith Butler. Rather than my telling you a whole lot about her, please just watch this “Big Think” piece on YouTube (see here; sorry about the stupid ads that will pop up).
What we’ll do in this post is take three ideas from Butler’s most influential work, Gender Trouble (1990; see here), and apply them to this summer’s blockbuster hit, Barbie. (What could be more fun and innocent than that?) The first idea shows Butler working with the theories of Foucault. The second shows her doing the same with the theories of Derrida. The third idea is Butler answering the all-important “So what?” question—that is, telling us why all this high-powered thinking stuff is worth our time and effort.
Idea #1: performativity within the Panopticon
Butler’s core theory about gender is that of performativity. The concept goes like this. Contrary to popular belief, your gender does not emerge from within you, like some kind of core essence, as a result of your anatomical sex (either male or female). Instead, your gender identity is imposed upon you from the outside, via the disciplining mechanisms of the Panopticon, so that you learn to perform—meaning to act out—the current culturally acceptable versions of gendered behavior (either masculine or feminine).
Simple enough in the abstract, right?
Instead of naturally growing boy trees or girl trees maturing into our inevitable man or woman selves, we’re pieces of wood varnished over with a good coat of gendered characteristics concocted by our cultural moment—the male masculinity and the female femininity du jour, so to speak.
Butler puts it like this:
If the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor false, but are only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity. (Gender Trouble)
As trained Foucauldian theorists, you of course see how Butler uses here the cultural findings of Foucault. Through defining and enforcing “normal” versus “abnormal” gender behaviors, and through constant surveillance to make sure that the individual not only adequately learns but suitably self-regulates into conformity with these behaviors, modern panoptic power produces a desired result of, as Butler characterizes it, “compulsory heterosexuality...and regulation of sexuality within the reproductive domain” (emphasis mine).
That is, our current dominant society wants straight people making babies. Anything else is anywhere from odd to aberrant to taboo.
Moreover, this imposition of compulsory heterosexuality is an excellent example of the productive force of modern power. A correctly performing male and female getting married, having babies, and raising a family can be a wonderfully constructive activity. But it also masks the controlling influences panoptic power holds over us. As a result of this camouflaging-by-utility, we never think to question or to inspect the “normal” we’ve been made to believe. Instead, we take it for the “natural” manifestation of our inner selves.
And, as a result of this implementation of power, anyone performing otherwise is considered “abnormal” and “unnatural.”
Idea #2: gender as a language system
How do we learn to perform a gender? Repetition. That’s how the Panopticon tends to work: repeating over and over and over and over the same descriptions of the world until we start repeating them ourselves, both in our heads and through our bodies. Learning—being disciplined—to slot ourselves into one side of the masculine/feminine binary works like this, too. From birth our only choices are blue/pink.
The training is not random. Like language, masculine and feminine are, says Butler, “rule-governed discourses that govern the intelligible invocation of identity.” That is, there are whole syntaxes for how to dress, how to look, how to conduct yourself, how to walk and talk and think as either a “man” or a “woman.” And, like language, we absorb this discourse, this practice of gender behavior, before we know we’re even being funneled into absorbing it. Even language itself is a key instrument in this conditioning process (see, for example, a new study by Jenni Nuttall titled Mother Tongue, here).
Thus, we’re back to the semiology of Saussure (see “What’s in a Word? Two Things,” 15 March 2023) and the Structuralism of Barthes (see “Signs, Structures, and Myths,” 22 March 2023). Gender identity is a linguistic Battle for the Signified. Turning biological entities, human children, into “boys” or “girls” is an enactment of cultural myth.
Signifiers (Sr) for girlhood are everywhere to be read (the pink aisle in ToysЯUs) all aimed at instilling the Signified (Sd) of sugar and spice and everything nice (things such as silent, obedient, and chaste). Signifiers for boyhood are everywhere to be read (the war aisle in ToysЯUs) all aimed at instilling the Signified of snakes and snails and puppy dog tails (meaning, really, loud, naughty, and aggressive). Notes Butler of this semantic programming:
The subject [the individual] is not determined by the rules through which it [the discourse] is generated because signification is not a founding act, but rather a regulated process of repetition that both conceals itself and enforces its rules precisely through the production of substantializing effects. (Gender Trouble)
In other words, here we see the productive power of the Panopticon at work yet again. Because modern power successfully produces and installs in us, via repetition, these described personas of masculine and feminine, we get tricked into believing that these ways of being are the true and innate, the one-and-only core essences of ourselves springing out naturally from our biological beings—that GenderЯUs.
