AsterTracks 306: This Barbie is having another gender crisis.

The following contains spoilers for Barbie and assumes, in discussion, that you have seen the film. If you wish to avoid spoilers do not proceed.

My entire life I’ve defined my inner monologue and external expression via the music I listen to but recently my artistic consumption has become much more complex. These days film speaks to me a lot, a long way from where I was a year ago. Before I had seen very few movies and now, I have favorites. For a while I tried to start an AsterTracks movie blog and had a few outlines, but nothing ever came to fruition. The point is, I don’t really know how to talk about movies because I’m still sort of new to them. 

I also don’t know how to write intros to anything. Our secret? Cool. I do, however, know how to talk about music, so here’s a review of a Barbie album.

My friends and I saw Barbie completely by accident. We were enroute to see an old movie at a local theater when the plans derailed while we were in the car and went to see this instead. It was a holiday in that chain theater. Everyone dressed in pink, packed wall to wall, we had to sit in the front row. But also, we were all pretty cynical about this sudden change of plans, I won’t get into why you can probably piece that together yourself. What we watched changed me. I think I’m on a different trajectory now. But what I heard? That impressed me in a different way. I’m really glad I saw the movie before I knew this soundtrack was out because I have such vivid representations of all these tracks now.

The opening track, “Pink” by Lizzo, is a low-key piece of loungey synth-pop that serves as a sort of introduction to this story’s main character and world. It also makes a much stronger case for a high femininity anthem than I think Lizzo’s presented in the past. I think her other attempts at this are fine but come across as a little corporate, but I think this one really worked on me. Now, in introducing all these narrative themes, the song also presents the idea that not all is as it seems to our lead. There is a really pivotal line in the film version missing from the album version, but things do start to unravel all the same.

P - Pretty

I - Intelligent

N - Never Sad

K - Cool

“Dance the Night” by Dua Lipa follows and is for sure my favorite here overall. This was an easy sell for me though, I walked into this album already a fan of hers with Future Nostalgia still being one of my top albums of this decade so far and this sounds like an extension of that record. Like Future this is a dance pop cut that inspires the party to truck along even when it isn’t going perfectly. Lines of burnout and resisting collapse in the face of the perils of life outside the dance floor are cleverly interlaced in. In the scene that this song scores Barbie tries to party in spite of having an existential crisis and when she presents it to her friends, they can’t relate to her. They freeze everything and make her feel uncomfortable for questioning herself. Not everything can be a party all the time and to assume you can keep that momentum is to put yourself in danger.

Charli XCX’s “Speed Drive” is a deviation from her current era of attempted mainstream blending by calling back to her hyper pop roots. This, I feel, is a really bold move considering the view on her right now is that she’s sort of turned her back on the scene she came from. To show up to the major studio soundtrack with a song like this takes a lot of guts. That and lyrically this doesn’t go with its scene, in fact lyrically it’s in line with her last record. All this to set up saying that even though I’m not usually a Charli fan she’s really working on me this time. Maybe it’s my affection for the film and the sapphic in me, but still. I also enjoy Ava Max’s song later on too and I’m not usually all in on her either.

On the Ken side we get Sam Smith’s “Man I Am.” To be honest I can’t remember if this was actually in the film (maybe when all the Kens are fighting?) but it presents something interesting narratively. Here Smith conveys Ken as someone who knows they’re the antagonist of the story as opposed to someone who stumbled into being that because they were hurt and really liked horses. Sonically my continuous thing with Sam Smith is just sort of that I don’t like drag music that much and sure these verses aren’t my favorite moments or anything, but I think I’m a fan of this one too. The hook is really strong, the delivery is good, I'm into it.

One track later we get “I’m Just Ken,” the only musical theater moment on screen. This one is sung by Ryan Gosling’s actual character and presents his actual mindset while operating the way he does in the narrative. The phenomenon that this track is going through reminds me, in a way, of a smaller scale “Let it Go” off of Frozen. That probably sounds like a stretch but think about this; it gives you a song to paint a picture of a character and feel for them and their personal journey. It’s also just catchy in a theater kid way! If you haven’t seen the movie but you’ve heard the song you have all the context in the world even if you don’t realize it! That and similarly to “Let it Go” it's sort of culturally inescapable. People walk around my day job referencing this song. It’s a whole movement and a good counterpart to Billie Eilish’s contribution doing a similar but different service for Margot Robbie’s character.

