On her 40th birthday, Greta Gerwig made cinema history by becoming the first director of a film to gross over a billion dollars. And while Barbie is a huge blockbuster heralded by an entire year's promotional campaign more expensive than the film itself, it is at the same time, undeniably, a work of authorship.
Beyond the debate over the film's degree of feminism, we'd like to underline the director's prowess in keeping her vision on track in the face of pressure from both Mattel and Warner Bros. Whether in the fine arts or with endlessly reproducible works, artistic production is always shaped by the balance of power between the artist's vision and the patron's desires.
Gerwig has been criticized for a lack of radicalism, for diluting her militant message with capitalist, mainstream discourse, yet never before has the female gaze, a woman's view of the world through the eyepiece of a camera, imposed itself on hundreds of millions of viewers with such force, or in so many shades of pink.
At a time when we keep repeating that cinema is dying, the noise generated by Barbie and, by ricochet, by Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, has reminded us of its cultural impact. Even if, as Gerwig has the character of Gloria (America Ferrera) say in a monologue – the bravura piece at the film's halfway point – as women, "we always have to be extraordinary, but no matter what, we always get it wrong."
This assertion has been echoed by the film's critics, both professional and amateur. The vast majority have celebrated the aesthetic qualities of Nolan's film, excusing the stereotypical, even misogynistic, portrayal of the few female characters. When it comes to Barbie, exactly the opposite is true: Most articles have focused on the depth – or superficiality – of the message, paying only polite but distracted attention to the 33 films claimed by the director as sources of inspiration.
Contemporary popular culture is peppered with quotations, those Easter eggs that delight fans of Quentin Tarantino as well as Marvel and Pixar films. Gerwig's quotes for Barbie reflect her vision as a postmodern author, eminently personal and built up over the course of several viewings: The female gaze is also the way in which viewers look at works of art.
Her passion for musicals is reflected in her ballets inspired by films starring Gene Kelly or John Travolta, her explicit borrowings from The Wizard of Oz and the masterpieces of Jacques Demy. Demy is not the only European director she calls upon: as a New York intellectual, she has drawn on the poetic universes of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell, Jacques Tati and the absurdity of Monty Python.
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