I’m a Barbie Girl: Classical reception and the Barbie movie

By Jocelin Chan

tw: rape & rape culture

Rosalind Gill’s “Postfeminist media culture” attacks the notion of “postfeminism”, which she defines as the sensibility pervading media culture and texts that assumes second-wave feminist concerns have been achieved, and feminism need no longer be political. For her, this way of thinking emphasises individual empowerment, choice, and consumerism; and overwhelmingly features white, heterosexual, and abled women. It implies that individuals, not patriarchal structures, are responsible for the ongoing oppression of women. Using Gill’s framework on the children’s film Barbie and the Three Musketeers, Orr Vered and Maizonniaux argue that the Barbie film franchise is a propagandistic “postfeminist pedagogy”. They contend that the Barbie franchise took into account feminist criticism launched against its dolls. In response, it generated films that centre “girl power” but ultimately maintain the patriarchal status quo with historical and fantasy settings that elide the need to critique modern structural sexism.

The films are by no means perfect. But this analysis remains unnuanced and limiting. Barbie has long been a magnet for feminist criticism, but most (if not all) of her critics lie outside of the franchise’s target demographic of prepubescent girls. This ignores the reasons for the Barbie films’ popularity among this group, who may enjoy the stories and the female characters’ agency. The films’ lack of theoretical depth is also practical: the viewers are children who may not understand the complex feminist theory Orr Vered and Maizonniaux seem to want to see in the films.

With this in mind, I intend to look afresh at one of the Barbie films, Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (2005), and its reception of the titular mythological creature. The film follows Princess Annika’s quest to save her parents and subjects, whom the evil wizard Wenlock turned to stone when she rejected his suit. Wenlock claims that he will undo the curse if Annika agrees to marry him, but she discovers that he had turned her long-lost sister Brietta into a Pegasus when she refused his suit long ago. Reunited, the sisters embark on a quest to create the Wand of Light, reversing Wenlock’s spells and defeating him.

On the surface, the film has scant classical connection besides Brietta taking a Pegasus form. However, I will argue that re-examining its reception of Pegasus sparks a feminist reappraisal of his role in ancient myth. Contra Orr Vered and Maizonniaux, I will investigate how the film’s narrative engages with feminist issues of consent and creates contrasting paradigms of patriarchal and feminist power within children’s film genre constraints. The ancient Pegasus was a vehicle for male questing, but the film characterises Brietta as a sympathetic character—much more than a transport animal—and encourages the audience to rally behind her struggle to regain humanity. Brietta does not easily relate to the ancient Pegasus. Still, I will argue that her experience of male violence can be linked to Pegasus’ mother Medusa’s, particularly in how feminists have reclaimed Medusa’s narrative. I will conclude that the film’s reception revaluates the ancient Pegasus as a legacy of the curse that male violence brings against women.

Feminist discourse in Magic of Pegasus

Orr Vered and Maizonniaux criticise Barbie films for shying from political feminist discussion with their postfeminist veneer. But though limited by its young audience’s understanding, the Magic of Pegasus’ narrative speaks to a key aspect of third-wave feminist discourse: rape culture and consent. Buchwald, Roth, and Fletcher define a “rape culture” as a system which normalises male (sexual) violence against women. Considering how the film constructs Wenlock’s treatment of the women whom he desires as violent and violating, it is not a stretch to read “marriage” in the film as a euphemism—sanitised for the child audience—for rape. The mere fact that he feels free to violate women with impunity indicates that the world of Magic of Pegasus perpetuates a kind of rape culture.

When Annika (who had been ice-skating with her family and subjects) rejects him at the start of the film, Wenlock turns her parents and subjects to stone. He threatens to not restore them if she does not recapitulate in three days. Though determined to save them, Annika hesitates to comply. Thus, the film shows that her dilemma is justified as both choices will perpetuate violence against her. Extending the rape metaphor, we can compare this with feminist discourses on how sexual consent is invalid under coercion. Brietta, who had rejected him before, reveals to Annika that he transformed her into a Pegasus in retaliation—literally robbing her of humanity for rejecting him. And the women who do accept Wenlock’s suit, as the film shows, fare no better: he transformed his three former wives into goblins who must obey him. The goblins cower as he forces them to perform gendered, domestic chores, implying that Wenlock would not only have been an abusive husband to the princesses, but would also disregard their royal power by forcing them into domestic roles. Brietta and Annika were wise to reject him.

