I wonder if you saw Barbie last summer. I succumbed to the Oppenheimer–Barbie confrontation marketing strategy and went to the cinema to see both films. I liked Oppenheimer better, obviously, both for the plot and the more cinematic aspects. But Barbie has a very original approach, some interesting twists, and an underlying message that made me think. Here is the reflection it generated in me.
The film proposes that there are two parallel worlds connected in special situations. There is the real world we know, which represents current Western society, and then there is this idyllic place called Barbieland, where all the Barbies and the Kens, the mythical Mattel toys, live happily. There the Barbies take centre stage ahead of the Kens; diversity and respect are core values, and prosocial behaviour is naively wonderful. The Barbies and Kens are aware that outside Barbieland there is a real world where girls and boys play with dolls that represent them, and they are convinced that their values positively influence their development. For example, having a scientist Barbie makes more girls want to be scientists; playing with Barbies of different races educates them to avoid discrimination, etc. In short, what they believe is that the Barbie universe is created to positively influence humans, and that the real world works – thanks to them – as beautifully as Barbieland.
It so happens that, due to an unfortunate event, a standard Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) has to travel to the real world to solve a problem and… oh, surprise! It turns out that the people there are not as friendly as in Barbieland! Moreover, the boys behave as if they were superior to the girls, diversity exists, but it is not as accepted and integrated as in Barbieland and, to top it all off, some of the girls criticise the Barbies! Not only do they not imbibe their values, but they actually reject them: they dislike the Barbies, whom they accuse of frustrating them and harming them by creating this utopian reference of a happy world. So when Barbie-Margot sees that the real world is not permeated by the teachings and values of Barbieland, she is very disappointed. She fails to understand. «Look, just like scientists», I thought at that point in the film.
I know what I am about to say is somewhat of a caricature, but I suddenly imagined Barbieland to be the world where scientists live, where they research and reach conclusions from empirical data, share ideas constructively, and assume that all the knowledge they produce in their labs in Scienceland ends up impacting society with technologies and wisdom that improve our lives. Scienceland scientists rely on people in the real world to respect them, value their efforts, and heed their teachings. And then I imagined a researcher coming out of his scientific world in the middle of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and finding people reluctant to get vaccinated, or YouTube videos by slightly moronic characters claiming that covid can be cured with some bizarre therapy. Or a climatologist coming out of his research centre and running into denialists on the Metro, or almost worse, seeing the supposedly most powerful people in the real world, politicians and governments, ignoring his recommendations to curb climate change. How is it possible that the real world is not deeply permeated by Scienceland?
I know that the overwhelming majority of scientists live in the real world and have the same virtues and shortcomings as its non-scientist inhabitants. But I remember a story Eduard Punset told about a physicist he interviewed at Princeton (I think it was Freeman Dyson, but I cannot say for sure), whom he asked how people in the street responded when he explained the amazing things he was researching. The physicist thought about it, and finally replied: «I don’t usually talk to people in the street». I imagined this scientist walking around the real world one day and coming across a flat-earther who claims that everything NASA does and says is a lie.
It may only be an anecdote, but there are some scientists (or even science communicators) whose partners, friends, colleagues, and usual environment are in academia, and despite living in the real world, they become frustrated and do not understand how people do not give more consideration to science, and why people do not generally make more evidence-based decisions. How can it be that researchers spend months locked away in their labs researching covid, and when they come out to explain their findings, some idiot tells them on social media that they are evil and in the service of the pharmaceutical companies and the establishment? Poor misunderstood researchers, they sometimes seem almost as naïve as the Barbies from Barbieland. What a shame that Scienceland does not have a much greater influence on societies and inhabitants of the real world…
I will not dwell on it: the main message I wanted to put forward is nothing more than a joke or a reflection on the parallels between Barbieland and the scientific world, which I am sure the reader will be able to expand on on their own. But I will end with one last consideration that the end of the film provoked in me (this is a bit of a spoiler, so be warned). And it is that, at the end of it all, to solve the incongruity between the two worlds, Barbie loses her naivety and goes to the real world. I did not like that. I interpreted it as a concession. I would have liked the real world to somehow come closer to the idyllic universe of Barbieland, and not the other way around. Just as I would like people in the non-scientific world to come closer to scientific thinking than the other way around. I would prefer, in short, that the good side had won.