Of course, don’t get me wrong, this is a movie soundtrack and a major label pop compilation, there are plenty of misses. In fact, a lot of these songs just sort of fade into the background, weren’t in the movie and probably on here contractually. There is a point where the hits become fewer and further between and the back half is a lot weaker than the first half even when the songs do go over well. I like PinkPatheress’ inclusion here but the dog barking on that beat? The “butterflies” remix? There are certainly some things to question.

Then there’s the Aqua “remix” with Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s “Barbie World.” On which the duo lazily raps over a sample of the classic song in a way that I almost feel like neither actually wanted to be there. I understand that Nicki’s former aesthetic is this high pink thing and that there’s for sure a cultural tie into the original song, but both feel forced fit. Maybe culturally both things have moved on to the point that this record, this film, we as a society would have been better off without this track actually being here.

I think ultimately this album’s biggest strength is the fact that in spite of being a pop compilation, in spite of encompassing so many genres and presentations of mainstream music it manages to do what so few movie soundtracks fail to do; include all of that while also fitting them sonically and thematically. It’s weird to say that a movie album may be in contention with the best albums out this year but with strong songs that you can’t go to any of these individual’s albums for I can’t really deny the strength at play here.

Plus, hey! You got your Letterboxd-ish review after all!

Our Rating - 8/10

Favorite Tracks:

1. Lizzo’s “Pink”

2. Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night”

3. Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice’s “Barbie World” with Aqua

4. Charli XCX’s “Speed Drive”

5. KAROL G’s “WATATI” feat. Aldo Ranks

6. Sam Smith’s “Man I Am”

7. Tame Impala’s “Journey to the Real World”

8. Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken”

9. Dominic Fike’s “Hey Blondie”

10. HAIM’s “Home”

11. Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”

12. The Kid LAROI’s “Forever & Again”

13. Khalid’s “Silver Platter”

14. PinkPantheress’ “Angel”

15. GAYLE’s “butterflies”

16. Ava Max’s “Chose Your Fighter”

17. FIFTY FIFTY’s “Barbie Dreams” feat. Kaliii

Support the Barbie film and soundtrack here

Alright, are the Redditors gone? Don’t want them to message me about being a bad critic because I have emotions tangential with the art I enjoy.

Anyway!

It’s been a while since the last AsterTracks and to be honest I thought that I was done with that. I’ve focused this year’s energy on instead reviewing albums in more massive bursts and as such I’m actually able to keep up with releases. It feels weird. It feels good! Part of that though is that not a lot of music has made me feel huge intense emotional revelations except for a handful of songs, an album and an EP. Not enough for an essay at least and the last, not finished mind you, episode never even came out. If you’ve followed this series though you probably remember the Beach Bunny episode. On that one I came out as trans femme publically about a month after coming out to my friends and family. I had actually considered coming out to them by sending them that, but my parents don’t even know about that piece. At least, if they do, we’ve never talked about it. Funnily enough, the Barbie movie and Emotional Creature came out almost a year apart to the day. I know a lot of people think this movie “isn’t that deep” but I have to be honest I’m kind of on a different trajectory now because I watched it. This second part of this essay isn’t a review, it’s me coming to catharsis about a lot of unpacked anger, gender and sexuality stuff. Its “outline” is literally one of my own diary entries. So, you know, that might be a lot, it might not! Proceed carefully and the same spoiler rules as above apply.

In the climax of the movie Margot Robbie’s character talks to Ruth Handler, her own creator, about her reason for being born. Ruth explains that her story has no ending and that she is meant to be ever evolving. From here, with her mother’s blessing, she becomes human and enters the real world knowing that it won’t always be happy or easy. In my own way, years ago, I always wanted this out of my own mother. My mom is supportive of her trans daughter, at least I think she is, I live here, and she lives there. It wasn’t always like this though. We had a lot of clashes at the offset of my transition, she didn’t really want to accept that I was anything other than a son and she had a lot of anger about it. But so, did I. Not only at her but at my whole life’s journey up to that point. From childhood all the way till I came out I longed for femininity. I wanted to be every type of woman I could to make up for the absence, the weird sort of no gender presentation and personality I invented to not be berated or bullied for being gay or not masculine. If I did nothing gendered not only could no one hurt me about it, I didn’t have to hurt over it. If you see me out on the street I wear a band shirt, usually a skirt or jeans and do some sort of minimal make up. That feels pretty good, it feels better than before, and I do that because I care about music so much. Clearly. If I’ve written about your art, I promise you I am a walking billboard for it too. I want people to ask me about the name on my chest. I also really love high femininity; I love pastels and everything this movie represents gender to be.

