From indie stardom to blockbuster success: How Greta Gerwig’s career reflects the current state of the film industry
Just over a year ago, the internet was on fire with memes about Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. ‘Barbenheimer’ became a worldwide phenomenon due to the opposing films possessing coincidental release dates, with both vying to become 2023’s most popular summer blockbuster. While Oppenheimer won more awards, Barbie came out on top in terms of box office success, grossing over $1 billion.
It was a record-breaking feat for Gerwig, who became the first female director to achieve such a monumental milestone. While this is an impressive and commendable feat due to the industry’s overwhelmingly male bias and overall lack of female directors, Barbie signalled a serious issue with the state of modern cinema. The film had such enormous ties to other brands, with merchandise coming out from every company you could think of, from makeup and clothing brands to AirBnB and fast-food chains. Everyone wanted a piece of Barbie, and with its marketing budget sitting at $150million (more than it cost to make the film itself), Mattel and Gerwig ensured that as many people as possible would flock to their local cinema to watch Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling pretending to be dolls.
You couldn’t escape pictures of Robbie dressed in pink or Gosling posing in campy outfits online – even if you’d never been much of a Barbie lover as a child, the film’s marketing lured sceptical views in with the promise of fun, camaraderie and celebration. Whether you loved Barbie’s girl power message or found the exploration of feminism rather flimsy and one-dimensional, the phenomenon that the movie generated epitomised everything currently wrong with the film industry, which is continuously prioritising capitalistic blockbusters and disregarding indie filmmakers – something that Gerwig used to be.
If Gerwig no longer identifies with the low-budget, authentic productions she made during her mumblecore beginnings, that’s perfectly understandable; filmmakers are allowed to change and evolve. However, Barbie—which seemed to contradict itself by championing both feminism and capitalism—highlighted how large conglomerates and profit-driven production companies often only tell women’s stories when they can generate massive profits. Barbie was undeniably a cultural phenomenon, and it’s likely we’ll see Primark T-shirts, produced in sweatshops by underpaid women, adorned with pink glitter and images of Margot Robbie, hanging on charity shop racks for years to come.
The message at the heart of Barbie wasn’t exactly revolutionary in terms of its feminism either, merely providing a surface-level education regarding the fact that women are individuals deserving of autonomy and that the patriarchy is harmful. This was the perfect level of feminism for these massive companies to promote. There was nothing truly earth-shattering about it, and there was no danger of viewers becoming truly restless with a desire to incite dramatic change. It was a fun take on feminism, which was enough for many, but it’s sad to see that movies about women’s issues can seemingly only succeed when packaged in such a digestible way.
The popularity of Barbie meant that theatres were playing it day in, day out for weeks and weeks, taking up many more slots than your typical new release. This undoubtedly impacted other movies released at the same time. The issue is that the most powerful and vital films being made by female directors right now aren’t being given the same hype or attention simply because they don’t have enough commercial sway like Barbie, or their more poignant messages appear to pose real threats to the stability of the patriarchy.
When Gerwig made movies in her mumblecore days, her characters were often messy, complex and relatable. When she directed her Oscar-nominated Lady Bird, many girls and young women found the movie’s dissection of everything from mother-daughter relationships to friendship, the struggles of fitting in, being treated like shit by boys, wanting to escape a dead-end town, and grappling with privilege, a breath of fresh air. Gerwig crammed so much into Lady Bird, which is a truly special and beautiful film, and with Barbie, it feels like a vacuous, soulless, money-making project, betraying the nuances that made Lady Bird and her other early works so spectacular.
We need more indie films directed by women about the female experience – ones that can tap into niche issues and relatable topics, from body image to race to sexuality. With Barbie, it was so clear that the film aimed to please as many people as possible and offend as few people as possible. Yet, we don’t need these homogeneous, one-size-fits-all films. We need films that dare to truly challenge us and present us with ways of thinking that are rarely given time in the mainstream.
While the success of a female-directed film like Barbie, centred on women and female issues, is undeniably significant, there’s much more nuance to consider. With Mattel planning more large-scale movies like a Polly Pocket project, it raises important questions about representation in cinema. Why aren’t women granted more simple, diverse, and challenging depictions of their lives on screen? Why do films about women only seem to thrive when they’re transformed into grand spectacles? If this is the only path to success for female filmmakers in the industry, then it’s clear we’re in dire need of change.
