Film Review: BLACK BARBIE: A DOCUMENTARY: A Terrifically Entertaining and Thought-Provoking Documentary [SXSW 2023]

Black Barbie: A Documentary Review

Black Barbie: A Documentary (2023) Film Review from the 30th Annual South by Southwest Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Lagueria Davis and starring Monica L. Bailey, Raj Brown, Darlene Bunjako, Julissa Calderon, Diana Doowop, Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins, Brylee Hsu and Gabourey Sidibe.

Lagueria Davis’s new film, Black Barbie: A Documentary, provides an in-depth look at the evolution of Mattel’s Barbie dolls throughout the years with a key focus on their effects on the Black population. This movie very distinctly examines how these dolls (with Black, white and other appearances) are perceived by the children who play with them. This movie is quite informative and, right from the start, will immediately make the viewer become immersed in the material it richly details.

Black Barbie: A Documentary starts at the beginning of the Barbie timeline with the story of an aging ex Mattel employee who got into the toy company by approximating her age to her advantage. This woman was always accustomed to playing with white baby dolls when she was a child. We get to move across the timeline the movie presents as, over the years, new Mattel employees helped bring their wisdom to the table in terms of creating more diverse Barbie dolls which became both fun and empowering to the children who would come to play with them.

A Black female professor does some intensive research during the latter stages of the film. When interviewing children who play with Barbie dolls, the kids questioned are both boys and girls of various young ages. These children are asked, for example, which Barbie is the “real” Barbie to them. These children seem to mostly think that the blonde Barbie is the real Barbie because she came out first before all the others. Of course, the answer is not that simple in reality.

The children in the movie don’t always see the Barbie dolls in simplistic black and white terms. One boy likes the white Barbie doll because of what she is wearing while some little Black girls tend to notice the dolls’ hairstyles as reasons specific ones stand out and appeal to them. Some of the problems that come up during the documentary involve the fact that the Black Barbie characters are not as well developed as the white one usually is and the other race Barbies sometimes seem to exist merely as Barbie’s friends and sidekicks rather than as their own central presence. Still, the Barbies (of all colors) eventually were proven to provide hope that kids of all races could become successful in their own right regardless of their skin color.

We are also shown the ways racism manifests itself in society and how Barbie and a fellow female Black character speak out to their child viewers to address such situations. It is also suggested that bringing up the topic of racism isn’t necessarily helpful in terms of providing kids with the correct ways to deal with racism.

There is a lot going on in this documentary and, obviously, all the issues surrounding the topics the movie chooses to pursue are not all tied up with a neat bow in regards to the way they are presented to the audience. Though the children interviewed seem to know a lot more than we’d think they know, there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of educating kids that beauty is not necessarily emulating a doll’s hairstyle or fashion sense. Every kid should be able to work with the physical attributes they are born with in terms of being unique and distinct in their lives. Barbie dolls should pave the way for children to walk through their lives successfully. These dolls should not define how they should look while walking through life although it’s OK to appreciate the beauty of these dolls.

The use of Gabourey Sidibe (from Precious which was based on the novel Push by Sapphire) in the documentary is particularly effective because she is a woman who was not what was originally deemed to be a traditionally beautiful woman in the old days but she has since become a star in her own right thanks to the more precise standards of beauty used in the world today where all shapes and sizes are happily welcome and embraced.

Black Barbie: A Documentary is an excellent movie. The film’s greatest irony is that the director didn’t like dolls much growing up and is now making a movie about them. Lagueria Davis has crafted a satisfying take on the way dolls influence children in the world. The creation of different types of Barbies throughout the years is a great accomplishment but the media still has a lot of work to do to make sure that each and every person in the world is appreciated for the unique qualities that make them them. It’s hard for the documentary to get every single thing right because life is always a work in progress. We’ve come a long way in society since the creation of the original Barbie doll, though, and this film is proof.

Rating: 8.5/10

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