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Kitchen Table Kibitzing Friday: Barbie, the film, Barbieism with a human face [1]

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Date: 2025-06-27

Aside from word-play, I finally got around to watching the Barbie movie. It made me think about epiphanies in narratives.

Barbarism with a Human Face is a book by Bernard-Henri Lévy that critiques the idea of progress and revolutionary benevolence, arguing that what appears to be hope may actually lead to destruction and darkness. It explores the complexities of human nature and the potential dangers of ideologies that promise a better society. (AI) x YouTube Video

For Lacan, the ah-ha experience is analogous to the mirror stage, which also involves a moment of sudden insight that leads to a significant change in the subject's mental organization.

In the movie Barbie’s alternate reality, Barbieland, the character Weird Barbie says “better if you don’t think about it (Real World).”

“Irrepressible Thoughts of Death Barbie (and cellulite)” happens in Alternate Reality or Barbie Land, unlike the real world, Los Angeles, where an actual tween, Sasha calls Barbie a fascist.

Not really, it seemed appropriately historicized, honoring its human creator and the anachronism of Barbie as cultural stereotype, questioning the media effect of Barbie on women’s body-images. An easy target and a testimony to disciplined marketing by Mattel. Lacan might view Barbie as a representation of desire and identity, illustrating the struggle between the idealized self and the reality of human experience. The film's exploration of existential themes and the quest for self-acceptance aligns with Lacanian ideas about the complexities of desire and the human psyche. (Auto-generated based on listed sources. ) x x YouTube Video

Now, what's the problem with fantasy? I think that the key point, usually overlooked, is the way that Lacan articulated the notion of fantasy which is, 'OK, fantasy stages a desire, but whose desire?' My point is: not the subject's desire, not their own desire. What we encounter in the very core of the fantasy formation is the relationship to the desire of the Other: to the opacity of the Other's desire. The desire staged in fantasy, in my fantasy, is precisely not my own, not mine, but the desire of the Other. Fantasy is a way for the subject to answer the question of what object they are for the Other, in the eyes of the Other, for the Other's desire. That is to say, what does the Other see in them? What role do they play in the Other's desire? A child, for example, endeavors to dissolve, by way of their fantasy, the enigma of the role they play as the medium of interactions between their mother, their father, all their relatives, etc.: the enigma of how mother, father and others fight their battles, settle their accounts through them. This is, I think, the crucial point that, for example, a child experiences their situation as a series of obvious ; investments in them. Parents fight their battles through them, but it is I not clear to them what their role is in this complex, intersubjective ' network into which they are thrown. And precisely through fantasy they try to clarify this point. Not, 'What is their desire?' but, 'What is their role in the desire of the Other?' This is, I think, absolutely crucial, which is why, as you probably know, in Lacan's graph of desire, fantasy comes as an answer to that question beyond the level of meaning, 'What do you want?', precisely as an answer to the enigma of the Other's desire. [3] Here, again, I think we must be very precise. www.lacan.com/... return.jls.missouri.edu/... x x YouTube Video

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