If we want to understand the relationship between philosophy and film, what better place to start than the best film of 2023! No, I’m not talking about that award-laden nuclear nonsense Oppenheimer. I am, of course, talking about Greta Gerwig’s masterpiece Barbie. It shouldn’t be a surprise that philosophy might contribute to our understanding of Barbie—philosophers of art seek to understand how we engage with artworks so the theories they develop should be applicable to a particular work of art. What might be more surprising is the idea that Barbie can contribute to our understanding of philosophy. According to the film-as-philosophy movement, some narrative films should be regarded as works of philosophy that make an active contribution to our philosophical knowledge. I claim that Barbie is just such a film. The contributions it makes to our understanding of philosophical topics such as gender, freedom, and society are just as legitimate as those made by more traditional works of political philosophy.
My positive case for this conclusion is quite simple: go watch the movie! If I’m right then the philosophical value of the film should be evident to an open-minded viewer. It shouldn’t take any fancy argumentation on my part to convince you. But some careful argument is needed to fend off sceptical objections to the whole idea of film-as-philosophy. According to the sceptics, films just aren’t the kind of thing that can make a serious contribution to philosophy. In their view, philosophy is about articulating precise arguments for general conclusions. And since film can’t do this, it can’t do philosophy. Let’s zoom in on these sceptical worries and see how they apply to the case of Barbie.
The first worry is that narrative film is unable to explicitly articulate thoughts. If you write an article about patriarchy you can convey your philosophical thoughts explicitly. But if you make a movie about patriarchy you can only convey a philosophical message implicitly. The Barbie movie can’t assert that patriarchy is oppressive—instead, it has to imply it by having a narrative in which Ken brings patriarchy to Barbieworld and by presenting this event as a bad thing. And because such claims are only implied, they lack the kind of precision we would expect from a philosophical thesis. The film can convey the message ‘patriarchy bad!’ but it would struggle to convey a more nuanced message about, say, collective culpability for structural injustice. For this, you need good old sentences!
The second worry is that narrative film is unable to justify philosophical thoughts. Doing philosophy involves more than just asserting philosophical claims—it involves offering arguments for them. This is connected to the previous problem: if a film can’t make explicit and precise claims then it can’t really make an argument. A deeper worry is that philosophy is in the business of making general claims. But since narrative film presents us with a single fictional scenario, it can’t justify general claims. Barbie might tell us what it’s like for Barbie to live in a matriarchal world and what it’s like for real-world characters Gloria and Sasha to live under the patriarchy. But extrapolating any general claims about the patriarchy from a few fictional cases would be completely unwarranted.
How should we respond to these sceptical worries? One option is to argue that the sceptic has underestimated the power of film. That is, we could argue that film is capable of articulating precise thoughts and justifying general conclusions. This isn’t a promising path to go down. The sceptic could well be right that film can’t do these things. And even if film can do these things to some extent, it’s pretty clear that it can’t do them well. And if it can’t do them well, then the advocate of film-as-philosophy would have to concede that doing philosophy through more traditional means is better than doing philosophy through film.
A more promising response to the sceptic is to challenge their assumptions about what’s involved in doing philosophy. Sure, most philosophy involves articulating precise arguments for general conclusions. However, some works contribute to our philosophical understanding simply by asking questions. Think about the famous case of Socrates and the ‘slave boy’ depicted in Plato’s Meno. Here Socrates teaches an enslaved child a principle of geometry by prompting him with a series of questions. Here Socrates doesn’t argue for some conclusion. Rather, he enables the child to arrive at the right conclusion for himself. And because the child works it out for himself, he understands the principle much better than if Socrates had simply told him the principle explicitly. I think this Socratic model helps us to capture how film can contribute to our philosophical understanding.
Barbie invites a lot of interesting questions. Is the matriarchy of Barbieworld any more than just the patriarchy of the real world? What do gender roles mean in a world where women rule and where genitals are replaced with ‘fleshy bulges’? Are the Barbies culpable for marginalising the Kens? Are the Kens culpable for their (attempted) marginalisation of the Barbies? Given the choice between staying in Barbieworld and moving to the real world, is Barbie right to (spoiler alert!) choose the real world? Do Barbie toys offer a route to female empowerment or are they just another prop for the patriarchy? Even the Oscar-winning song that plays at the climax of the film is a question—What Was I Made For?
The fact that Barbie doesn’t offer clear answers to these questions is one of its greatest strengths. It leaves us to work things out for ourselves and prompts us to achieve a deeper understanding of gender and society. And it can do this without expressing explicit thoughts and without having to justify any particular conclusion. In fact, as a film, it is probably better at prompting questions than a traditional philosophy article would be. The vivid, detailed and emotionally-engaging scenarios we see on film can help us to appreciate the ins-and-outs of a question in a way that a written paper might struggle to achieve. So by choosing the method of questions over the method of argument, Barbie—like Socrates—becomes a midwife of the truth.
Tom McClelland
Tom McClelland is a lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a Director of Studies at Clare College Cambridge. He is also a member of the Inner Speech in Action project based at UPF Barcelona. His research covers a range of topics in philosophy of mind, psychology, metaphysics, aesthetics and applied ethics. His introductory book What is Philosophy of Mind? is available from Polity Press.
