Things Only Adults Notice About Ken

Many people were skeptical when it was first announced that a live-action Barbie movie was on the way. But now that the world has seen it, to say that people are pleasantly surprised by it would be an understatement. It's already breaking records, and critics love it — in fact, they love it only slightly less than rival film "Oppenheimer," which is, by most accounts, a masterpiece. There has already been buzz about a sequel, as well as a Ken-focused spin-off. 

Speaking of Ken, what would a Barbie movie be without her longtime friend/boyfriend/whatever he is playing a key role? That confusion over what Ken is to Barbie is one of the main conflicts of the film, as Ken struggles to both figure out what he means to her, and who he is without her. The poor guy even thinks his full name is "And Ken," as evidenced by his mugshot photo after he and Barbie get arrested in the real world. 

But just as the movie seeks to prove that there's more to Barbie than her blonde hair, hourglass figure, and pink décor, there is also a lot more to Ken in "Barbie" than what you see on the surface. While the Kens — played by Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, John Cena, and various other actors — can be enjoyed as characters on a purely comedic, surface-based level, adults will definitely be able to dig a little deeper and appreciate him even more.

While there seems to be at least a little bit of body diversity among the Barbies in the movie, the Kens are all pretty stereotypical in that they're uniformly thin, chiseled, and — in a detail that is easy to miss — completely devoid of body hair. It's most apparent with the two main Kens, played by Ryan Gosling and Simu Liu, given how often their bare chests are visible. But it can also be seen (or not seen) on the arms and legs of all the other Kens, with no visible hair to be found despite the fact that some of these actors surely must have some arm, leg, and/or chest hair in real life.

Sure enough, Liu confirmed to Allure that he had to have his body waxed two different times while filming "Barbie" to ensure that smooth, hairless look. But that's not all that went into making the actors look like human-sized Ken dolls. "We had to look glossy and plastic and there was a lot of body paint applied every single day," Liu explained. Younger viewers wouldn't necessarily have thought twice about all that perfect skin lacking in body hair, but those who have a few more years on them certainly found themselves wondering how all these adult men — some who are 40-plus — could look so smooth and shiny. 

Barbie and Ken learn most of the same truths about the real world, only they absorb the information in almost exactly opposite ways. Barbie is disappointed to see that she hadn't fixed feminism and that the world is in fact still a patriarchy, while Ken couldn't be more thrilled to learn that there is a place where men rule instead of women. While exploring Los Angeles on his own, Ken stumbles into a building where multiple screens are showing visuals of masculinity throughout the years, and becomes especially fixated on one recurring figure in that montage — Sylvester Stallone.

After that, Ken bases much of what it means to be a man on both Stallone himself and the characters he plays. "Rocky" clearly makes a major impression on him, as he is seen inexplicably wearing boxing gloves at one point when he first arrives back in Barbieland after being transformed by what he saw in the real world. Ken's obsession with horses as a sign of masculinity could also be connected to Rocky Balboa's nickname, "The Italian Stallion." But most blatant is the white fur coat that Ken comes to wear for a long stretch of the movie, modeled after a similar coat that Stallone is seen wearing in the aforementioned montage. Stallone was known to don extravagant fur coats in the '80s, helping to popularize them as a statement of not only hyper-masculinity but also wealth and success.

The opening scenes of "Barbie" show how all of the Barbies in Barbieland are BFFs. They all love each other, respect each other, and celebrate each other's success. While that mostly seems true for the Kens as well, Beach Ken (Gosling) and Tourist Ken (Liu) seem to have a pretty bitter rivalry. Much of it stems from them competing for the attention of Stereotypical Barbie (Robbie), but it also just seems like they simply don't like each other very much, even apart from anything Barbie-related.

How do you settle a dispute in Barbieland? It's later established that weapons don't exist there, and the Kens don't exactly seem like the type to get into vicious physical altercations. So it's suggested that they have a beach-off, which sounds innocent enough — until phrases like "I'll beach you off" and "nobody's getting beached off" start getting thrown around.

Sounds a little like they are saying something else, doesn't it? There are only a few gags in "Barbie" that are meant to elicit chuckles from the adults while soaring well over the heads of children, and the whole concept of getting "beached off" is perhaps the dirtiest of them all. That a snippet of it was included in some of the trailers was definitely meant as an indication that a little bit of grown-up naughtiness was going to be snuck into this PG-13 movie.

In order to take control of Barbieland back over from the Kens, the Barbies have to be reprogrammed back to their original selves from the meek, subservient women that they've been turned into. In one of the movie's funniest sequences, this is accomplished by having the already-fixed Barbies pretend to need reassurance about their looks, or have something mansplained to them, or some other such form of stereotypical girly helplessness that no Ken doll would be able to resist giving his full attention to.

There are some obvious ploys, like the Barbie that pretends she never saw "The Godfather" and needs a Ken to watch it with her and explain the entire movie to her as they go. But one of the more obscure ones has a Ken explaining to a Barbie the role that Stephen Malkmus played in the evolution of rock 'n' roll in relation to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. Most know Reed and his former band, but only those with a love of '90s indie music will recognize Malkmus as the frontman for celebrated rock group Pavement, whose biggest mainstream success occurred in the early-to-mid-'90s — and even then, they never exactly lit up the charts. 

Malkmus responded to the shout-out in an Instagram story, initially teasing that he was going to get his lawyers involved but saying the band is "pro-Greta {Gerwig]," while seeming to appreciate the mention.

