Why I needed the Barbie that was attacked by birds
The moment I learned that there exists a Barbie Doll modeled after Tippi Hedren — you know, the actress attacked by a murder of crows in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film “The Birds” — I had to have it. You’ll either understand immediately or will be sputtering a series of barely formed questions about my sanity.
But I am quite sane, thank you, and Barbie is an important American icon who is as much a cultural barometer as she is a plaything. I grew up with her personally. And she has gone through many iterations.
That’s why, when I saw that Barbie had morphed into a character besieged by fowl in one of the great horror movies, I knew I needed her by my desk. You know, as a muse. Or something.
Yet I found Tippi Hedren Barbie because I was searching for one of her younger and far more elusive sisters, who is currently the talk of the town. (Don’t tell her I said that.)
If you’ve been keeping up with the news — the truly important news, and not just that stuff about whether we’re getting into a new war or whether Great Britain is being sold to PBS’s Masterpiece Theater as backdrop as a way to handle Brexit — you know that major news outlets across the globe have been reporting on the utter depletion of Mattel’s entire stock of its “Day of the Dead” Barbie before the doll was actually available for purchase. That’s how many pre-orders there were.
It was Bonnie Januszewski, a brilliant therapist on Long Island, who took time from her busy day to tell me about the latest “Day of the Dead Barbie.” Bonnie and I have been talking about Barbies for more than 50 years.
Misreading her subject heading, however, I thought Bonnie said Mattel was issuing a “Dead Barbie.” I figured Mattel, anticipating the next social shift as always, was targeting the baby boomers. This made me terribly excited. I started thinking of all the possible accessories for Barbie’s funeral: Satin lining for the casket? Floral arrangements in the shapes of shoes or poodles? A sparkling, glowing urn?
After realizing my error, “Day of the Dead” Barbie grabbed my interest too: She has an elaborate gown, beautiful dark hair and eyes and stunning face-paint in the image of a skull.
In contrast to the Tippi Hedren doll, she isn’t scary. She doesn’t look possessed; she looks selfpossessed. But that’s not why she’s been getting press. The question is whether this sold-out Barbie has Sold Out. Is the Dia de los Muertos doll a form of cultural appropriation whereby the powerful adopt and adapt, for their own amusement, the styles and expressions of those in less-privileged positions, or is this Barbie a new mirror in which kids can see themselves?
Most little girls don’t want to look like dolls but instead want dolls to look like them. That’s why we happily adore and destroy them, and I say that as someone who knows. My deep, complex and unbroken connection to Barbie — whose full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts of the Willows, Wisconsin Roberts and who never would have liked me in real life, let’s face it — has endured longer than several relationships I’ve had with actual human beings.
There are good reasons for that. Unlike Barbies, human beings would not permit me to cut their hair; human beings would not allow me to chew on their fingers; human beings would not permit me to draw all over them when I got bored. Human beings wouldn’t listen for hours at a time or let me get angry. In addition, no one I knew had a Dream House with a built-in breakfast nook, and nobody had a standing microphone to be used when we had our own “Solo in the Spotlight” the way Barbie did. One person I knew many years ago did have a Corvette similar to Barbie’s Dream Car, but I purchased it for him, and he drove away from me in it, so it wasn’t exactly the plot point from a Mattel story line.
The conversation we’re having about how children look at race and ethnicity, how we as adults define and react to race and ethnicity, about the implications and inevitability of cultural mixing, the richness of cultural influence — and, yes, about Barbie — is more valuable than a dream house. My Tippi Hedren will delight me, but she doesn’t bring the same gravity to the table. She’s for The Birds.
Gina Barreca is a board of trustees distinguished professor of English literature at the University of Connecticut and the author of 10 books. She can be reached at www.ginabarreca.com.