Full disclosure, I am a man. I took a female friend to Barbie, and did so under comical protest. I had no expectations because I had not really thought about it much. The movie did not leave me with much thought, but still there are some things to say as I now see anti-feminist/feminist/whateverist comments..
It seems the movie tried to do several things. Its seemed to want to address young women/girls who like Barbie, but also the middle aged women they have become. It seems to try to say something about female and male chauvinism, and all that in a kind of absurdist reality. This style reminded me of the Luxury Comedy few people outside the UK will know (see below)..
In the end it turned into a morality play, where the main character (Barbie) expresses she wants to create meaning, not consume it. Nice ambition, a kind of ‘grow up and take responsibility’ choice, but then she goes looking for a job, which may lead you to do super irresponsible things (in terms of planetary health an human existential security). Going from consumer to producer of consumer society is not progress.
The way modern movies work is they get massively promoted, its incredible how basically the world was marinated in a false choice between Oppenheimer and Barbie, or this shows how absorbed those that went to the movie theater are in (social) media. FOMO does the rest. Once you are in the theater you hope for a profound message so you leave not feeling you wasted your time. With Oppenheimer the complete message was a bit of a slog to absorb, with Barbie its a cacophony.
Now if you try to put together the pieces handed to you it doesn’t make much sense. Barbie goes through a repetitive life and enjoys it until she starts to deviate from other Barbies with thoughs about (among other things) death. This is because her owner started playing with her Barbie doll again and is depressed about life. There’s no real analogy with life there. The woman is feeling melancholic, but if Barbie symbolizes the young naieve girl with ambitions the negative thoughts do not enter her mind, that only happens when a young girl is traumatized, a parent or sibling dies, or some calamity happens.
You could say the older women tries to view her life from her Barbie perspective and is in the end encouraged to recognize the inevitability and/or honour of taking responsibility even if it it means growing old. The lesson is that her perspective and reason for melancholy was a mistake, that she evolved and was trying to hide in ‘Barbie mind’ and finally chooses to face the music. The role of Mattel (also in reality) has been to create a bubble she could exist in that had no negative aspects, and Mattel in the movie also tries to put Barbie back in the bubble to fix what the older self was teaching Barbie about reality.
In the above sense you could see Barbie as a “positive trauma” she had to neutralize.
Another story line is the discovery of Ken that men can dominate a society, because in Barbie land Kens are muscular furniture (not sure what Alan is). It shows the absurditiy of women fixating on female preferences and men on male preferences. It is a comment on the absurdity of sexually segregated society, a society the economy loves (because segregated people spend more) and which Mattel’s Barbie helped create. Of course there’s songs men can play that women like, and things women do that men like.
The unmentioned aspect of the entire movie is the way gender roles and gender behaviour are barely meaningfull in todays (westernized) society. The potential for men to do heavy lifting and their interest in adventure barely has any meaning. All existential needs are financialized, you are born without land or permission to freely roam (like people did until a few centuries ago), in return for fear of death and a lot of trinkets. In the ‘real’ life Barbie and Ken can work for money to finance their chauvinistic persuits. There used to be a time when this was a rare exception after you did usefull things most of the time. Life was more of a Smörgåsbord of challenges, many where about getting to where we are now.
The movie doesn’t fix the absence of real meaning in modern life. It stays within the confines of being accepted as worker in the economy. The highrise is more of a temple where magic happens that materializes as digits in your bank account which you can then trade for a lifestyle of your choice. Todays Andrew Tate and many influences hold up an example of enjoying such hyper consumer lifestyle, the point of which is really to keep you wanting to work in those highrises.
So in conclusion the movie fixes nothing, it has nothing to teach us, just that we have to face the music sometime in life, and Barbie fantasies can make it harder. Not the real music, not your ability to control your existence beyond money. Nobody wants you to try to do that. The level of cooperation between men and women needed for that would evaporate all chauvinism, and probably lead to real appreciation. But where’s the profit in that?!