Barbie (2023) woke score

Film · opened 39 times

Yes, a heavy-handed feminist lecture that makes patriarchy the villain and men the punchline.

Certified Woke

weighted average of 8 scorers, 57 point spread

The story

Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land. However, when they get a chance to go to the outside world, they soon discover the joys and perils of living among regular humans.

What is woke about it

Barbie Land is a matriarchy where the Barbies run everything and the Kens are beach-dwelling accessories, and the film treats this as a joke it then half-defends. The plot sends Barbie and Ken to the Real World, where Ken discovers patriarchy and imports it back, turning Barbieland into a horse-and-MoJo Dojo Casa House regime the Barbies must overthrow with a speech about the burdens of being a woman. America Ferrera's monologue is the thesis statement; the Mattel executives are buffoons; Ken's arc is a punchline about fragile masculinity that ends with him being told to find himself. Ryan Gosling is funny, but the film's gender essentialism and lecture-first structure are unmistakable.Our analysis, written from the synopsis and the published scores

Script analysis screenplay

Yes, it is woke, driven by explicit feminist critique of patriarchy and consumerism.

The script stages a didactic gender-war allegory. The opening 2001 parody has girls smashing baby dolls to embrace Barbie as liberation, framing femininity as a break from motherhood. Sasha delivers a Raging Bull-styled tirade calling Barbie "sexualized capitalism" and "unrealistic physical ideals," and the film treats her as admirable and correct. Ken is written as a posturing, needy fool whose "Mojo Dojo Casa House" takeover is played for mockery, and the Mattel CEO and execs are blundering corporate clowns. Gloria's monologue about impossible double standards is the film's thesis, delivered as awakening doctrine. Men are ornamental or villainous; women are the competent center. The ending, Barbie visiting her gynecologist, seals the mortal-female-empowerment message. The script's ideology is not subtext but text, repeated in speeches, and it consistently sides with the female critique of men and capitalism.Read from the screenplay itself (22,607 words sampled)

You represent everything wrong with our culture: sexualized capitalism, unrealistic physical ideals.
This shall henceforth be known as Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House.
You have to reject men's advances without damaging their egos.

Theme scores

Theme	0 to 100	Carried by
Feminism	100	Wokealyzer 10/10
Identity Politics	90	Wokealyzer 9/10
Anti-Western / Oikophobia	90	Wokealyzer 9/10
LGBT Themes	80	Wokealyzer 8/10
Anti-Theism	80	Wokealyzer 8/10
Bossbabes AI	92	judged by AI from the synopsis and the notes
Emasculation AI	88	judged by AI from the synopsis and the notes

Bottom line

83/100, certified woke. Main drivers: Feminism (100), Identity Politics (90), Bossbabes (92), Emasculation (88). Averaged from 8 scorers, who differ by 57 points.

Where the number comes from

Each score below is published by that site. The weighting, the theme analysis and the summary are ours.

Source	Score	Band
Is It Woke or Not? Human editorial score	96	Certified Woke
Is it Woke (isitwoke.io) AI verdict and score	76	Very Woke
Wokeometer AI score, 0 to 10	90	Certified Woke
Wokealyzer AI score with a 5-part rubric	90	Certified Woke
Woke Movie Score AI score plus ten markers	76	Very Woke
Wokeness Ratings wokeness, feminism, chick flick	40	Slightly Woke
Virtue Vigil woke score out of 50	97	Certified Woke
Worth It or Woke estimated from the review text	95	Certified Woke

See it inside Stremio

The aggregate, each source and these theme scores on the movie or series page: chips on desktop, the first line of the description on phones and TVs, and an entry at the top of the sources list.

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