Sometimes the most pervasive hegemony can come from the most unlikely places. While the popular Barbie films of the early to mid 2000s are critically acclaimed and widely accepted as some of the purest cinema ever made, they are also vehicles for themes that can both work against the status quo, and confirm and support it. To highlight this, we can examine a few of the characters and how their relationship with poverty reflects these themes. To start, we look at the villain of the film, Preminger.
Raised by low class "peasant" parents, he is employed as the Queen's advisor but seeks to usurp her throne by means of crime. Throughout the film, he makes remarks about how far he has come and how he plans to be king, such as "This peasant's son won't turn and run because some reckless royal chose another beau". He is portrayed in the film as being greedy, undermining, and skeezy. He is also fabulous but that is besides the point. By the films end, he is thwarted by the princess (true royalty) and he is arrested. I think in some ways, this confirms that though he may try, he came from poverty and can never truly be a part of the ruling class.
Conversely, the film has a second rag to riches story, but this one with a different ending. Erica, an indentured servant working as a seamstress at a dress shop outside the palace, aids the royal family by secretly filling in for the princess during her disappearance. She gets to see the vast disparity between her life of poverty and the princess's life of excess and refinement. Near the end of the film, the ruse is discovered and she is thrown into prison when it is revealed that she does not have the royal birthmark (a crown on her shoulder).
This could be a reference to the idea that those in power are born to it, and that a pauper could never truly be a part of the ruling class. However, Erica is busted out of prison by a hot king who loves her for her, and at the movie's end he proposes to her and she is freed from the oppression of debt and poverty.
So is the movie wanting us to know that the poor deserve to be ruled over, or that with hard work and a little luck anyone can turn their situation around? What do you think?
First off love the movie that you chose! Secondly I think this movie is a perfect movie to showcase Neo-Marxism. I think that you are right in the Pauper does become a princess and in a sense the hero. I also wonder what the message is for us as we watch the movie is does this mean all people have the opportunity to become something more or that the do poor people should be ruled over. For a children's movie there is some deep thought. I think and hope the latter that a hard works lead to good things.
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