tv Arts Unveiled Deutsche Welle July 25, 2023 8:30am-9:01am CEST
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the culture information, this is the the news w. mine's the letters to us. that's why we listen to their stories. reporter every weekend on dw, the high barbie. she's iconic and inspirational. it's really important that so many little girls can see the of the to every she's a role model and an object of hate. she stores debates around empowerment,
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especially with beauty and insanity. due to body associated with good, biologically, impossible to survive. and she is so much more then adult if the toys you're playing with don't look anything like you. then what does that telling you? in 2023 body is brought to life in a wild and quirky comedy, directed by a feminist filmmaker of all people, dis barbie still matter today. and did she ever the for over 60 years barbie hasn't body the american beauty, ideal athletics, super slim, blond, her biographer. yes. barbie has a biography. put it like this book or the teaches women what for better or worse is
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expected of them in society. but who would come up with such an idea the one in the created barbie and sort of, you know, infused her with her very progressive ideas was, was a trailblazer and a feminist. it might come as a surprise. the barbie was actually a german invention long legs, big eyes and a blond pony to barbie's ancestor lily were high hills and skimpy clothes. she was born in the 1950s as a cartoon character for the tabloid newspapers bid. soon the drawing became a 3 dimensional door looking more like a pin up then a children's choice for in perfectly shape little dolls. in this case, better suited to own the children and the traditional toys that in durham back. the dog was also sold in switzerland where a fateful encounter took place in about 1956. my husband, i took
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a vacation with my daughter, barbara, and my son kemp. and we were in switzerland and there was a display that i saw. these adults dall, it was exactly the kind of dell that toy entrepreneur ruth handler wanted for her daughter when she could not only play money with, but one for which she could dream up and exciting life when she could, wow, the barbie is single, childless, and confident in 1959, that was a very modern image of a woman. root handler was way ahead of her time. so it's,
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you know, 5060 is very, very conservative. when barbie's being invented, bruce handler was a jewish feminist. who was working at a very young age and she was working at paramount pictures as a teenager, driving around, she picked up the guy that she liked. elliot handler who she wound up marrying. she proposed to him from then on. lily was renamed barbie after their daughter barbara, but handlers company wouldn't buy the rights to the lily don't until 1964, 300000 barbie sold in the 1st year. and the goal is still one of the best selling toys in the world. barbie laid the foundation for the successive mattel's which built an entire universe around her get. it wasn't until 64 years later that barbie came to life on the big screen circle them. and then there's can go to
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a beautiful man for a beautiful woman since 1961. barbie has had an infinitely loyal and therefore rather boring partner with a mustache on 10 and make believe he's a bad or side and please the you this don't to was named after one of the handler children, their son can from now on can will be barbie. sidekick the guy in her long pink shadow. i'm coming with you. did you bring your roll of weight? i literally go nowhere without them. although he tries to keep up with barbie's fashion, he always makes a slightly underwhelming impression. and let's face it can doesn't stand a chance against barbie's glamour. barbie never married. it was only the voice of
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and it was the accessory. barbie was always the star. a woman who doesn't have to get married and doesn't have to have kids and has their own great house and has their own great car. and i think has their own airplane at this point and are on the boat. and you know, gets to be with can when she needs a date but then doesn't need and most of the time i think that's i think it's pretty cool. no 2 hours. number 2, i have to use the search unix job in say it has to be said really makes the headlines bought in 1993 the earring magic kendall triggered one of the few ken controversies with his fishing net shirt, leather waist coat and jewelry. this can proved unexpectedly popular with
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a gated community before mattel's took the dog off the shelves to progressive for the kids rooms. after all, ken does have one small flaw, at least as a dom, and it's something that women or barbie should be aware of and she has no genitalia, oops. and why is that? i'm actually not sure the was waste atomic breasts and less legs. let's be honest, who looks like that. even doctor say not all organs would fit into bobby's body for breasts would be so heavy in real life that you would have to crawl on all fours. some it is say she's not a suitable toy for little kids. and those feet barbie
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is everything we didn't want to be and were told to be with us. not all for many, some of this in the western world. body embodies an image of a woman that is meant to perform bobby eastward as barbie's. maybe not the norm, but already a step in the construction of this norm of the young white, then non disabled body, which is ready for action in a capitalist world. because the fit body also stands for the performing body, which you can do what you want with my kind of as my most of the problem is. barbie stands for a beauty standard that can put pressure on young girls who then start themselves in order not to become overweight and to look as beautiful and perfect as their barbie doll. their scientific research to support this i think that the barbie brown is still fundamentally tied up in the really unhealthy
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ideal femininity of what it means to be an attractive woman and a good woman, a wherever you want. and, and, you know, i think by talking change by disclosed and they can change the packaging and they could make her body moderately more realistic. but i'm just not sure that there is escape being, you know, that history. and that when you're putting these dolls in the hands of those little girls around the world, it, there is a message there. and that message is, you know, this is some kind of ideal yet despite all the criticism barbie continue to sell really well. but then battelle made a mistake in the early ninety's, it released up talking barbie. 6 and now barbie was also certified stupid. that was one step too far for the bar, the liberation organizations which took
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a subversively ironic look at the downtrodden dog as well as her male counterpart g . i. joe. both toys replicated stereotypes. the so i worked with a bunch of people, 1st transplanting the voice boxes and barbies and joe's and asking friends around the country to join the organization and send the toys in. so they could be operated on and sent back to be put back on store shelves. and so, um they were sold again for christmas, you know, to a bunch of unsuspecting people. i don't need my voice to a g i do cuz they want to be free to they were sick and tired of of being a sort of a, you know, being stereotypical. they were, they wanted to do things that were different and unique's just like many of us do. and so they were billed against the company that made them they
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made the national news another holiday shock, this one under some christmas trees. why r g? i joe and barbie talking like each other. yeah, joe wants a friend to come along to the dance. no, but everybody else seem to really like it. that was really the big surprise. isn't most people who saw this thing, we're kind of in favor of the barbie liberation organization because once you see the toys doing what they do with the voice to switch, it becomes obvious. what's wrong with them. we have a g i, joe. and um, let me see what he says. yeah, i loved the planner party with skipper on the weekend.
