The Barbie Theory Part 2 of 2: Barbie is God
Ah, fuck it here you guys go. This is easier than college application essays.
So, if you still have a functioning brain you might recall last November when I posted the first part of The Barbie Theory, which claimed that all Barbie movies take place in the same universe and do in fact have a consistent timeline. I am aware that it has been seven months, but I'm sure you guys have heard that time isn't real so the delay really doesn't matter. This post is going to be about 60% more unhinged than my usual writing style but bear with me, I've got a point.
Have any of you guys ever played a Zelda game? I've only actually played one (BotW), but from my understanding of the series as a whole, there isn't really a concrete timeline linking them all together. The stories don't feed into each other. Instead, each game features a new incarnation of Link and Zelda (and also Gannon/dorf? not totally sure about him). They're all reincarnated and have similar roles in each time, Link saves the world, Zelda does some magic, die repeat ad infinitum.
The cyclical hero is a surprisingly common trope in fiction (AtLA, She-Ra, The New Testament, etc) and it's one that I love a lot. The fundamental constant of these universes is that there are two or more forces in a constant struggle against each other. In my Zelda example: Link, Zelda, and Gannon/dorf represent the three parts of the Triforce (courage, wisdom, and power respectively) which are pretty important forces in-universe. The universe manifests the progress of these concepts and ideologies by creating the Hero/es to oppose one of them. I've wondered for a while why I like these stories so much. Maybe it's my inner need to cling to constants in this chaotic and unforgiving universe, maybe I like the angst and reality of knowing that evil doesn't end when you kill it, maybe it's just a flavorful enough variation of The Chosen One that I can pretend it's high brow literature. Regardless, it's a good one.
Anyway, you've probably guessed by now that I think Barbie is a cyclical hero.
"But barbie-movie-reviews!" you say, "Aren't all the movies meant to be movies in-universe and Barbie just acts in all of them?". I hear you young reader, and I am aware of this. I watched Fashion Fairytale on repeat when I was seven, just like the rest of you. But I must ask you to trust me on this, I will explain in all due time.
In the BCU, the struggle looks like a pretty cut-and-dry "good vs. evil", but I think it's a bit more complicated than that. If you recall my timeline, the cycle starts with Fairytopia. The world is full of magic, and the first non-magical beings are appearing. The Barbie is one of them, and she helps to placate anti-magic sentiment amongst the fey long enough for more non-magic beings to appear, who would eventually become the humans and drive the fey into hiding. As the eras pass, The Barbie of each story almost always has a role in guiding magic or preserving it in some way. Finally, we get to the split end of time (if you haven't read part one you're confused I know) and her roles are to 1) stop evil from usurping the throne in the fey world, which would crumble the meager civilization they'd preserved (Magic of the Pegasus), and 2) Stop the "big rip" end-of-the-universe scenario by re-introducing magic (or dark energy if we want to use proper astronomy terms) (Star Light Adventure).
The Barbies' job is ultimately to make sure the universe ends with magic still in it and to do that, every event in the universe had to progress the way it did. Each era had its own cosmic significance. If this is true, this means whatever is scattering Barbie across the universe has to have some ultimate knowledge of time. I think whatever this force is doesn't experience time the way we do so any point in time could be the end or the beginning for it.
This is relevant I promise.
So okay, each Barbie is an incarnation of the same being. Yes, this means she interacts with herself sometimes, yes this means she's given birth to herself (Queen Genevive of Princess and the Pauper being the same Princess Genevive from 12 Dancing Princesses is a hill I'm prepared to die on), and the reason for It All is to guide magic to where it's supposed to be. Great. So why the fuck do we have in-universe movies about them all?
Detour that will eventually loop around into an answer to the previous question time!
Let's discuss Barbie Prime (Henceforth abbreviated as Barbie*). Recall this era of the barbie theory:
The one that deals with Barbie* herself. In these movies her name is Barbie and they take place in some variation of Nowadays. Obviously, they are all about the same person. Let's break down her story.
Barbie* was the child of neglectful parents. She had three sisters, but no way to take care of them on her own. As a normal teenager living in Wisconsin, she didn't have a source of income beyond a minimum-wage after-school job. Things were bad.
Until she got an idea. It was a story about a girl, a nutcracker, and a fantasy world hidden in a mousehole. She wrote it down movie script style because that was how it came to her. But as the story flowed from her fingers to the keyboard, it was less like she was creating it and more like... she was remembering it. When it was finished she sold it to a movie studio in LA on the pretext that she would star in it. This shouldn't have worked, but the stars aligned in her favor, she'd soon realize they always would when the time was right. At 15 she was old enough to be emancipated from her parents. With proof of substantial income and some help from the stars she managed to gain the custody of her sisters too, and they were off to LA.
Time passed and Barbie* wrote script after script, every time she needed something new she would find some memory of a story hidden in the back of her mind like a forgotten dream. Eventually, she'd fall out with the director of one of her films and fight her way to directing her own movies. She made them a bit softer after this, she didn't really like the real world knowing too much about what it was like in those worlds she used to be a part of.
She struggled to parent her sisters, but she found time to take them on vacation and she made sure they went back home often enough, despite the bad memories.
The magic in her mind would seep into her own world too. She discovered several fae realms, populated by both winged and wingless varieties. She felt a bit saner writing these stories down, and much more genuine acting in them. As she grew older, her own adventures became more mundane: chasing puppies around Hawaii and running after the perfect horse in the hills of Switzerland. But just when she'd start to doubt herself too much she'd get sucked into a videogame or rescue a mermaid. Seeing Isla transform the same way she-, no, Merliah, had in her memories somehow made them feel more real.
Eventually, she'd write them all down and bring them all to life. She felt an overwhelming sense of peace seeing them exist concretely.
Okay fanfiction over, here's the point:
Barbie* was some sort of conduit for all the other Barbies scattered across time. It was her job to record her own history.
So that's it. That's how I contextualized the movies when I did the reviews. If you like it, great! If you don't, great! Tell me why.
This whole thing is kinda dumb but that's why we're here, to do dumb things and die happy about them.
Anyway if you guys want me to rewrite The Secret Door as the queer coming-of-age psychological horror film it was meant to be, let me know and I'll get around to it sometime before I finish my first degree.
So in short, reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, and the moon is a planet. Bye!
