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Someone on the Barbie movie’s marketing team deserves a raise.
I’ve never seen a publicity rollout so pandering, which is to say: so genius. On Tuesday, Warner Bros. teased the long-waited release of the trailer for the upcoming Barbie movie—a project which, from its first announcement to the upsettingly hot first photo of Ryan Gosling as Ken and the paparazzi photos of the actors on set—has occupied not just an alarming amount of real estate in my brain, but the most valuable. Rather than survivalist thoughts like, “Should I eat today,” or “Have I paid my rent,” my brain is now full of questions like, “What metaphor for our current socio-political crisis is Greta Gerwig making within her Barbie movie?”
A slew of character posters for the film were released in the morning, drumming up excitement for a trailer that would premiere later in the day. The posters featured photos of the actors in the cast along with their character’s name (most are “Barbie” or “Ken,” as the film features multiple versions of the dolls) and a brief description of who they are. A photo of Issa Rae in costume, for example, was captioned, “This Barbie is President.” Simu Liu, rocking a green tank top, was pictured with the descriptor, “He’s another Ken.”
As a warmup for the trailer, the poster rollout was brilliant. It gave us the most minimal roadmap possible for understanding the footage that was to come, by at least knowing which of the many famous faces in the cast—from Margot Robbie to Will Ferrell and Kate McKinnon—were versions of Barbies or Kens, and which were playing other characters. That turned out to be helpful, as the trailer itself offered not an iota of plot detail, something that would ordinarily enrage the Extremely Online horde, but instead was forgiven because of how bright, pink, and delightful the rest of the publicity had been.
We were given a montage of dazzling costumes, some stellar music cues, and a not-so-thinly veiled sexual innuendo in the one robust dialogue scene—Gosling and Liu talking about how they would “beach off” each other, just as in my recent dream—and not much else. And that was fine, because the character posters had provided plenty of entertainment otherwise.
The brilliance of the posters was not just that they distracted us from the veritable nothingness that was to come with the trailer, but that they also ended up drafting us and our enthusiasm for the film into its publicity. (Nefarious, but inspired.) The posters were a perfect template for Photoshopping other faces—be it actors, characters from shows or movies, or us regular plebeians—with witty captions, memes meant to go viral. Many of these resulting memes were hilarious. Others tried hard! Most of them were incredibly popular. I know this, because I have seen Barbie character poster memes more often this week than I have seen my own face in a mirror. And I stare at myself in the mirror a lot.
What intrigues me is more than the blast I had scrolling through these memes as they flooded my Twitter timeline, Instagram carousels, and entire consciousness. (Gwyneth Paltrow: This Barbie lost half a day of skiing. M3GAN: She’ll kill you. Reba: She’s a single mom who works two jobs, who loves her kids and never stops. Margo Martindale: This Barbie is a character actress.) It’s the way they went viral, and when.
The Barbie memes were a communal positive experience that rarely exists anymore. Sure, it burned fast and bright. The memes were so prevalent and so high in volume that they got old fast, and the lingering attempts at jokes reaped diminishing returns. But just when I thought the Twitter dumpster fire was down to its last embers, the vitality of the Barbie memes seemed to fan its flames in ways I hadn’t expected. I don’t know whether this says more about me or our culture, but I observed more engagement with Barbie on Tuesday than I did with the historic arraignment of the former president of the United States.
There’s a palpable exasperation with Twitter, with the litany of changes instituted since Elon Musk’s takeover. Most of these indicate that Musk seems to have no idea how or why people who liked the site used it. While Musk’s foolishness when it comes to the platform has been a staple of the last few months, the nonsense was extra potent at the beginning of this week, like that one corner of the neighborhood that’s always a little smelly on a hot, muggy day.
All of the back and forth about allowing people to pay for a blue check and removing the blue-check verification from existing users who did not subscribe—a discourse that included outrage, mockery, and warnings from experts about cyber safety—ended with people keeping their legacy blue checks after all. It was just all so silly, and many people, myself included, had a feeling of “enough” when it came to the site.
Then the Barbie memes came pouring in. Just when I had one foot out the door, Twitter was throwing a Barbie-themed party I never wanted to leave. That’s especially because, in a rarity, everybody seemed to be on board. While, sure, some of the poster memes were funnier than others, it seemed like the whole site was enjoying it. That never happens.
We’re divided to a fault and not shy about it. The prevalence and influence of fan culture is at risk of being squashed by the prodigious jaded anvil of killjoy culture. Even the new season of Succession, which accomplished the miracle of being as good as people anticipated, isn’t immune from scattered naysayers online. But we were all united in the Barbie love. It’s a rarity that I can’t imagine happening again.
Who knows how long Twitter will go on without Musk legitimately running it into the ground, or doing something finally triggers a mass exodus. And if it sticks around, the internet party-poopers surely won’t be caught sleeping on the job again, allowing something to be popular and beloved without running the fun. But this has been a blast. #GretaGerwig2024, running on the “Life in plastic, it’s fantastic!” platform.
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