Orr Vered and Maizonniaux further decry Barbie films for failing to illustrate and criticise patriarchal structures. However, by using simple visual cues for its young audience, Magic of Pegasus constructs contrasting paradigms of power along masculine and feminine lines which can be interpreted as models of a patriarchal system versus a feminist alternative. Wenlock’s masculine world reflects the ugly traits of its leader’s patriarchal power. His lair is a grimy cave in a mountainside, lit with an unnatural and sinister green glow. His own wand is dark and thorny, capable of performing any wickedness he desires. Even his winged mythical animal of choice juxtaposes the Pegasus of the feminine world: a griffin, with dark feathers and dangerous talons. With its masculine colours and threatening aura, Wenlock’s world can be read as a reconstruction of the patriarchal system that abuses power and violates women.

Contrastingly, the princesses and the Cloud Queen with whom they seek refuge belong to a world of pastel colours and beautiful ornaments. Indeed, they are the royal leaders of this world, wielding power that is defined as feminine. Unlike Wenlock’s lair, the Cloud Queen’s palace floats on a pink-lit cumulus bed in the sky, its soaring ceilings illuminated with beautiful warm light. Brietta’s Pegasus form has a pastel pink coat. The colours of the Wand of Light, the sisters’ new instrument of power, are sourced from the same palette. Moreover, they construct the wand by performing valorous deeds, and can only access its power through kindness. By comparing how these two worlds have been designed and what they represent, the film clearly aligns Wenlock’s masculine/patriarchal world with violence, whereas the sisters’ and Cloud Queen’s world presents a feminine alternative based on their goodness. Indeed, the film pointedly denigrates the patriarchal world as evil. At the very least, this text is more critical of men’s roles than the ancient sources for its titular Pegasus.

Pegasus in Barbie and the classics

But what is Pegasus doing in a Barbie film? Other than Brietta, there appears to be little other reference to the classics. However, the ancient Pegasus’ origins provide a link to some of the Magic of Pegasus’ feminist themes. The Pegasus myths focused on masculine questing. Most famously, the winged stallion was tamed by the hero Bellerophon, whom Pegasus bore on his quest to kill the Chimaera. Pegasus also transported Bellerophon to his fights against the Amazons and Solymi. Other versions of the myth also depict him retiring to Olympus, bringing Zeus thunder and lightning.

This butch transport animal does not make an easy transition to the winged mare that Brietta becomes after Wenlock curses her. Brietta’s Pegasus form represents the disempowerment and dehumanisation she had suffered under Wenlock. Where the classical Pegasus enabled the pursuit of kleos through the hero’s quest and reinforced the corresponding patriarchal norms of the era, Brietta’s Pegasus form represents her victimhood at the hands—or hoofs—of the patriarchal system Wenlock embodies.

One scene exemplifies Brietta’s resistance to her equine form. Annika and Brietta reunite in the Cloud Kingdom, and the latter explains how she became a Pegasus. As Brietta gazes into a mirror, she sees the reflection of her Pegasus shimmer and transform back into her old human self. As one form fades into the other, the film asserts that despite a physical change Brietta’s fundamental identity has remained the same since her transformation. This scene is a powerful symbol of her yearning to regain the humanity that still lingers inside. It exemplifies how the film positions the Pegasus as Brietta’s prison, its bars wrought out of male abuse.

So how does this relate to the ancient Pegasus? For one, Bellerophon tamed and bridled Pegasus, subjugating the stallion to his masculine pursuit. But Pegasus’ entrapment does not quite have the gendered nuances of Brietta’s. Pegasus, after all, was male. And Pegasus’ disempowerment saw a change in function not form, where Brietta’s change in form signalled a loss of humanity. Pegasus, moreover, seems to have little cause in mythology to protest his situation; though tamed, he is not abused and leads an exciting life for a horse. This similarity does not fully answer why the film chose to combine Pegasus with a specifically feminist outlook.