"Barbie" is absolutely jam-packed with references to pop culture, especially films, ranging from biggies like "The Wizard of Oz" all the way down to obscure French New Wave films. But there is one scene in particular that is almost entirely based on another sequence from a different movie. It's far beyond a mere Easter egg or background reference and instead is an outright love letter to the film that inspired it.

Though the big song and dance battle between the Kens initially starts on the beach, they are all soon magically transported to a dream-like space of blues and pinks, with everyone dressed all in black. While some have suggested that the outfits recall what Danny Zuko (John Travolta) wears in much of "Grease" — a scene from which is also briefly shown during that masculinity montage — the whole scene is a much more obvious tribute to the iconic dream ballet sequence from "Singin' in the Rain." Released in 1952, the legendary musical is older than both Ken and Barbie, and is certainly one of the oldest pieces of pop culture history that "Barbie" puts so much time and effort into paying homage to. 

Stellar reviews and billion-dollar box office receipts are plenty of proof that most moviegoers have found "Barbie" to be a delight. However, a vocal minority has criticized the film for being anti-man. But what Gerwig and her partner in life and screenwriting, Noah Baumbach, are really doing is using Barbieland as a thought experiment. The plastic utopia (at least from the Barbies' perspective) is an exaggerated (but in ways, still sanitized) version of the past, albeit one with gender roles reversed. While Barbies are self-possessed and can be anything, Ken exists solely in relation to Barbie when we meet him (that's why his mug shot says "and Ken"), and none of the Kens own property or have professions.

"Barbie" isn't just getting allegorical about the patriarchy; it's also saying something meta about the way protagonists and their romantic partners are often depicted on TV and in movies. At the outset, Ken is playing the role of the underdeveloped significant other. He has no interests (other than beach and Barbie) and no real personality traits (other than jealousy of other Kens). This role is almost always reserved for a girlfriend or wife. However, all too frequently, sidelined female characters stay sidelined without fully fleshed out B-plots of their own. Proof that "Barbie" has fairness to the opposite sex in mind: Ken gets the best arc. He becomes the villain, but is redeemed at the end when Barbie helps him to self-actualize. 

Barbie doesn't invite Ken to accompany her on her mystical journey to the nation of California and the state of Los Angeles. But Ken stows away in the backseat of her car because he doesn't want to look uncool in front of Simu Liu's Ken (at which point, Barbie assures Ken that he's worried for nothing; Ken is not cool). He begs her to let him come. He brought his rollerblades, and if there's a beach, he reasons she'll need a professional. Barbie acquiesces and allows him to tag along, but she makes him stay in the backseat. 

From there, Barbie and Ken use various modes of transportation (all of which have previously been sold as toy sets) to get to Venice Beach. The montage closely resembles Buddy's trek to New York City in "Elf," as Barbie's reality transitions into our reality. But whether he's in a boat, on a rocket, or straddling a jet ski, Ken is always relegated to the back. Even on his return journey without Barbie along for the ride, Ken can still be seen barely holding on to the rear of the spaceship and peddling on the backseat of a tandem bike. This visual joke has deeper psychological meaning: Ken, not Barbie, is putting himself in the number two position. 

Barbie's biggest high-concept joke is that Ken discovers patriarchy in the real world ... and thinks it's awesome. But that larger comedic premise is full of smaller hilarious details that drive home the point. What astonishes Ken about Century City in particular is that men don't just fill most if not all of the seats of power, but they command respect. Men are on the money. As he ascends an escalator, he's bombarded with Jumbotron images that lionize men like Bill Clinton. In the lobby, he observes a man in a suit dismissively wave a finger at his executive assistant, and mimics the move as if practicing it for later. What's funniest about Ken's concept of patriarchy, however, is how superficial and nonsensical it is, especially when it comes to feeling respected himself. 

While on the school grounds, a mother asks him if he knows what time it is. He replies, "You respect me," before emphatically declaring that he does not know what time it is (the woman and her daughter politely scurry off in the opposite direction). Back in Barbieland (or Ken-dom), when Barbie — with Gloria and Sasha in tow — confronts him for the first time, he's wearing not one, not two, but three wrist watches. It's a goofy sight gag, as is the rest of Ken's ensemble, but the idea that he thinks more watches equal more respect is pretty amusing and in keeping with his character. 

At first glance, Ken-dom might seem like a generic male paradise. Like a man cave turned into a fantasy society, Ken-dom has masculine-looking recliners, mini-fridges stocked with brewski beers, and movies like "The Godfather" playing on demand. But upon closer inspection, Ken-dom is a surface-level reflection of everything Ken experienced in the real world, as well as another homage to "The Wizard of Oz," one of Gerwig's major sources of inspiration. 

Besides the fact that Ken's beloved horses have become such a significant symbol, Ken-dom replaces Barbie's pink convertibles with bulky silver SUVs. Ken first sees SUVs in Los Angeles, where he calls them "truck cars" and admits to himself that he wants one. The many huge LED screens that decorated LA's office buildings lead Ken to conclude that one TV isn't enough. The refurnished dreamhouses are outfitted with almost too many oversized televisions to count, mounted on every available surface. Ken notices real world muscle-y men working out together, and installs equipment like pull-up bars throughout Barbieland. 

Ken-dom is meant to be funny to us, but for Barbie, it has to be foreboding. One way we get that message is that Ken uses a black cloud of skywriting to spell "Ken-dom" where the word "Barbieland" used to be. The Wicked Witch of the West, who tried to take over Oz, wrote "Surrender Dorothy" in similar lettering.