The Tribe

High quality, and entertaining. Barbie as some manifestation of some kind of outsider-insider understanding of Jewish-American identity?

How random the topics are but still its hold our attention.
Really high grade and worth praise!

Interesting as it was, the film omitted to mention an interesting phenomenon that could have added a layer to the analogy, namely the very ambiguous, love/hate relationship that all little girls have with their Barbie dolls.

The from an ongoing study of brand identification among seven-to eleven-year-olds, by researchers at the University of Bath School of Management:

bq. The most striking thing about the discourse that surrounded Barbie was the rejection, hatred and violence that the doll provoked. Barbie evoked practically no positive sentiments – even among seven-year-old girls.

bq. One interpretation of this perplexing finding may be that although Barbie masquerades as a person, she actually exists in multiple selves. The children never talked of one single, special Barbie. She was always referred to in the plural. Moreover, accounts of Barbie ownership always implied excess – too many Barbies. Most children had not only more than one Barbie, but a box of Barbies; and not just a box but a very large box.

bq. Barbie is hated because she is babyish; she is hated because she is unfashionable; she is hated because she is plastic; she is hated because she is a feminine icon.

bq. But reactions to Barbie went beyond an expressed antipathy. Actual physical violence toward the doll was repeatedly reported (gleefully) across age, school and gender. […] The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning and microwaving.

My wife, who claims Jewish-ness through lineage on her mother’s side, raised our daughter in this way: she bought her stuff. So much stuff that it took up two other rooms. Dozens of pairs of shoes, closets and dressers full of clothes, hundreds of stuffed animals of all shapes, sizes and species. Also, my daughter acquired over a hundred Barbie dolls. Some were cheap, some cost a bundle and were given at Christmas time as the “premier” gift. At twenty-two and out of the house, I worry in a mild way that because of all this stuff, my daughter has a warped and distorted sense of the world that will prevent her from succeeding, whatever that means, but then I think: what it is! It’s just a crapshoot. Maybe she’ll do just fine, but it’s kind of out of my hands anyway except for my occasional admonishment for her to become an adult. But I got to tell you, there are a hundred Barbies packed away in boxes in the upstairs storage room waiting for my daughter to determine their fate. Many of them lay there naked, (there wasn’t enough Barbie clothes to go around)and stuffed into liquor boxes along with all those aforementioned stuffed animals and, I, being a goyim, it makes me crazy to think that we have to keep storing all this plastic crap until the “dumping the stuff” epiphany occurs. And I say to myself, what a wonderful world!