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ultimately, the team to authority was a flop. the regardless barbie's success story continued, especially that of the original, don't white, blonde, and extremely slim. barbie's fans might argue that the pretty little dog wasn't stupidly waiting for prince charming, but works for a living from an early age and not as a secretary either. she's a doctor, a dancer, a dentist, a pilots, or even a president. whatever the job, of course, she has the perfect outfit for it. i think it's simple. i think it's you could be anything you can be anything you want to be. you don't have to follow. you don't have to be a mommy taken care of. little babies, you don't have to get married. you don't have to have your father or your husband supporting you. you could support yourself, you could do anything you want. you could have one of hundreds of careers. you
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could have your own place, you could have your own car, you could have a fun, wonderful, amazing life. you want can call these there, if not thrown under the bed and you know, so i could role with your science as girlfriend to know a clever message by the toy giant mattel's. now they're saying we want to inspire and empower girls. that's why famous women are being immortalized as barbie dolls. the painter frida kahlo the astronomer maggie aaron polka the primate researcher and environmental as jane goodall. even the recently departed british queen has a party the n. hey barbie looks just like the astronaut samantha christopher, ready. it's a great promotional tube i'mma tell with a simple message, girls can go to outer space to the. so i do think the company has
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it's the leech side to shift to barbie, is to reflect what parents want for their daughters. and for what young girls kind of see and understand as normal and not outdated, but i do think you know, battelle and barbie are always but a couple of cases behind the . okay. okay. barbie is running a bit behind the zach guys. but the zeitgeist is running behind her to this painting of barbie by andy warhol, is fitting consumption is exalted as high art. premier likeness turned into a spectacle. other art is to use barbie as raw material to play with the stereotypes associated with the toy artist dina goldstein takes a series of photographs that show barbie and ken living together both dreaming but not about each other. about
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a different hod guide. and then there's this, an unsuspecting barbie catching can in bed with a man, a very different kind of dream house. no one has as many barbies as german collector bettina dolph months, who owns over 18000, making it into the guinness world records. when museums in tokyo, las vegas or berlin want to put on a barbie exhibit, they usually get their dolls from digital dor barbie and fashion are inseparable. even world famous designers like karl lagerfeld and will she know have dressed the blonde all or become a barbie themselves. but this one is not at all, but everyone can afford the code of barbie also produces some bizarre, a phenomenon. some people are willing to do anything including pay millions to look like barbie. that's what you call devotion the. and then there are
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also men who would like to look like ken rodrigo olivers has undergone several procedures to accomplish the look. now going by the name of jessica, she wants to be barbie instead of calling all the one of the barbies, ken's and dream house fanatics, the movie has also produced some real estate and it's available to rent on air b and b. the 1968 the year that civil rights leader, martin luther king, was assassinated, was the time of severe racial discrimination in the usa. the 1st african american barbie was introduced. her name was christie, and she was mattel's statement to the moment. yes, black is beautiful, but christie wasn't exactly the same as barbie. mattel's narrative is one thing
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where they are very progressive with introducing a black friend for barbie through our lives, through the story in which we enter it. you know, of the black woman lands law that feels progressive for them. it feels less progressive for us in the sense of, um, for 21 years, there was a, a black passion, dog, worthy of the barbie brand name. materia davis made a documentary about the history of black barbie. her aunt was one of the women at mattel's who convinced ruth handler to expand barbie's universe for the inclusion of african american girls. so the lack of black dolls for them. um, once they started to see them, then they want to like, oh, i love them, you know, that's all they ever really wanted when they were little worried. pretty black dolls, the, you know,
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the 1st black barbie goes on sale in 1980 finalize the black bar be represents the dall, like represents my aunt and katie, black perkins and the other black employees. let's tell being seen it's like validation of being seen and heard. but black barbie is nowhere near as popular as her blond sister the, even in some african countries. little girls prefer to play with a pretty little white dog. the on that square a nigerian entrepreneur steps in my those are, which was around 3. you don't see asked me and you said that the what color of mine and i'm like okay, i know you know the answer and then she had