I often, wow I’m writing about this, I often view my personality as two-fold. While I was building that defense mechanism, I also lived a secret life on the internet as a cool trans girl who totally got to be herself don’t look past the curtain. I never lied about my age, for all any of these people knew I was on estrogen at sixteen because I wished I was. This led me to a pretty dangerous grooming situation to the point that I destroyed all evidence that any of that ever happened when I got old enough to understand that’s what was going on. I grew up from that, I kept feeding my real-world persona and eventually crossed the gender line and stuck with that. The thing is though. That girl? Who liked bright colors and was outspoken and liked being specifically trans femme so much? I locked her in a dark room in my mind. She represented my shame and even when I declared to everyone, she was who I was I was still repressing her in my own way. Almost as if to say, “yea I’m a girl but don’t worry I’m aware of my height and masculine features, ha-ha!” It affects my confidence. A lot of times when I’m purposely misgendered at work I let it go when I know, damn well, she wouldn’t let herself be. Watching this movie, I realized I take her advice but don’t let her out. It’s as if my “egg cracked,” I’ll never say that again, all over again.

That’s why I’ve been so angry with my mother about her time being upset with me. I locked myself up for my protection. For hers. How dare you tell me I was never anything but a son?

Of course, she doesn’t know that. And I don’t know what it would do for her to know that now. I remember when prom season came my mom really pushed for me to go. I went begrudgingly, stayed for the dinner, then left when I was dysphoric over my suite and was up all night. Is it really taking it from her to not know that I was so distressed?

Moving on though, I want to talk about Hari Nef, Doctor Barbie, in this movie. Not only is a trans woman in the Barbie movie, but the production also literally froze for her to be there. Hari’s character had my eyes every time she was on screen. She was a doctor, a DJ, she was just one of the girls and no one thought any different. She was also, like everyone here, just really beautiful. When Ken infects Barbieland with patriarchy all the dolls become complacent to men and specifically Hari’s character says she likes being a decoration and dresses, clearly, for the Ken's enjoyment. Later when her brainwashing is undone the way she disguises this is by saying, in a fake monotone voice, that she doesn’t feel pretty so that they’ll reassure her that she is and distract them to save another one of the dolls. You’re probably asking, like, “what the fuck is this girl talking about?” Here’s the thing though; that line absolutely fucked me up. All I do every day is give people excuses to pick on me for being AMAB by internally picking apart my appearance. It’s like I’m saying to myself, “well you’re ugly so it’s okay that they bully you.” Meanwhile a trans woman played a Barbie doll and jokes that she isn’t fucking gorgeous. Beyond looks, of course that’s not all of what I’m getting at, I keep talking in my reviews about how there’s so many trans artists now. 100 gecs is on the radio, Hari Nef is Dr. Barbie.

What’s my excuse for not just doing shit I wanna do?

Back to Ken’s side, at the end of his story he explains that he always felt defined by Barbie and even tries to stay with her romantically. Barbie explains that it doesn’t have to be “Barbie and Ken;” he can be defined by himself to be simply “Ken.” That spoke to me, it seemed to hit a lot of people, it certainly hit my best friend sitting right next to me in the theater. Like I said, I talk a big game, but I’m defined a lot by other people. I’ve let that take my gender expression away, I even let it affect my sexuality. I always say that I’m a lesbian even though I know my own sexuality is deeper than that. I don’t allow myself to say I’m bi because I feel like anything I could have with a man would be read as a gay relationship. But isn’t that just reliving that childhood repression all over again? In reality I just feel like sexuality is fake altogether and I'll be attracted to whatever I’m attracted to but maybe that’s a deeper point than this episode. I only even bring this up because it’s just another weird, repressed detail about myself I’ve been afraid to look at until a movie about a doll made me look at it differently.

I think I’m even writing this second section because what I’m realizing is that it’s all fake. I like being a girl who departed from being a boy. I also like things that, surface level anyway, have nothing to do with gender. The day after seeing this movie I made myself up in a way that made me happy and went to my first in-person TCG tournament in a year and went undefeated. No one thought I was a man there in fact everyone referred to me as the girl who rolled in and did well. That gave me gender euphoria. Because the thing is gender is whatever about your being brings you joy, I guess, cause even that’s reductive! There are no rules, everything’s fake, do with your vessel whatever makes you happy!