“‘Barbie is taking issues about equity, body image, inclusion, diversity, intersectionality, politics and the patriarchy, all of the stuff we’re dealing with in such a divided country.”
On Friday evening, as Barbie fever took over movie theaters across America — and the world — one scene struck me as romantic, poignant and sort of beautiful. But it wasn’t a scene from the feel-good movie, which was designed to lift spirits while taking some swipes at the patriarchy.
And she was smiling, even after seeing the dark, three-hour biopic about Robert J. Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb. It felt like Halloween, when people get to dress up, act silly and forget about their troubles. “Barbie,” directed by Greta Gerwig, glided her way to No. 1 last weekend with $155 million in ticket sales from North American theaters, making it the biggest movie debut of the year and setting a first-weekend record for a movie directed by a woman. For context: Marvel’s DIS, -0.67% Black Panther, the first mainstream Black superhero movie, earned more than $200 million in its opening weekend in 2018. The fact that Barbie managed to bring in two-thirds of that revenue is no small feat.
“The marketing for Barbie has been insane,” said Kristina Durante, a professor of marketing and department chair at Rutgers University’s business school. Durante cites a concept in psychology called the “contrast effect.” That’s when something goes from almost zero visibility to such an enormous boost in visibility that people will say, “I remember that!” It makes the impact so much more powerful. In simple terms, if you put a lighter-colored object in front of a dark object, it makes the lighter-colored object all the more vibrant. Similarly, Barbie may have appealed to people all the more when contrasted with an “Oppenheimer” double bill.
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