February, 2024
The striking similitudes of Barbie and Lilith
Barbie and Lilith both start in Paradise. In Barbieland and Eden, everything seems perfect. But Barbie gets flat feet and recurring thoughts of death. Lilith’s husband Adam has changed… They used to be equal, but recently he’s discovered a new material called BRONZE and it’s changing everything.
Barbie meets Weird Barbie, who explains she must travel to the Real World and put things right. Lilith too must leave Eden and join the Real World. Lilith’s Weird Barbie is Norea, wife of Noah, a drunken patriarch. Norea’s job is to shepherd Lilith onto the ark and deliver her to the New World to put right what went wrong in Eden.
In both Real Worlds, men are in charge. Mattel’s board are all men. The patriarchs after the Ark are all men. Worse, back in Barbieland, inspired by Real World, Ken has overthrown the matriarchy (barbiearchy?) and set up Kendom! Both Barbie and Lilith must bring down the patriarchy, but how?
America Ferrera breaks the spell in Barbieland. She tells the Truth of patriarchy to the brainwashed Barbies. In Lilith, it’s Mary Magdalene whose long-buried scriptures speak the Truth and spark a revolution. Her Truth is inspired by the real-life Nag Hammadi texts: gnostic scriptures declared heretical and buried in the 4th century CE, found in Egypt in 1945.
Barbie meets her Creator – Ruth Handler, who invented Barbie in 1959. Lilith’s Creator is Asherah, the Mother Goddess erased from early Israelite religion as it became increasingly monolatrous over the course of the first millennium BCE. Asherah is still there in the Old Testament – she’s the Queen of Heaven whose worship in Jerusalem enrages the prophet Jeremiah. She’s the goddess worshipped by Queen Jezebel, miscast as a ‘foreign god’ and the real reason Jezebel is slurred as a whore by the monotheist writers of the Book of Kings.
Both Ruth and Asherah are loving, wise Mothers, who want the best for their children. They’re happy for their daughters to surpass them. They are VERY different to the jealous Father, who demands worship and subservience, who curses Woman for all time, for daring to seek Wisdom.
Both Barbie and Lilith are about big questions: about learning how to be human, to accept a complicated reality over a pleasing illusion; that stasis is unnatural, and change is necessary; that death is part of life; that one sex dominating another is damaging; that partnership is better than hierarchy; that motherhood is loving and letting go.
Men (or Ken!) are not the enemy in Barbie or Lilith. The enemy is the system of social organisation that evolved to privilege men and enable them to dominate women. This system is called patriarchy, and it’s not (as Ken misunderstands) all about horses.
In short: if you loved Barbie, you might like Lilith!