In a Barbie World

 

Kate McKinnon presents the symbols of the polar choice Barbie faces

Barbie turns the plight of women in a patriarchal world into the universality of the quest for enlightenment

by Wil Guilfoyle

July 21, 2023 

Birkenstocks or high-heels? Acknowledge death or live in denial? Seek out who I am or rely on my lover to complete me? These were the questions on my mind before I went to see Greta Gerwig’s new film, Barbie.

Let me start off by saying that FOX News warned me not to go see this film. But I didn’t listen. Now I’m gay and think all kids should transition. Not that I didn’t like the film, but see it at your own risk. 

What stuck out to me about Greta Gerwig’s new creation is the existential theme at the heart of the film. 

Sure, the film is stylish, often times hilarious, has some deep heart, clearly illustrates and defines patriarchy and how it harms both women and men. But it also directly deals with death and the ever-present reality of this looming destiny we all get to enjoy. 

Cultural Anthropologist and intellectual giant, Dr. Ernest Becker, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for his 1973 book, The Denial of Death. This was two months after he died of cancer at the age of 49. 

In the book, Dr. Becker paints a very convincing picture of the world as we know it— inhabited by cultures around the world that deny the existence of death in varying ways, particularly by never really acknowledging it. He posits that all of our wars, fights, battles, fears, suffering, anxiety, and disharmony can be boiled down to our denial of death. 

On the other hand, those who have embraced the reality of the inevitability of their own demise seem to live a life much fuller, much deeper, much realer than the majority. 

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” In my Death and Dying psychology class, my professor said, “The unexamined death is not worth dying.” 

I tend to agree. 

I try not to give spoilers in these film-talk reviews and discussions unless the film’s been out awhile, so I won’t give any details. But I will say that at the heart of Barbie the film is Barbie the heroine awakening to the temporary nature of existence, or, as the Buddhists say, “Change is the only constant.” She’s confronted with death and the reality of growing old and forming cellulite and feeling depressed and existential dread. 

In the mythological story of the Buddha’s birth, the background was that he was born Prince Siddhartha, the son of a great king. Before his birth, his father was told by the oracle that his son would either become a great King or a great spiritual leader. 

Wishing his son to take the throne, he devised a plan to insulate the prince from anything that would steer him toward the spiritual path. So he hid all of the suffering from the palace and the surrounding area. He pushed out the diseased, the aging, and those experiencing any physical pain, so his son wouldn’t see such things and wander into spiritual contemplation. 

As the story goes, one day the Prince strayed a bit far beyond the palace walls and came into contact with an old and dying man. He witnessed this man die, and the reality of death suddenly became real to the Prince. 

The Prince couldn’t stop thinking about the man who died nor the reality of his own coming inevitable demise. Finally, he swore off his birth right and left the palace to go out into the world with one goal in mind: to find the cause of suffering and to be rid of it forever.

 

We all know how the story ends: The Buddha joined a frat, objectified women, and spent the rest of his days playing video games. 

But what the myth illustrates is that the spiritual path, or the contemplative path, is inspired by reality: that we are destined for death and change is the only constant. 

In the film, Barbie has spent her entire life enjoying a perfect and unchanging world reminiscent of the blissful world of a child who has yet to develop the conscious awareness of the difficult realities of life: non-acceptance, growing old, depression, looming death, etc. 

However, once thoughts of these matters arise, she decided to leave her perfect life in Barbie-land and is inspired to go on her own quest. 

Barbie is totally the Buddha in this one. She goes on the journey of her own awakening, and finds her own enlightenment (another word for ‘enlightenment’ can also be ‘insight’). 

I’m being a bit unnecessarily longwinded and pompous, trying to explain to a very hip audience of readers what we all already know about the Mattel™ created toy called Barbie™—that she was always meant to represent a woman on a quest for, and then achieving, complete, unexcelled Enlightenment™. 

We can all take the leap that the brave Barbie has taken and face reality head on and quest for the Truth of our very own true nature. We can ask, “Who am I?” And we can listen to our own heart for the answer. 

Or we can do as Cypher did in The Matrix and enjoy a fake steak right before getting shot to death with a lightening rifle on the Nebuchadnezzar. 

The choice is ours. 

The End

Oh yeah I forgot….Fuck the patriarchy!

Just some morning thoughts at this coffee shop on this dreary Sunday:

It really would be a lie to say that when we die we become one with the universe. The phrase itself is misleading. We are already one with the universe. We are already God. That is all God is, is the entirety. Death is the relinquishment of all you thought you were completely. The body is gone. The mind is gone. The thought world has dispensed. All that remains is all that always was. Pure essential everythingness. Allness. Truth. Unification. 

I’m highly reluctant to call all of this “God” or “Love” because those are only words—words that have too many historical connotations that are diluted and mutated into subjective and highly relative ideas within each mind that speaks or thinks these terms. Reality is far beyond these subjective, and thus opposable, ideas. Reality is unopposable. How could reality oppose itself? How could the left hand grab itself? 




