Let’s hear it for Ken.
Yes, I’m talking about the Mattel doll or, as my son called him in his daycare days, “Barbie’s action figure.”
My wife and I saw Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” in the theater a few nights ago, seeking something therapeutically light after seeing “Oppenheimer,” and I now see Barbie’s perpetual boyfriend with new eyes.
Typical of members of our generation, my wife loved Barbie like a member of her family, she told me, especially after Mattel widened its choices of Barbie’s complexion, which is why I took her to see the “Barbie” film. Gerwig and her co-writer, Noah Baumbach, are two of their generation’s most interesting filmmakers, and besides, I didn’t want fellow moviegoers to see me and wonder why an old guy had come to “Barbie” by himself.
As a fan of G.I. Joe toys in my younger days, I wondered, in particular, how this film would handle Ken, whom I recall as a perpetual second banana to Barbie’s stardom.
In the movie, Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, uses a song early in the film titled “I’m Just Ken” to sing and dance like John Travolta in “Grease” and reveal his own inner Ken. It’s an all-male Busby Berkeley-style dance extravaganza in which Ken tries to smile his way through his frustration over his seemingly shallow existence at Barbie’s elbow on his way to Malibu Beach.
“Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blond fragility?” he wonders. “I’m just Ken. …What will it take for her to see the man behind the tan and fight for me?”
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