One could argue that a more fitting horse-based mythological creature for this girl’s film would be the unicorn, which has a famous affinity with maidens. We are still left with the Pegasus. And to say that this reception of Pegasus is inaccurate and accuse the filmmakers of not reading the original texts is reductive. Barthes has long asserted the “death of the author”, arguing that critics should read texts for more than their creators’ intentions.As Goldhill states, there is no direct genealogy from ancient text to modern reception, but an inspirational collage of other receptions, translations, and theoretical frameworks. So, I will read the film’s Pegasus as part of a “chain of receptions”on the Pegasus myth: namely, his conception and birth.

Where the ancient Pegasus’ own connections to feminism may be difficult to divine, the task becomes easier when we consider his mother Medusa. Famed in myth for being the terrifying monster who transformed men to stone with her gaze, Medusa’s reception has veered from misogynistic to feminist in the last century alone. As Currie states, “On the one hand, she becomes […] the helpless maiden, the threat of castration, and the dangerous seductress, while on the other she is the Mother, the rape victim, and the voice of feminist rage.” Hélène Cixous’s 1975 essay “The Laugh of the Medusa” (Le Rire de la Méduse) was the first to reappropriate her as a feminist symbol. The essay called women to arms (or pens), encouraging them to write their own narratives instead of relying on men. Men, after all, had corrupted Medusa’s story. And, as Cixous asserts, the real Medusa isn’t a monster: “she’s beautiful and she’s laughing.” Women writers answered her call. In 1977, Ann Stanford published the poem “Medusa”, using the titular character’s voice to recount her experiences of rape and baseless punishment, embodying within her the female rage of second-wave feminism.

Certainly, this feminist identification hinges on Medusa’s story as Ovid recounts it in his Metamorphoses. Although Hesiod locates her and Poseidon’s union in a “soft meadow amid spring flowers,” a lush and romantic setting with no hint of the untoward, Ovid baldly states that Poseidon raped her in Athena’s temple. For this desecration, Athena punished the once-beautiful Gorgon by turning her hair into snakes. Moreover, Medusa’s story is told by her killer Perseus, robbing her of ownership over her own narrative. Undoubtedly, Ovid and his antecedents who had contributed to Medusa’s myth lived in a rape culture which had no interest in rescuing her from the cruelty she suffers from patriarchal forces. Ovid does not think to question that Athena punishes Medusa though it was Poseidon who perpetrated the rape. But it is no surprise that second-wavers rallied around Ovid’s Medusa, reading within her story the crimes they fought against: sexual violence, unjust punishment, and the loss of control over their stories.

However, all our versions of Pegasus’ birth are the same: he and his brother Chrysaor were born from the wound where Perseus decapitated Medusa. Combining Ovid’s version of Pegasus’ conception with the general myth of his birth, Pegasus was conceived by and born out of violence against a woman. More so than his human-shaped brother, Pegasus bears the imprint of his father Poseidon. The genetic likeness between Pegasus and his parents is admittedly inconsistent, but Poseidon was the god of horses as well as the sea. As a winged horse, Pegasus is stamped with the emblem of his mother’s rapist.

The legacy of male violence

Thus, Pegasus in both Magic of Pegasus and the ancient myths functions as more than an animal of quest. He symbolises the legacy of male violence against women. In the film, Brietta’s Pegasus form is a lasting reminder of how Wenlock dehumanised her when she rejected him. She yearns without end for her true human form. And a survey of the myths about Pegasus and their receptions reveals that he is the product of his mother Medusa’s rape, born from her decapitation. Taking a form that represents his father Poseidon, he bears the likeness of her rapist and his very existence is a living reminder of her violation and murder.

Moreover, the women from both texts are punished despite their innocence. Brietta is the victim of a rape culture which rejects women’s agency to consent. Medusa is punished by Athena for her rape by Poseidon and turned into a monster—then punished again with death by Perseus with Athena’s help. Both women exemplify the existence of patriarchal systems which entitle men at the cost of women.

Medusa’s decapitated head adorns forevermore the shield of Athena, protecting with her petrifying glare the goddess who so relentlessly pursued her doom. However, Magic of Pegasus shifts Medusa’s “monstrous” properties of petrification to Wenlock, who becomes the real monster of the tale. Moreover, for Annika and Brietta, the film provides feminist salvation that counters Medusa’s dire end in the myths. Together, the sisters construct the Wand of Light to reverse Wenlock’s spells. It acts, then, as a conductor of feminist power and deconstructs the harm of the patriarchal system. Annika uses it to first break Brietta’s curse, freeing her from the prison of Wenlock’s making and resurrecting her humanity again. Where Medusa’s equine child lived on after her, Brietta is no longer doomed to bear that symbol of male violence.

