2024 has ushered in yet another wave of big-budget nostalgia. From the film adaptation of Wicked to the unstoppable Barbie juggernaut, it seems Hollywood can’t resist chewing over old material in the hopes of striking box-office gold. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, nineteeth century doctrines like “Manifest Destiny” and “Big Stick” imperialism—once responsible for the forceful expansion of U.S. borders and the subjugation of Indigenous communities—are reappearing in policy debates. Everywhere we turn, billboards and headlines urge us to look back at some pocket of our national history—be it cultural icons, shared childhood memories, or the good ol’ days of U.S. expansionism.
Analyzing the recent turn to nostalgia in politics and pop culture is a massive undertaking, well beyond the scope of this blog post. That said, I’d like to kickstart the discussion by unpacking how nostalgia operates in the Barbie movie (TBM) and what socio-political implications might follow. I’ll begin by introducing Fredric Jameson’s “Reification and Utopia” and applying his ideas to TBM. In doing so, I show that the movie exploits nostalgia to redirect our desires for inclusivity and social change around gender norms into ones for a commercial product: Barbie dolls. From there, I’ll explore how this process of redirection connects to political yearnings for a bygone era of American supremacy.
In his “Reification and Utopia,” Jameson argues that pop culture functions as a medium for spreading capitalist ideology by giving expression to (and ultimately rewriting) “utopian” impulses. For Jameson, these impulses are repressed social desires and anxieties that point beyond the confines of a capitalist status quo, offering a glimpse of alternative social possibilities that, in turn, threaten to destabilize it. The mystery, then, is why pop culture—which presumably reinforces capitalism—would arouse such subversive psychic phenomena in the first place. If they’re repressed anyway, why not let the dead stay dead? For Jameson, the answer amounts to a kind of tactical maneuver: by summoning our utopian impulses, pop culture creates an opportunity to defuse and redirect them. This bit of psychic “horse trading” involves the use of symbolic containment structures that associate the fulfillment of utopian fantasies with capitalism itself. In doing so, they effectively transform the subversive desire for utopia into a desire for a capitalist social order.
Turning to TBM, we can see this tactical maneuver at play through “Stereotypical Barbie” and her quest of self-discovery. In the movie, Stereotypical Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) embodies everything we traditionally associate with the doll: thin, blonde, white, etc. These attributes serve a double function, as the name “Stereotypical” implies—and yes, that’s literally her name in the movie (subtlety was never on the table). The first is that they evoke the nostalgic image of a childhood spent playing with (or yearning for) the classic Barbie doll. The second, however, veers toward the pejorative side of “stereotypical”: in her attributes, Stereotypical Barbie represents a problematic standard of femininity that has plagued the doll since her 1959 debut. In the 1960s and 1970s, feminists criticized Barbie’s narrow, hypersexualized depiction of womanhood. More recent movements for body positivity, racial inclusivity, and LGBTQ+ visibility have pressured Mattel to diversify Barbie’s appearance and storylines. Naming Robbie’s character “Stereotypical” thus recalls a long history of frustration with the Barbie franchise and the restrictive gender norms it helped propagate. In doing so, it arouses the subversive desire to repudiate those norms and, by extension, reject Barbie as a commercial product.
TBM’s Stereotypical Barbie, therefore, gives expression to the “utopian impulses” discussed earlier: the character confronts viewers with a problematic ideal of womanhood that reignites desires for social change—along with an anti-capitalist inclination to stop supporting that ideal in the marketplace. On the face of it, these impulses neutralize the nostalgic effect of Barbie’s stereotypical representation. After all, we’d be contradicting ourselves if we pined for a doll that embodies the very norms we want to overturn (not to mention admitting our complicity, as consumers, in perpetuating them).
Yet it is precisely because Stereotypical Barbie elicits both nostalgic and utopian impulses that she works so well as a symbolic containment structure. By uniting these in Barbie, TBM tells viewers that it acknowledges (and seeks to change) Barbie’s issues, while leveraging her nostalgic allure to suggest that she’s more worthy of reform than outright rejection. In this way, TBM sets up—and leads viewers to embrace—the idea that it can revise and reimagine Barbie to further social progress. This idea (developed throughout the film) ultimately maps onto Barbie-as-product, positioning the commercial consumption of the “reformed” doll as the solution to our utopian impulses. While these impulses might’ve originally pointed to boycotting the franchise, TBM redirects them into a product. We can now play an active role in dismantling restrictive gender norms by buying Barbies—and, in the process, absolve ourselves of the responsibility for sustaining them through our consumer choices. All it takes is a quick mea culpa at the Toys “R” Us.
Here, then, we begin to see how TBM’s Barbie fulfills the role of Jameson’s symbolic containment mechanisms: it stokes desires for social change and, by harnessing nostalgia, positions itself as the means of fulfilling those desires. Of course, there are clear problems with this message. First, even if TBM succeeds in convincingly redeeming the Barbie icon— such that it becomes a symbol for inclusive, equitable gender norms—the implication that we can achieve social change by buying and playing with dolls is just absurd. Worse, it reduces our agency as change-makers to our agency as consumers, while those who refuse consumption are either cast as passive bystanders (at best) or obstacles (at worst).
