Why Barbie deserves the backlash

Being the CEO of a massive corporation isn’t easy. You’re expected to grow the company, increase profits and boost the share price – the traditional responsibilities of a top hat-wearing capitalist. But at the same time, you need to align your company with the ‘values’ of a hyper-liberal global elite, e.g. anti-racism, trans rights and net zero. Contrary to the rhetoric of business school professors and management consultants, these agendas don’t always complement each other, and too much emphasis on one risks alienating those who care about the other. Get it wrong and you can come a cropper, as Dame Alison Rose, the recently departed CEO of NatWest, has discovered.

The film is a gender studies seminar disguised as a summer blockbuster

Having watched Barbie on Monday night, I cannot help feeling that Ynon Kreiz, the CEO of Mattel, has also slipped up. On the face of it, the 114-minute film about the company’s bestselling children’s toy, directed by Greta Gerwig, is a dazzling triumph. It earned $162 million last weekend in the US, the biggest opening in history for a female director, and has been almost universally praised by critics, with 90 per cent giving it a thumbs up, according to the Rotten Tomatoes ratings website. Perhaps more significantly, Barbie has achieved a cultural dominance that’s rare for a movie these days – it’s even spawned a fashion trend called ‘Barbiecore’.

But it’s also become a hot potato in the culture wars thanks to its un-apologetic misandry. Elon Musk joked that he’d drunk a shot of tequila every time the main character said the word ‘patriarchy’ – and had only just woken up. The conservative commentator Ben Shapiro began his review on YouTube by setting fire to Barbie in her pink convertible. Another pundit – the Critical Drinker – dismissed the film as ‘114 minutes of spiteful, bitter, mean-spirited, borderline unhinged hatred of men and everything even vaguely associated with them’.