In calling out this misconception, Butler channels the deconstructive strategies of Derrida against the dominant discourse of gender.
Butler denies the status of Transcendental Signified to these conventional versions of “masculinity” and “femininity.” These descriptions are not Signifieds set in timeless and absolute stone. Instead, for Butler, they are Signifiers still very much in linguistic play.
Idea #3: achieving agency via subversion
Butler’s call to action is simple. Stop repeating this gender story we’re constantly being fed. Know that agency “is to be located within the possibility of a variation on that repetition” (Gender Trouble). Understand that conventional masculinity and femininity are but two choices among many—among potentially innumerable—choices for behavior. There is no core, essential, gendered “you” before we step onto the cultural field of play. There is only the play of culture.
Even patriarchy is not a rule. It’s a power play.
Besides, culture is always shifting and changing anyway. What it means to be a “man” or a “woman” always differs by way of social and temporal settings. The performance of a “real man” or an “ideal woman” in, say, 13th-century Mongolia has nothing to do with those standards in 21st-century America. As a human activity, gender is a movable feast.
And Greta Gerwig’s film, Barbie (see here), certainly sets a rich table.
Applying this bit of cultural theory
What follows is not intended to be a movie review. I will say up front, though, that I thoroughly enjoyed Gerwig’s film. I found it a tasty combination of zany and meaningful, with neither quality getting too much in the way of the other. Major kudos to the writing of Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. What does follow, then, is an application of Butler’s three ideas, as explained above, to the film Barbie.
As the central premise of my application, I find that Gerwig’s movie has much the same effect on audiences as that of a Drag Show.
This might help explain why the rightwing is in such a dither over a box office smash hit about dolls (see here and here).
One of Butler’s central examples of the performativity of gender is the phenomenon of Drag. That an anatomical male can enact flawlessly femininity, or that an anatomical female can do the same with masculinity, demonstrates the constructed nature of these gender identities. Says Butler, “In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as its contingency” (Gender Trouble, emphasis original). Even more troubling about this Drag parodying of gender is how it gives the lie to the dogma that gender is some kind of inherent kernel inside us tied inextricably to our biological sex. We see before our very eyes how, in a very real sense, we are all parodying gender. We are all imitating a performance of masculinity or of femininity that we have learned to play.
Either amusingly or upsettingly, a good Drag Show demonstrates that our bodies (and minds) are much more canvases than seeds.
This rupture of biological sex from cultural gender is made abundantly—in fact, lavishly—clear in the film. When Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) first visits the Real World, she explains to a group of constructions workers staring at her and Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling): “I do not have a vagina and he does not have a penis. We have no genitals.” Yet there they both are, garishly feminine and masculine. Earlier, in Barbie Land, when Ken wants to stay the night with Barbie because “we’re girlfriend and boyfriend,” Barbie asks innocently, “To do what?” Ken hesitates for a moment and then is forced to admit, “I’m actually not sure.”
Barbie Land is a world of gender performance absent of sexual equipment and of sexual activity. Butler’s concept of gender performativity thus serves as the conceptual anchor of Gerwig’s film.
With regard to Butler’s other two contentions—gender as a language system and achieving agency via subversion—Barbie realizes both by means of gender inversion. That is, in Barbie Land, the dominant discourse (i.e. language system) of the Real World (i.e. current American patriarchy) is turned on its head. As a result of this inversion, a gender fluidity is revealed that not only calls into question our conventional thinking about the activities and attitudes of masculine and feminine. This topsy-turvy world likewise undermines (subverts) the “normal” gendered behaviors that have been drilled into our heads by means of relentless panoptic repetition.
In flummoxingly pink Barbie Land, Barbies rule and Kens drool. Real World patriarchy and plutocracy are reversed into dolliarchy and barbocracy.
The girl dolls hold all the positions of masculine authority while the boy dolls are feminized into second-class citizens. This funhouse mirror of American society allows us to see that the way things are now—that is, silly corporate men such at the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) running our lives—is not the way that things have to be. Masculine corporate capitalism is merely a description of the world foisted on us. Other ways of behaving—both with regard to gender and to socio-economic formation—are available if we stop repeating the gender and societal stories we’re constantly being fed.
Leading this rebellion, this insurrection, this betrayal of all this Good and Right and American is—according to rightwing doomsayers—the Che Guevara of Toyland:
Wow, how fun is this?
