The Barbie Experience

My plan was to write about something much more serious today, but what the heck!

The Barbie doll was introduced to America in 1959, when I was seven years old. Although I had a houseful of beautiful dolls of all sorts, I never owned a Barbie. Mother determined her to be “obscene.” Perhaps she knew that Barbie was fashioned after a German doll named “Lilli,” who was based on an adult-themed cartoon featured in a German tabloid.

The fact is, I had heard of this new “Barbie Movie” peripherally and never considered paying money to see it, until my older daughter, Shannon, said she’d seen it and advised that I would “love it!” She gave away no details except that it contained humor that only adults would catch. Still, I had determined that I would go see the newly released, “Oppenheimer” instead of “Barbie.”

But this past weekend I was gifted with two days in the presence of my two younger granddaughters, ages nine and eleven. One day would be spent at the beach with Perkins, the dog. I played with the idea of taking them to see “The Barbie Movie” on the other day.

And so it was that the lights dimmed and we made it through all the previews. Then, I was hooked by the opening segment, a parody of the opening scene from Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” complete with the fanfare (Sunrise) from “Thus Sprach Zarathustra,” by Richard Strause. Okay, from that moment I was watching for other classic cultural allusions, and they abounded!

I’m sure I missed a few of them, but I can assure you that the little girls caught not a one of them, completely over their heads and outside of their life experiences. Shannon had completely missed the irony of Barbie singing along with “The Indigo Girls” while driving her pink convertible out of Barbieland. The two ladies (about my age) sitting to my right chuckled and guffawed through the entire movie, right to the final line, which might have been the ultimate jab, and which I will not give away.

My granddaughters thought the movie with its silly, stupid storyline (right on their level) was pretty good, while much to my surprise, I absolutely loved it!

I’ve often been accused of being too serious, and I still plan to go see “Oppenheimer,” but I have to ask… why do clips of Laurel and Hardy dancing together still pop up online to delight us? Why do we laugh uncontrollably when we see a baby belly laughing? Why do I still smile at the simple recollection, from more than three decades ago, of seeing two unknown high school boys dressed as Elwood and Jake Blues (completely in character) cruising the corridors of Timberlake Mall?

The takeaway is this. If you can never let loose your Inner Silly, why bother breathing? Laughter is, after all, the most beneficial form of breathing.