We can trace TBM’s pro-capitalist subtext through Barbie’s journey from Barbieland to the real world. That journey begins with an existential crisis prompted by Gloria, who turns to her old Barbie for comfort after an argument with her daughter. In this moment, Gloria imagines a version of the doll that reflects a more authentic version of the female experience—“cellulite Barbie,” “thoughts of death Barbie,” and so on. Back in Barbieland, Stereotypical Barbie undergoes aesthetic transformations mirroring Gloria’s fantasies: she starts questioning her mortality and notices cellulite on her legs. Barbie then leaves Barbieland to discover and ultimately transform who she is in response to the desires of her discontented consumer. Along the way, she unites with a diverse group of Barbies to topple a newly erected patriarchy of Kens.
All of this underscores a central message of TBM: that our power to enact social change and realize our utopian desires effectively amounts to our power as consumers. Only by falling into Barbie’s nostalgia trap and choosing to “play” with her do we create an opportunity to invest her with new meaning, thereby shaping her as a force of radical transformation. TBM then takes this idea one step further: once Gloria imbues Barbie with new content, Barbie realizes her transformative potential onscreen by adopting more inclusive ideals of womanhood and dismantling patriarchy. In doing so, she no longer merely embodies the utopian desires that Gloria projects onto her (and that her Stereotypical attributes invoke), but gratifies them. Put differently, she becomes the means through which longings for social reform are fulfilled. In this way, TBM suggests that we can achieve reform by wielding our purchasing power (or, more specifically, by buying Mattel products) rather than demanding anything close to systemic overhaul.
A second prong of TBM’s pro-capitalist message hinges on the way it uses Barbie (as-character and as-product) to create a superficial form of social unity. Although the film briefly nods to polarizing issues—political divides, tensions within feminism, racial inequities, and generational conflicts—it ultimately glosses over them. Instead, it suggests that we can resolve our differences by simply rallying around a shared consumer item (Barbie).
One of the clearest examples of this involves Gloria’s daughter Sasha, who labels Barbie a “fascist” and a “white savior.” Sasha’s accusation resonates pointedly with critics of TBM who object to its portrayal of “white feminism” (wherein considerations of race and class are overlooked). Yet, as one critic points out, the film plays Sasha’s accusation largely “for laughs” , trivializing the issues she raises. The scene’s comedic framing also plays into broader American anxieties about how the political left—especially younger activists—are perceived: too steeped in cancel-culture and too quick to deploy extreme, hyperbolic rhetoric. As another reviewer puts it, “I can’t say that I didn’t cringe. The prototypical representation of a Gen Z girl who…hates everyone who isn’t socially acceptable in her mind, and just uses political rhetoric to make fun of people for absolutely no reason is getting old.”
Rather than scrutinizing Sasha’s concerns, TBM resolves her tension with Barbie through a feel-good moment of “political solidarity” aimed at toppling the Ken patriarchy. On one level, this implies that women’s empowerment need not address how race or socioeconomic status shapes different experiences—implicitly vindicating “white feminism.” On another level, it suggests that the political and cultural divides between us (the ones that led Sasha to originally reject Barbie) can be reconciled by purchasing into a consumer product both literally and metaphorically. This idea resurfaces in the mother-daughter dynamic between Gloria and Sasha. Although the film sets up a generational rift early on, it ultimately bypasses deeper questions about that conflict (and Gen Z’s socio-political disconnect) by having both characters rally around Barbie. Gloria’s nostalgic attachment to the doll becomes a bridge that magically heals their relationship, suggesting that consumer loyalty (in this case, mutual enthusiasm for a “reformed” Barbie) can smooth over intergenerational tensions. As a result, the film gives little insight into how genuine conflicts might be resolved. Instead, it offers a marketplace solution to social fractures; one in which capitalism—our shared desires for and consumption of goods—becomes the vehicle through which we transcend difference and achieve unity.
Ultimately, TBM harnesses nostalgia to steer our “utopian impulses” for inclusivity and unity into Barbie-driven consumerism rather than genuine social change. It’s a clever marketing tactic, but its influence doesn’t stop at the toy aisle. In fact, the very same logic underlies political slogans that dredge up old expansionist ideals for today’s agendas.
Like TBM, these slogans exploit anxieties about our current national situation by championing the illusion of a prodigal return to the past; one in which “progress” can be achieved through a revision of outdated, problematic systems. In both cases, nostalgia becomes the hook that lures us into accepting the very structures that fueled a need for change in the first place. As voters or consumers, we’re sold the idea that, for the price of a ballot or a Barbie doll, we can revisit, revise, and recreate a supposedly “golden age” of American life—no structural upheaval necessary.
Yet, by clinging to the illusion of an idealized past-made-present, we insulate ourselves from the transformative potential awakened by our longings for change. After all, we wouldn’t bankroll an entire film industry that peddles nostalgia pour temps perdu if things were going well, nor would the phrase “make America great again” ring so loudly. Rather, we gravitate toward nostalgia precisely because our current social and political conditions are untenable, and we know something has to give.
The real challenge lies in recognizing that genuine progress can’t be bought or resurrected. It demands that we grapple with our utopian impulses and reject the nostalgic appeal of a feel-good quick-fix wrapped in Barbie pink. Nostalgia might alert us to the fact that something’s gone awry, but it can’t solve our problems on its own. Instead, we should channel that longing into a critical engagement with our past and present—one that finally breaks the time loop and gets us somewhere worth going.
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