Emily Shirkey is an undergraduate student in the Honors College of the University of Missouri. Her next liminal adventure is participating in the spring 2024 seminar, Liminality and Literature of the Fantastical.
Liminalities are the “spaces between”. The time between two majors, changing events. An amazing example of liminal space comes from an unlikely place: The Barbie movie. On the surface, the movie is about living Barbie dolls, and their Barbie world. The movie depicts Margot Robbie as “Stereotypical Barbie”, as she finds the human playing with her to stop her malfunctioning. The movie is emotional, funny, and very well scripted. Without analysis the movie is very well done, but analyzing through the liminal lens, the movie is plain incredible.
The movie consists of two liminal arcs, consistent with the plot arcs of the movie. Both of which follow the movie’s main character: Barbie. As every Barbie in the universe is referred to as such, I will be addressing “stereotypical Barbie” as her actress, Margot Robbie.
Before the first chunk of Liminal space, Robbie is living her best life in Barbie land, the magical place where all Barbies, and Kens, exist parallel to the Human world. Each Barbie, including Robbie, has their person. Every day is a perfect day for Barbie, and, as stated in the movie, Ken only has a good day when Barbie pays attention to him. The premise of Barbie Land is to be the exact opposite of the human world. Where men dominate in the human world, women run those positions in Barbie Land.
Robbie’s liminal space begins when she starts to malfunction. Everything that could go wrong, does, which is highly unnatural for a Barbie. She comes to find out the reason that she is malfunctioning is because the human playing with her is going through a lonely and depressive period, causing Robbie to feel the same way. She is then sent on a quest to find her human and figure out why she is malfunctioning and how she can stop it. This first arc of the movie is the first chunk of liminal space. Robbie and Ken, played by Ryan Gosling (and who will also be addressed by his actor’s name for simplicity’s sake), go to the human world to look for Robbie’s human. Gosling wanders off and learns of “patriarchy” and discovers that the human world is the opposite of Barbie Land.
Robbie learns about humans and how even negative emotions are good to express instead of bottle up before she comes across her human. The person is not who Robbie thought she would be, however. Instead of being the blunt sarcastic middle school girl, Robbie finds out the person playing with her is her mother. The three have several heart-felt conversations and Robbie decides that she should bring them back to Barbie Land. She figures that everything is sorted out and is getting used to this new life. This is the end of the first liminal space in the movie.
The second begins when the three get back to Barbie Land where they discover all the Barbies have been brainwashed into servants for the Kens and that Kens are running the world. Robbie goes to find Gosling thinking that she can get everything sorted out, or at least figure out what is going on, by talking to him. She finds Gosling as well as her transformed Dream House. Now Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House, she enters another Liminal Space.
Robbie cannot cope with the fact that she is losing her perfection, her dream house, all her friends, and Barbie land itself. She has a breakdown where she admits that she doesn’t feel pretty (terrible choice of casting Margot Robbie if that is the point, you’re trying to make she is effortlessly beautiful). She explains that she doesn’t feel like she is enough to both humans as well as the local Barbie Land outcast. The three of them talk to her and try to cheer her up. The mother goes into a speech about the double standards of being a woman, which snaps one of the Barbies out of their zombified state. This is enough to cheer up Robbie, as she sees that she is able to fix everything and get to the other side. The movie, and the liminal space, comes to a massive crescendo with a dance battle between the Kens before a cut to where the Barbies have taken back Barbie Land. Robbie comes out of the other side a completely transformed person and sees that Humans have a lot of value. She enjoyed the feeling of every day being a new adventure or challenge to overcome instead of perfection 24/7.
In the end, she decides that she enjoyed experiencing human emotions, and decides to become one herself. As one liminal period ends, another begins demonstrating the constant ups and downs of life.
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