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a long phase and i was like, why? um, she said, well, i wish i was right. i'm thinking, why would you think, why would you wish you were why it says old cars? white is pretty. how could any father not feel sad hearing that. tell say go cool. yeah. got active and launched a new line of black dolls in nigeria in 2007 the queens of africa. i'm just trying to say no, it's more of them beauty. you need to have much more, you know, and also saying that note that i could have my head straight. i have my head curly, i can have it in black. it's my dignity. so i am, you know, i'm, that was a message that was behind, you know, the queens of africa, the queens of africa now corner of the don't market, at least in nigeria, they're affordable. and they're also african with natural hair styles and dressed in color full traditional patterns don't the people from
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nigeria and other african countries can identify with you start to play. and if i'm able to get, you know, a child's life, my portal, like what that product stands for, i'm that put on, should be able to enlighten and teach them something out. the we've said that before, battelle is trying to keep up with the times. and that means greater diversity. now barbie can be lots of different things like muslim a chinese chemo therapy in a wheelchair with a prosthetic leg barbie, you can have down syndrome. finally, there's a curvy barby, which is technically an average size the
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can i just put in to be leaving. the studies now show that even when forms of objectification are meant to be positive to complement women's appearances, for instance, that still tells girls ok it's all about my looks that's and that can make them see themselves as object setup. obviously when it comes to barbie's marketing and the way the products are portrayed, i still see only minimal attempts to break away from this intense focus on appearances. which lies at the core of this damaging marketing concept. so you need focus of this. i still have to comment the entries to can from do some sheet vision, but guess which barbie is still the best seller. battelle does have an image to consider. thrilled to see it, but i still think it's chord, it's roots. the bar, the brand is a pretty anti salmon s, you know, pretty uh,
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helpful, ideal for us. and i would bet that a lot of women of my generation, i'm not getting their daughters barbie's the. so i think that the fact that mattel's is willing to keep reinventing and rethinking and re imagining, i think, is a good thing. so the focus is no longer on being skinny or, you know, going to beach parties. the focus is on, you know, the, the dolls that are modeled after a famous scientist and, you know, can this doctor's and famous designer so. so i think that there's been a little bit of a shift in terms of um, even the advertising the but try as they might to adapt barbie's to realize many young customers go from loving to hating barbie's. the use of for
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reasons who are like 5 years old in 2005, there were media reports of a strange phenomenon in the united kingdom, numerous cases of barbie dolls, getting tortured came to light. the renowned bath university published a report that girls between the age of 6 and 10 were torturing their barbies in every way imaginable, or even completely destroying them. the researchers found that the girls thought their barbies were useless, but it's not a new phenomenon. here's a little kid, i would cut the noses off my barbies and cut the hair off. and um, as i said, instead of changing the clothes on the tiny don dolls, i would change their heads and i met a psychologist and she was actually a sex therapist named dr. helen senior kaplan. and at one point when we started talking and i told her what i did to my barbara, she said, that's why you're healthy now because she took out all the aggression on your dolls . so you know, play when you're playing as a kid,
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i think taking your aggression out as is, is probably a good thing to do. susan shapiro still has her childhood barbie's. she even wrote a book for barbie's 60th anniversary. so don't worry. barbie still had a purpose for many the nothing lasts forever, even if barbie lives her best life. but where does she end up? that's right in the trash. they say 3 barbie dolls are sold every 2nd and that really adds up. but mattel's wouldn't pass up an opportunity to bolster its posit of image. in 2021. it launched a barbie made of 90 percent recycled plastic. barbie loves the ocean. the problem is that you can only recycle plastic 2 times maximum 3. so those toys that are harming already been recycled, ones are going to end up disintegrating,
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just like the rest of their plastic toys. and so it doesn't get rid of the problem . recycling is part of the problem. recycling is green washing when it comes in plastic, still use it. give that some thought 40 you can go back to your regular life, or you can know the truth about the universe choice. the 1st one, the high you you have to want to know. okay. do it again, the intranet girl weeks film. barbie land is a candy colored paradise with no deaf aging or getting frowned, which then barbie become so human the best they ever it is the best day ever. so is yesterday and so it's tomorrow and every day from now. i really my not denying that the i think that that was part of what was so
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interesting about her with this. you know, in some ways she's been ahead of culture in some way. she's been behind it, but she's definitely been the top of the conversation for 64 years. and that's why barbie matters because she's still evolving and she really ought to be able to age gracefully too. but one thing is certain good, old kent will keep on loving her unconditionally, the, [000:00:00;00] the,
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