The upcoming Barbie movie looks incredible. That’s not to say for sure the movie will be good. I haven’t seen it, but it is absolutely an incredible movie to even exist. A Barbie film directed by Greta Gerwig in which a Barbie doll played by Margot Robbie has an existential crisis regarding the nature of her existence is just an insane idea, but of all the insane things that the Barbie movie is set to do, a lot of people are apparently concerned with Ryan Gosling playing Ken.
Ryan Gosling is 42 years old, and it seems that the catalyst for the backlash is that some people are critical of him playing a Ken doll in the Barbie movie because they feel he’s actually too old for the role. Speaking with GQ, Gosling is having none of it and he calls the people upset "hypocrites" because he feels like people who are upset with how he is portraying Ken didn't actually care about Ken before, so why do they care now? Gosling said…
But suddenly, it's like, 'No, we've cared about Ken this whole time.' No, you didn't. You never did. You never cared. Barbie never fucked with Ken. That's the point. If you ever really cared about Ken, you would know that nobody cared about Ken. So your hypocrisy is exposed. This is why his story must be told.
Gosling certainly has a point. Ken has always played second fiddle to Barbie, and most anybody who really cares about Ken as a doll likely only does so because of his connection to Barbie. In the Barbie trailer, we can see a little of what he’s talking about. His Ken just sort of tags along on the adventure, and as a character, Ken doesn’t seem to really have much going on beyond being part of Barbie’s world.
I'm finding it difficult to disagree with Ryan Gosling here. While I'm certainly no major expert on Barbie, there's a lot that I could tell you about the doll that I've picked up through simple cultural osmosis. The same is not true for Ken. Ken is simply "Barbie's boyfriend" and nothing more. Barbie has been a staple of pop culture for centuries but she often appears without Ken and I've certainly never heard anybody be upset about this fact. There are actually multiple Kens in the Barbie movie cast, which means if people have a problem with Gosling's version, there are others that maybe will be less of a problem.
Based on everything we know about the Barbie movie the story sees Ken and Barbie make the leap from their own world into the real world, leading them to almost certainly come to terms with the nature of their own existence. For Ken, that could very well mean a character arc that sees him realize that nobody cares about Ken, and that even as a doll is little more than an accessory.