Gerwig makes over Barbie from being the glorification of “bimbo culture” into serving as this summer’s rally-point for female empowerment. The primary target of her commentary on—via the fantastical inversion of—the Real World is, of course, the hegemonic discourse of masculine domination.
Gerwig begins her critique by giving male viewers the opportunity to see and feel what it’s like to live as a female within the patriarchy. All the Kens are bimbos, particularly Beach Ken. As the Narrator (Helen Mirren) tell us, “Barbie has a great day every day. Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him.” His palpable insignificance and pathetic bids for Barbie’s attention mirror the plight of females in the Real World. Complains Ken to Barbie: “But it’s Barbie and Ken. There’s no just Ken. That’s why I was created. I only exist within the warmth of your gaze. Without it, I’m just a little blond guy who can’t do flips.” We even come to feel sorry for Ken (sort of), such as when he sings: “I’m just Ken, anywhere else I’d be a ten! Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blonde fragility?”
From there, Gerwig unapologetically takes on patriarchy by name. When accompanying Barbie to the Real World, Ken catches a glimpse of masculine domination and becomes enamored with it. He hurries back to Barbie Land to overthrow the barbocracy in order to create Ken Land—a macho paradise. Ken’s version of patriarchy (its focal point being horses) is wildly over-the-top. So much so that, when the Mattel executives show up in Barbie Land to restore corporate order, Ken chides one of them by saying, “You guys aren’t doing patriarchy very well.” The executive replies, “We’re actually doing patriarchy very well...[lowers voice]... we’re just better at hiding it.”
So, yes, Gerwig is deriding hegemonic masculine behavior. No doubt. But is it the vicious male-bashing rightwing politicians and pundits are up in arms about, or something more along the lines of fairly good-natured ribbing? The film delightfully lampoons bro culture, mansplaining, and playing “the guitar at you.” But Gerwig doesn’t venture into issues such as pay equity, sexual violence, or abortion rights. The film isn’t built to be a hardcore feminist diatribe. In the end, Ken admits to Barbie, “To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t just about horses, I lost interest.”
The heart of Barbie as a movie seems less about mounting a specific attack on men than voicing a general lament on behalf of women. The show-stopping moment is a long speech delivered by Gloria (America Ferrera) on how it “is literally impossible to be a woman.” The major part of her frustration springs from women’s compulsory relationship, within the patriarchy, to men:
You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.
The upshot of Gloria’s assessment of the predicament of the modern female is:
You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault. I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.
The message of Gloria’s speech brings the plotline of the movie to its happy ending: Barbie Land is restored. Things then wax sentimental when Barbie has a kind of spiritual encounter with the ghost of Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), Mattel’s co-founder and the creator of the Barbie doll. Motherhood is hazily invoked, and Ruth encourages Barbie (of course) to find her own path. Cleverly (and judiciously), there’s a return to zany for the closing moments of the film. Barbie, living in the Real World now as Barbara Handler, shows up for her first appointment with a gynecologist.
The moviegoer leaves the theater with a chuckle and much to discuss with friends. But no one is likely to exit a showing of Barbie to erect barricades in the streets in order to do battle with The Man.
So what?
Barbie is a skillfully crafted satire on the current American gender landscape. But the movie is a lighthearted, playful, Horatian brand of satire designed to entice viewers into thinking about some extremely important issues. It’s not an outpouring of savage indignation meant to tear down hegemonic masculinity as we know it—as welcome as that would be.
To be sure, Barbie lands some excellent satiric jabs of yellow laughter against masculine behavior. But the film isn’t going for the roundhouse satiric knockout punch; it’s not looking to park patriarchy’s butt on the canvas. Rather, by making the powerful look ridiculous (especially Ken and the Mattel CEO), their power is weakened—most of all their power to contrive and impose self-serving lies cloaked as “Truth.” I know Gloria’s Anglo husband inanely studying Spanish on Duolingo struck a satiric nerve in me. (¡Ai, no! ¡No me encanta estudiar español en mi computadora!)
Calling bullshit on bullshit is a regular aim of satire. (By the way, if you care to freshen up on the workings of satire, see my posts of 17 May, 24 May, and 2 August 2023.)
Gerwig’s film works to clear the gendered air. It inverts to subvert customary gender identities in order to make room for new thinking and new possibilities about the performance of gender in America. Butler theorizes that the more traditional gender norms are disrupted, the more the field of gender play opens up. In turn, the wider the field of gender play, the less possibility for gender discrimination and gender violence.
That the rightwing hates Barbie—every bit as much as it hates Drag Shows—tells you all you need to know.
Love the idea of "Barbie" as drag show!