Margot Robbie Had an Illuminating Response to a Certain Studio Anxiety About ‘Barbie’
With Barbie now on streaming, the premier box office juggernaut of 2023 continues to build upon its cultural impact.
We have Greta Gerwig and her phenomenal imagination to thank, of course, but it’s the talent behind the eponymous doll herself that wound up safeguarding Barbie’s many fantastic pieces from the delicate stomachs of the studio executives. In a recent interview with Variety, Margot Robbie recalled her defense for including the final line we all saw in the final cut of the movie—namely, the reveal that Barbie is about to have her first gynecologist appointment:
“There’s not one voice at the studio and one voice at Mattel, so some people are like, ‘It’s brilliant. Let’s do it,’ and other people are like, ‘I’m terrified. What if kids are screaming the word “Gynecologist!” and asking their parents what that means?’ And I was like, ‘That could be the best thing to come out of this, is little kids asking what a gynecologist is and learning that early on.” That’s really our gift to the world.’
The fact that some executives began quaking in their boots over including the word “gynecologist” really makes you wonder how they got themselves into a position where they could have any creative input at all, but more importantly, Robbie’s point about their greatest fear actually being the best possible outcome is indicative of just how debilitating studio meddling can be.
Committing to such a sanitized fantasy of the world, as those aforementioned executives did, is an incredibly harmful practice, especially when that fantasy is projected onto media, which is then consumed by an impressionable public.
Luckily, Robbie and company kept Barbie committed to its mission of breaking rules and making audiences face inward to the very end, and especially with the gift of hindsight, it’s clear that deconstructing the strangely taboo state of North American sex/health education, even with just a single line of dialogue, is very much undiluted Barbie behavior—behavior that made Warner Bros. over a billion dollars, thank you very much.
Barbie is now available to stream on Max.
(featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
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