In the film’s dénouement, Annika loses the wand in her struggle against Wenlock and it ends up in the hands of the three goblin-wives. While Wenlock demands that they hand it to him, Annika promises, upon learning of his abuse, to use it to “save us all… All of us”. The wives, accustomed to obeying Wenlock, hesitate but make a bid for their own freedom when they capitulate and throw the wand to Annika. Thus, the film reflects that patriarchal systems can be destroyed when women work together for their freedom. In Annika’s hands, the wand works its magic: the petrified people are restored, and the trappings of Wenlock’s power are destroyed too. His magic and the symbolic livery of his patriarchal world are stripped away. Wenlock’s griffin becomes a cat, his wand becomes a paddle, his stone palace falls apart, and a high-angle shot compounds Wenlock’s own powerlessness as he is transformed into a stooped, balding man. In a role reversal, his wives regain their human forms and give him a taste of his own medicine.

The final shots of the film show young girls skating gleefully in the Cloud Kingdom. Where Wenlock before had confronted Annika when she too had been skating, the girls’ insouciance reflects the newfound freedom that will be passed onto future generations of women who no longer have to fear him, thanks to the sisters. This triumphalist ending gives hope that feminism can dismantle abusive patriarchal structures when people support the cause of women and actively turn against the cruel systems they have been accustomed to follow. The ancient world could not afford to give Medusa this ending. But the generations of feminists who preceded this film have made it possible for Brietta and Annika to bring male violence to justice.

Barbie reconsidered

Magic of Pegasus bears the implications of feminist critique on its franchise. This essay does not want to dismiss the work of past feminists, and defend the Barbie brand of familiar charges: that Barbie prioritises an unattainable standard of appearance to girls, that the brand only embraces hyperfeminine expressions of gender, and that it is a capitalist institution more interested in money than women’s rights. But it is limiting to not consider how the franchise has developed alongside the new waves of feminist thought, and actively tried to address past concerns. Moreover, it is limiting to not consider Barbie as many young girls—her target audience—do.

I have re-examined Orr Vered and Maizonniaux’s claims that the Barbie films indoctrinate young women with postfeminist pedagogy by analysing the reception of Greek mythology in Magic of Pegasus. This study has revealed that the film’s narrative, though simplistic for the sake of its young audience, is more up to date with feminist discourse than our critics have claimed. It engages with contemporary feminist issues of rape culture, contrasts paradigms of patriarchal and feminist power, and even criticises the former paradigm. The film characterises Brietta as more than a transport animal by creating sympathy for her. In fact, her form becomes symbolic of how Wenlock’s masculine violence dehumanised her. Though the ancient Pegasus and this Brietta bear little resemblance, Pegasus’ mother Medusa in certain versions of the myths was also an innocent victim of male violence at the hands of Poseidon and Perseus—versions that later feminist receptions latched onto. Pegasus, the product of her rape, is the product of the violence Medusa faced, just as Brietta’s Pegasus form is the product of her own experience of patriarchal violence. This film’s reception of the classical Pegasus, in fact, brings a nuanced new interpretation of the creature: Pegasus is the outcome of male violence inflicted against women.

Did the filmmakers intend to convey this aspect of Pegasus? Would the child audience of this film recognise its classical aspects? That is unknowable. But we can reflect on how classical stories take on their own lives after antiquity. For the girls watching it, Pegasus will become forever associated with Brietta’s fight for liberation from Wenlock’s curse.

Magic of Pegasus demonstrates that the curse of patriarchal coercion and violation can be broken as the Wand of Light, symbolic of women’s power, sheds her Pegasus form and restores her humanity. This is an eventuality that the female victim of the ancient myths, Medusa, would never have dreamed of seeing. For the girl audience, the film inspires them to tackle evil systems of male dominance. Even now, the reality that modern feminists face is not always so easy or ideal. However, without media like this to inspire young girls, perhaps they would not be so motivated as adults to embrace women’s rights.