Miah Week 9 - Barbie and Gentrification

 Barbie and Gentrification

        This title may seem a little unbalanced to you at first, but I promise it's related. I know "Barbie" is two syllables and "gentrification" is five, so if you put their word weights on a scale it would end up horrendously uneven. I know you're thinking that. If you aren't, you're definitely at least considering it now that I said something, but I swear that these topics are connected.

        A bit ago, I watched Barbie: Princess Charm School with my little brother. The commoner protagonist, calling herself Blair Willows even though we all know she's actually just Barbie, gets a scholarship to—you guessed it—a school that trains princesses into their poised and precise Mattel molds. It's a very entertaining movie overall, and if you ignore the mildly racist stereotyping, Camp Rock talent show-esque music, and that one British woman that only exists to give speeches in a special accent, it's easily the best movie of 2011. Why? The introduction of gentrification.

        Gentrification is, in essence, when rich people start moving themselves into poor neighborhoods and displace the people living there. They refurbish it for tourism and luxury and don't seem to care at all about the homelessness and crime rates they're actively contributing to. In Princess Charm School, the antagonist attempts to do just that. She has a plan to bulldoze where Blair lives to make room for industrial buildings and architecture intended for the wealthy. Even from the very beginning, she's portrayed as a classist villain that preys on everyone's downfall (which classists tend to do). Princess Charm School may not be the perfect movie, but it has a theme, and it definitely delivers on that. It may be surprising to new children that gentrification is bad. It may be surprising to you, too, if you previously thought that it was ethical before reading this.

        It isn't. It ruins lives. Mattel did what other companies didn't want to do, and actively taught kids that these practices are immoral.

        It also taught kids that murder happens too, but surprisingly doesn't have much of a stance on it. I'm pretty sure both the hero and villain side of this movie contemplate murder at least once, even if the latter is the only one that goes through with it. (Which, if you've seen Princess Charm School, you may already know that the murder plot was suspiciously casual. The evil woman admits to killing her sister and attempting to kill that sister's daughter live on air, and the crowd reacts as though they got some mildly bad news. She could have said "Guys, the appetizer course at this coronation tasted kind of bad" and everyone would have had the same reaction. It was a little shocking, but I will support anything in the name of comedy.)

        What have you learned to do from children's media like Barbie? Or, alternatively, what have you learned not to?

        Peace out, and remember that the rich having unbarred control over the quality of life of the poor is dystopian in nature.