31
votes
Ken is a bell hooks critique come to life in ‘Barbie’
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- Title
- Opinion | What Barbie's rendition of Ken shares with bell hooks' reading on masculinity
- Published
- Jul 25 2023
- Word count
- 1180 words
I'm not familiar with this acronym and a quick search shows a radio station or motorcycle safety course...
That said, there will always be people comfortable telling others how they need to act, men and women, and just because your coworkers had the cognitive dissonance to not see their own hypocrisy doesn't inherently take away from the article or the book's points.
That said, I enjoyed the fact that the article seems to imply that patriarchy is inherently a negative but voices no concerns towards Barbie's matriarchy - however I'm okay with admitting that I'm not familiar with the work cited in the article enough to know if it's also as one sided as the article.
WMST = WoMen’s STudies.
Presumably from college course codes in the US like CHEM 1003 and BIOL 2014 or WMST 5203.
I haven't actually seen Barbie yet, but I'm interested in what you mean by "Barbie's matriarchy." Do you mind expanding on that point?
Well, I was using the article's term (e.g. 'Ken pines for attention in Barbie's matriarchal world') for it but as the other commentator said Barbie does everything and the world is built around her.
This is to say, obviously to me at least, we don't really need to spend half the article breaking down how unfair Barbie world is to the Kens - it was meant to be a parody of the real world 'second classing' of women - but the author glosses by Barbie's regime being just as repressive for Ken and, to me, ends up making the argument that men should 'find themselves' in a woman's world.
But, all this isn't really my wheelhouse, so I'm happy to admit I may be missing some subtlety. And as another aside, Barbie is still a good movie so if you've got any interest consider this a recommendation.
I think it had to be glossed over because pointing out the second-class status of Kens in Barbieland sort of steps on the point they're making with the main Ken being a reflection of male reality. By elaborating on the matriarchy it would emphasise the satire of female reality, and trying to argue both at the same time is probably beyond the scope of this kind of article.
Barbie lives in Barbieland which is an exaggerated matriarchy. The Barbies hold all the skilled and/or intellectual jobs and positions of power while the Kens are just kinda.. there.
The hypocrisy you mention is a problem in the realm of pop feminism, but I don't see hooks' thoughts in The Will to Change as "telling men how to be men". If anything, it's much more focused on her own self-examinations and a critique of those hypocrisies. It prescribes some things to men broadly, but they're basically calls for self-awareness and compassion, not defining a standard of masculinity.
"The Will to Change" implies that change is necessary and her book makes that implication more explicit. It asserts that because patriarchal culture has pushed/forced men to hide their emotions/pain and live a stoic life, that culture has cut off men from their emotional inner core.
hooks very very clearly views stoicism negatively, which is fine, that's her opinion, and I don't exactly disagree with her either. But I think it's silly to pretend she wasn't telling men how to be men because that's exactly what she was doing.
Okay, but that's really very vague and quite insufficient as a description of "how to be a man", and she continuously admits her own shortcomings in the area of discussion. The majority of the book is discussing how she came to those conclusions, and is apologizing for her own misandry, and the thesis is that feminism needs to recognize that "the will to change" is the only moral prerequisite for a man to engage with the movement. With that in mind, criticizing it for "telling men how to be men" feels off-base.
PS: It's been a while now since I read it though, so I could be misremembering the tone a fair amount. This was my impression though.
The lack of capitalization of Bell Hooks is making it so difficult for me to read that article. Is that on purpose for some reason, or just overzealous autocorrect + no human editor?
It was how she spelled her pen name. From Wikipedia:
The fact that both names are words themselves made it additionally tricky. To each their own, i suppose.
Thank you for explaining.
A brilliant HCI researcher I deeply admire and was influenced by also spells her name in lowercase: danah boyd.
danah, you're brilliant, but capitalization is still important for readability. 🤷🏻♂️
This opinion piece got me interested in bell hooks' book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love.
As a side note, I'm bothered by the fact that when I was tagging this submission, "men" is a valid tag but "women" is not... Edit: it looks like I was still able to tag "women," it just didn't pop up as a suggestion.
You can tag your posts whatever you want. The ones that pop as suggestions I believe are tags that are frequently used in that group.
It's a really top book, honestly.
I picked it up in 2020/2021 when I started reading about a lot of mens liberation type literature and was gobsmacked by how much is in there that's wondeful.
This honestly belongs just as much in ~life.men. It's got a message that a lot of men need to hear and understand, for their own health.
Yeah, I agree. Is there a way to repost this there?
Done.
Thank you!
There isn't a feature like Reddit's crosspost, but there are a few users (I know @cfabbro is one) that can move topics between groups if you want.
EDIT: ninja'd by mycketforvirrad
Yeah, I enjoyed it. I'm intrigued by hooks's quotes in this article and want to understand the ideas better. I'll probably check out the book.
I'd say it's the other way around unless you, like me, think that "intersectionality" ultimately deconstructs race and gender.
One thing that make Barbie so much fun is that it does not take an unambiguous stand on anything so people can read what they want into it. I mean, Barbie gives up on being an idea and decides to live as a real person so she's not going to be the prisoner of an ideology.
The "patriarchy" is so thoroughly parodied by Barbie that if anything it discredits the idea that such a thing exists. Mancur Olsen makes the case that it is close to impossible for a large group (e.g. 50%, 80%) to organize on its behalf compared to what a small group (billionaires) can do. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
Also Wintrobe's book
https://www.amazon.com/Political-Economy-Dictatorship-Wintrobe/dp/0521794498
has a case study of how 20% of people in apartheid South Africa were able to greatly enrich themselves at the expense of 80%, a situation very different from racism in the U.S. where the numbers are the other way around. The argument I'd make is that since the dawn of agriculture, social difference between families (men if you insist) have been much larger than the differences within families and if anyone is telling men that "the lowest man is above the greatest woman" it is like
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-white-man/
Something about generalities like "ken is so busy trying to impress barbies or other kens, he doesn't know what he wants" kinda irk me. Ken seemed to like horses. I think he knew what he wanted (horses). Is there some sort of assumption that because horses are "manly" that can't be what he really likes?
He did seem to like horses, but he also both lost interest in the idea of patriarchy once he realised it wasn't all about horses and went on with the patriarchy plan anyway. He was too busy trying to impress everyone to pay attention to his own wants.
I'm not sure where it was implied in the movie that Ken isn't allowed to like horses. Ken can both like horses and also struggle with having a stable inner sense of self-worth.