The existential bummer, of course, is that we fall deeply in love with the transient world and wish for this subjective experience of beauty, truth, goodness, joy, and bliss to last forever and ever. The bummer comes when we realize that none of it will last—none at all. Most people spend their entire lives avoiding facing this reality. It’s quite an easy reality to come face to face with in large doses of personal solitude. But most people never spend more than an hour or even a day alone. How many of us ever spend a week or month or even year alone? Many Buddhist monks and seekers do. Some people just fall in love with reality so much that despite the many discontenting bummers facing reality can bring, such as the fact of everything being destined for death, nothing can keep the lover of Truth from peering unhindered into the mystery of existence, no matter the inevitable pain, isolation, and waves of despair. My only advice, of course, is to just keep moving forward. The gift is the fact that none of it, not even the existential despair, is permanent. 

If Buddha was anything, he was a stubborn son of a bitch. He was like, “Fuck it! I’m going to sit here and have a good look at reality, and I’m not going to turn away no matter what the fuck happens, no matter how much pain and suffering arises from facing these truths.” And apparently he came out the other side quite contented and accepting of it all. 


We all bitch and complain about the world. But all we bitch and complain about is the suffering, greed, and selfishness that is the result of people not facing reality and going after the existential Truths of life. So as long as we ourselves are avoiding going into the deep, dark, mysterious unknown of it all, we can bitch all we want, but there is nothing going on here but the pot calling the kettle black. I don’t even know what that phrase means.

Edit: In the interest in sharing, I’ll be posting the current Wikipedia info on the phrase “The pot calling the kettle black.”:

The pot calling the kettle black

Proverbial idiom referring to an example of hypocrisy

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"The pot calling the kettle black" is a proverbial idiom that may be of Spanishorigin, of which English versions began to appear in the first half of the 17th century. It means a situation in which somebody accuses someone else of a fault which the accuser shares, and therefore is an example of psychological projection, or hypocrisy.Use of the expression to discredit or deflect a claim of wrongdoing by attacking the originator of the claim for their own similar behaviour (rather than acknowledging the guilt of both) is the tu quoque logical fallacy.

A pot and kettle both blackened by the same fire

Origin

The earliest appearance of the idiom is in Thomas Shelton's 1620 translation of the Spanish novel Don Quixote. The protagonist is growing increasingly restive under the criticisms of his servant Sancho Panza, one of which is that "You are like what is said that the frying-pan said to the kettle, 'Avant, black-browes'." The Spanish text at this point reads: Dijo el sartén a la caldera, Quítate allá ojinegra (Said the pan to the pot, get out of there black-eyes). It is identified as a proverb (refrán) in the text, functioning as a retort to the person who criticises another of the same defect that he plainly has. Among several variations, the one where the pan addresses the pot as culinegra (black-arse) makes clear that they are dirtied in common by contact with the cooking fire.

This translation was also recorded in England soon afterwards as "The pot calls the pan burnt-arse" in John Clarke's collection of proverbs, Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina (1639).A nearer approach to the present wording is provided by William Penn in his collection Some Fruits of Solitude in Reflections and Maxims (1682):

"If thou hast not conquer'd thy self in that which is thy own particular Weakness, thou hast no Title to Virtue, tho' thou art free of other Men's. For a Covetous Man to inveigh against Prodigality, an Atheist against Idolatry, a Tyrant against Rebellion, or a Lyer against Forgery, and a Drunkard against Intemperance, is for the Pot to call the Kettle black."

But, apart from the final example in this passage, there is no strict accord between the behaviour of the critic and the person censured.

An alternative modern interpretation, far removed from the original intention, argues that while the pot is sooty (from being placed on a fire), the kettle is polished and shiny; hence, when the pot accuses the kettle of being black, it is the pot's own sooty reflection that it sees: the pot accuses the kettle of a fault that only the pot has, rather than one that they share. The point is illustrated by a poem that appeared anonymously in an early issue of St. Nicholas Magazine from 1876:

"Oho!" said the pot to the kettle;
"You are dirty and ugly and black!
Sure no one would think you were metal,
Except when you're given a crack."

"Not so! not so!" kettle said to the pot;
"'Tis your own dirty image you see;
For I am so clean – without blemish or blot – 
That your blackness is mirrored in me."

• In ancient Greece, mention of 'the Snake and the Crab' signified much the same, where the critic censures its own behaviour in another. The first instance of this is in a drinking song (skolion) dating from the late 6th or early 5th century BCE. The fable ascribed to Aesop concerns a mother crab and its young, where the mother tells the child to walk straight and is asked in return to demonstrate how that is done.
• The same theme differently expressed occurs in the Aramaic version of the story of Ahiqar, dating from about 500 BCE. 'The bramble sent to the pomegranate tree saying, "Wherefore the multitude of thy thorns to him that toucheth thy fruit?" The pomegranate tree answered and said to the bramble, "Thou art all thorns to him that toucheth thee".
• Talmud: "Do not ascribe to your fellow your own blemish" (BM 59b).... "a person stigmatizes another with his own blemish" (Kid. 70b).
• The Mote and the Beam - In Matthew 7:3-5, it is criticism of a less significant failing by those who are worse that is the target of the Sermon on the Mount: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"