Barbie and Cultural Evolution

 

I went to see the Barbie movie with my 39 year old daughter; neither she nor her friends owned a Barbie doll when they were young. Cards on the table – I am a psychologist interested in cultural evolution, I was a consultant for an international toy company for 10 years, and I have been horse-mad ever since I can remember. Understandably, I have a few concerns about this movie.

Barbie is a fun movie on many levels. It is hugely entertaining at times; I particularly liked the weirdo Barbie, and the wise old woman towards the end of the film. Barbie is already having a profound effect on culture – evidence the number of movie songs in the charts, the predicted effect on the fashion industry, the nostalgia effect.

The opening scenes of the Barbie movie show monolithic Barbie (referencing 2001: A Space Odyssey) towering above young girls playing with baby dolls and prams. This creates a massive shift in these young girls’ understanding; they begin to destroy their baby dolls, smashing them against rocks. Am I the only one who felt a little uncomfortable with this scene? It’s fine for girls to show their feelings, anger even – but if you have visited Cambodia’s Killing Fields then perhaps you will know why I felt the scene wasn’t entirely appropriate.

There were no Barbie dolls when I was young but I know enough to realise one of the most popular ones, the horse rider Barbie, was absent from the movie. You can see that this would interfere with the storyline as horses are later equated with male power. Recently I have been struggling to explain the place that horses have in the play and imagination of young girls. But this particular aspect of a young girl’s experience, playing with horses and riders, even if it isn’t Barbie, Play Mobil for instance, is entirely absent from the movie.  

In the movie Ken sees men riding horses in the Real World and equates this with power; it changes his perspective and when he returns to Barbie World he changes the balance of power. This includes having constantly moving images of horses on the walls of his ‘mojo dojo casa house’. There is even some implication that horses are power in and of themselves?

As a British viewer of Barbie I felt as though some references were passing me by.  Why was Barbie visiting a gynaecologist at the end of the film? There could have been so many reasons; possibly depending on whether you are British or American. A British review by a man who governed this country, until recently, dismisses the Barbie film as, ‘a rallying cry for humans to have more babies’. It’s not that simple.

There were many other instances in the film where I felt that the US cultural experience of this film would be different to the British one. For example, the reference to the storming of the capitol buildings after the US elections completely passed me by until I read about it.

In this piece I have only focussed on some concerns with Barbie. I am convinced that this film is going to have an ongoing effect on culture. It will be interesting to see. What do other people think? Have I taken it too far with my criticism or maybe not gone far enough?

 

Social Influence

Humans are social beings. We are also curious about other people. What we sometimes don't realise is how much we are influenced by the people around us. Here is a link to a study I ran back in 1996. I filmed a group of people staring up at a building. I counted the number of passersby who stopped or looked up as they walked by in the space of minute. I varied the size of the group and also the location. One of my stooges asked me what he should say if anyone asked what they were looking at. I suggested that they should answer that they were looking at what the other people were looking at. See if you can spot the people who stop and ask the question.

People are also sometimes unaware that they have conformed to the majority. In another study I got psychology students, unwittingly, to copy an unusual behaviour. Later, as in any psychology experiment, I explained to the students that they had taken part in an experiment (debriefing). Some people missed the debriefing and continued to produce the rare behaviour (placing their keyboard covers on top of their computers) and they told me that was the 'best place to put them'! This is despite no students ever having put their keyboard covers on top of their computer before the experiment. The cause of the behaviour was that these students had observed a number of stooges and had copied them. We often rationalise our behaviour rather than acknowledge that we are influenced by other people.

In another study on opinions I approached people 'in the wild' (in shopping malls) and asked them whether they thought that they were influenced by the majority or the minority. 75% told me that they were not influenced by other people's opinions.