Barbie was always going to be relatable. How could it not be? I used to play with Barbies, my mother used to play with Barbies before me, and I was excited to discover how they’d translate those experiences to the screen. I wasn’t expecting to be so moved by it though, and so thoroughly seen. Painfully so. Called out, even. Who knew Greta Gerwig has personally witnessed what we all do when we’re feeling a little existential dread?
**Spoilers for Barbie ahead!**
No joke landed harder with me, my mom, or the rest of the audience—those 20 years or older, at least—than the Depression Barbie commercial. While that entire sequence was an unnervingly confrontational gem, it has unearthed the truth about a near-universal experience. Who here hasn’t cried over a Jane Austen adaptation while sitting on the couch in their sweats?
This is undeniably a multigenerational phenomenon. Because if you weren’t rewinding Colin Firth’s infamous lake scene from the 1995 BBC miniseries adaptation of Pride & Prejudice—as I suspect my mom did, and perhaps even both my grandmothers—you might have meticulously studied Matthew Macfadyen’s hand flex from the 2005 movie adaptation instead. Either way, many of us could recognize ourselves in Depression Barbie’s seventh Pride & Prejudice rewatch, in witnessing the magnificence of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett stubbornly falling in love with one another on a loop because it’s soul-destroying and comforting at the same time. Jane Austen’s impact really is undeniable.
For that matter, so is Greta Gerwig’s. Strange, isn’t it? That a movie made about a toy meant for kids could speak to so many adults of all different ages and backgrounds? It’s a magical thing, seeing yourself in a story, and sharing that kinship with those around you. People laughed at the clip of Pride & Prejudice because they immediately recognized themselves in it, in how much narratives and characters can mean to them and help them in their hour of need.
My mom might not have fully understood the social media-related jokes in the Depression Barbie commercial, and I wasn’t about to unpack all that for her because that would honestly just take too long. But she knows Pride & Prejudice 1995, she knows why she’s watched it so many times—in fact, I think it’s the one thing she’s rewatched most in her entire life—and she understands the universal appeal of a comfort movie or show, especially after a harrowing deep dive on Instagram and eating too many Starbursts.
Pride & Prejudice and Barbie really are for everyone.
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
