Before getting off the topic of Barbie, I did want to talk about one way it uses multiple meanings for words. Or more specifically, names.
Greta Gerwig’s film is gleefully breaking a story rule here. It’s a simple rule—almost goes without saying. Don’t give multiple characters the same name.
In general, names are becoming more individualized in individualistic countries, so the idea of a school where half the girls are named “Jennifer” doesn’t resonate with today’s teens the way it used to. But even if the reverse trend were true, writers would still want to give their characters distinct tags. I’ve even seen a theory that your characters’ names shouldn’t alliterate or rhyme, unless you’re trying to encourage your audience to group them somehow (like Ross and Rachel on Friends or Huey, Dewey, and Louie on DuckTales).
There are other notable breakers of this rule, including 100 Years of Solitude and The Adventures of Pete and Pete. And the current fad for movie multiverses means that characters are often running into alternate versions of themselves—we’re now on our third movie revolving around multiple Spider-Mans, and there’s at least one more coming up. Across the Spider-Verse plays its “many characters, one name” issue for comedy in the scene below:
(You’d think they’d be used to working around this problem by now, right?)
More down-to-earth stories have other reasons to break the same-name rule. In GoodFellas, Karen narrates some of her culture shock about her husband’s family:
The first time I was introduced to all of them at once, it was crazy. Paulie and his brothers had lots of sons and nephews…and almost all of them were named Peter or Paul. It was unbelievable. There must have been two dozen Peters and Pauls at the wedding. Plus, they were all married to girls named Marie. And they named all their daughters Marie! By the time I finished meeting everybody, I thought I was drunk.
My own wife can relate just a little bit. My birth family isn’t as extreme as what Karen describes, but we likewise have some favorite names that tend to get reused over the generations. My grandfather, uncle, and brother are all Alexanders.
Barbie falls somewhere between Across the Spider-Verse and GoodFellas in its same-name usage. Barbie’s world is not a multiverse, and for all its innocence, it has some of the energy of GoodFellas’ mob family. Its mores go unquestioned: things have always been this way. Miles the outsider calls the Spider-Verse “weird,” but in Barbie World, Barbie World is normal and “Weird Barbie” is the outsider.
But unlike the Italian mob, Barbie World runs on supernatural elements. Barbies and Kens never age and never die, levitate over to their cars, can hold any job but never need money, and wave to each other when one is on the ground and another is in outer space.
Like the Spider-Verse, Barbie World asks the viewer to think about the pop culture that inspired it. Across the Spider-Verse is full of references to versions of Spider-Man that have appeared in comics, movies, games, and other media, putting them into a larger tableau that also leaves room for never-before-seen versions. Barbie has that kind of tableau, too. It stays focused on the dolls, but the Barbie product line has released 176 dolls over the years, most of them named “Barbie” or “Ken.”
To get away with this sort of name-play, a story has to make choices about its narrative focus. GoodFellas doesn’t actually spend a lot of time with its Peters, Pauls, or Maries (it does have one Paul, played by an actor who is also named Paul). Despite its many Peter Parkers, Across the Spider-Verse only has one important Peter, and everyone else has a distinct first name they can use, after it becomes clear why calling all the male human characters “Spider-Man” isn’t going to work.
Barbie is first and foremost the story of one Barbie and one Ken, and the Barbies do occasionally use modifiers when they need to be more specific. There’s Weird Barbie and President Barbie. And Margot Robbie’s character explains, “I'm Stereotypical Barbie. I'm like the Barbie you think of when someone says, ‘Think of a Barbie.’”
Still, the way each Barbie first and foremost identifies as “Barbie,” and likewise every Ken, plays into the camp fun of the world Gerwig creates—and a few of the things she has to say about women and men. It’s a special kind of pun, and the simplest wordplays can be the deepest.