Yes, you read that right… This post has been sitting in my drafts for months now, I’ve just been too embarrassed to post it. I was a really big barbie kid growing up (which I think may have done more harm than good looking back, but I digress). I watched all the barbie movies. Barbie in the Nutcracker, Barbie of Swan Lake, Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (had a big phase with this one). I could keep going… But my all-time favorite barbie movie has almost always been The Princess and the Pauper. I had the soundtrack on CD, and I played that sucker at full volume on my Disney princess radio until the CD was so scratched it was unrecognizable. It was my jam. Recently, there was a sound that went viral on TikTok that is actually from the movie. I think the resurfacing of this film healed a small part of my inner child. Naturally, though, my brain had to find a way to connect it to sociology. And now here we are. Here is how this is going to work: I’m going to give you a (hopefully) brief synopsis and then we’ll dive into all of the topics from class that I can’t help but recognize in the movie. Am I going to totally geek out? Yeah, in more ways than one. Am I slightly embarrassed by my obsession with Barbie movies? More like significantly, but I just don’t care enough anymore.
So here’s the gist: The movie is based on Mark Twain’s 1881 novel by the same title. Anneliese is a princess who is forced to marry King Dominick to save her family’s kingdom, despite being in love with a castle worker named Julian. She was sneaking out into the town when she encounters Erika, an indentured servant working off her parents’ debt. The two girls are shocked by their undeniable resemblance. They grow close, and together they fight the forced marriage in addition to the evil plans of the antagonist, Preminger. It’s way more than just that, but I don’t want to waste time blabbering about the basics. I want to get into the really fun stuff: the sociology.
The best way to do that is to go through the musical lyrics of the movie, and oh is there so much to go through! I’m getting giddy just thinking about it. The first song we’re going to pick apart is “I Am A Girl Like You”. What I absolutely love about this song is that it’s connected to both Marx and Durkheim. It starts off with the two girls comparing their lives. Anneliese details the abundance of food she is brought upon ringing her breakfast bell, and Erika lists off the ordeal she must go through just to get an egg or two. It is a prime example of the bourgeoisie (which I still can’t spell to save my life) and the proletariat. But that’s not all! The beginning of this song also emphasizes a really cool, and pretty Marxist ideology about poverty. I’ve made reference to Matthew Desmond’s Evicted a few times on here, and actually already discussed what I’m about to state. This song emphasizes the idea that poverty is both the cause and effect of poverty. Erika is stuck in poverty because of he parents’ poverty, but in the same vein, it is because she was born into it that she cannot climb. Poverty is the cause and effect of poverty. So there’s our pal Karl Marx. In the same song, we also get a fair chunk of Durkheimian, functionalist ideology. The very title screams solidarity, which is something I’m trying to do more learning about. Granted, this song talks about organic solidarity more than it does mechanical, but solidarity is solidarity nonetheless. It goes a little deeper than this, though. Here’s a lyric: “I’m just like you, you’re just like me, we take responsibility.” To me, that’s reflective of the functionalist idea of our individual and necessary roles in society. Just as a society needs a royal princess, it also needs an impoverished seamstress. In the span of five or so minutes, these girls outlined the dense injustices of their society as defined by conflict theory, but they also embody the roles set for them by functionalism’s standards. I love it when conflict theory and functionalism are found in the same space. I would pay hard money to see Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim in the same room. Let’s move on.
So we see a pretty great example of class stratification with Annaliese and Erika, and thus a pretty good example of privilege. But I think there’s an even better example of privilege in the film’s antagonist, Royal Advisor Preminger. He is a part of what I have nicknamed “the WORMs”… White Old Rich Men. Annaliese is pretty privileged, but Preminger experiences privilege in an added way because of his gender. He gets the financial, political, racial, and gendered privilege that comes with all realms of his identity. The icing on the cake here is that he fully intended to use this privilege to advance his authority and power. Love it (sarcastically, of course). I also find it perfectly fitting that he is obsessed with financial growth and having a bustling capitalist economy for himself. I could go off the deep end on that one, but I’ll shut up and start on the next song.
If you ask me who my favorite character in this movie is, there is only ONE answer… a barking cat named Wolfie. Yup, a barking cat. Almost as cool as Wolfie himself is the song about him. Let’s talk about intersectionality, shall we? Maybe even border on ability status? I think “Cat’s Meow” might just be my favorite song in this movie. Please, allow me to bless your life with some of these lyrics… “If you bark, celebrate it. Make your mark, serenade it. Noah’s ark should have had a cat like you.” Now just picture the little girl who very clearly knew she was different from everyone else hearing this song. I felt validated in the “normal” and abnormal parts of my identity. My wonky eyes and stubby nose were my feline bark. And some more lyrics… “And if what you are is a strange you, doesn’t mean you should change you. Only means you should change your point of view.” I think that last line is where we strike sociological gold, in perhaps the most progressive way. When it comes to intersectionality, functionalism tends to get finicky. It would be easier to change the self rather than the perspective. But in a progressive way, I hesitate to say conflict theorist way, it’s not the identity that needs to change, it’s the social perspective. As a kid, this was a validating song. As an adult, it’s still validating, but it’s also food for thought.
I could spend way more time on a few other songs, but I’ll summarize in a bit. What I will say is this: Barbie of course had to give the movie a happy ending. The world is brought to perfect peace, and both protagonists get their ultimate dream. While our world doesn’t work like that, I like the hope that perhaps one day some semblance of peace and equality will exist. It would be way easier to live in a Barbie movie, but alas, here you are, stuck reading my ramblings (you poor soul…). Here are a few more songs and what they remind me of intellectually:
- “To Be A Princess”: Max Weber’s ideal types
- “How Can I Refuse?”: Privilege, power, and a splash of capitalism
- “Written In Your Heart”: Culture and solidarity
- “Free”: Rejection of functionalist ideologies/strict social roles, the American work ethic, and poverty.
So, as you can now very well see, I’m batshit crazy. So those are a few of the ways Barbie has infiltrated the sociological world. We’re going to return to the more problematic side of the Barbie franchise soon, so stay tuned if you’re interested in more of the bizarre sociological connections I’m exploring. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk…
Humble Chutzpah 