Barbie is a 2023 fantasy comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig from a screenplay she wrote with Noah Baumbach. Based on the eponymous fashion dolls by Mattel, it is the first live-action Barbie film after numerous computer-animated films and specials. The film stars Margot Robbie as the title character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, and follows the pair on a journey of self-discovery following an existential crisis. The supporting cast includes America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell.

A live-action Barbie film was announced in September 2009 by Universal Pictures with Laurence Mark producing. Development began in April 2014, when Sony Pictures acquired the film rights. Following multiple writer and director changes and the casting of Amy Schumer and later Anne Hathaway as Barbie, the rights were transferred to Warner Bros. Pictures in October 2018. Robbie was cast in 2019, after Gal Gadot turned down the role due to scheduling conflicts, and Gerwig was announced as director and co-writer with Baumbach in 2020. The rest of the cast was announced in early 2022, with principal photography occurring primarily at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, in England and at the Venice Beach Skatepark in Los Angeles from March to July of that year.

Barbie premiered at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on July 9, 2023, and was released in the United States on July 21. Its simultaneous release with Universal's  Oppenheimer led to the "Barbenheimer" cultural phenomenon, which encouraged audiences to see both films as a double feature. The film received critical acclaim and has grossed $1.44 billion, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2023 as well as the highest-grossing film by a solo female director, the highest-grossing film ever released by Warner Bros., and the 14th highest-grossing film of all time.

Plot

Stereotypical Barbie ("Barbie") and fellow dolls reside in Barbieland, a matriarchal society populated by different versions of Barbies, Kens, and a group of discontinued models, who are treated like outcasts due to their unconventional traits. While the Kens spend their days playing at the beach, considering it their profession, the Barbies hold prestigious jobs such as doctor, lawyer, and politician. Beach Ken ("Ken") is only happy when he is with Barbie, and seeks a closer relationship, but she rebuffs him in favour of other activities and female friendships.

One evening at a dance party, Barbie is suddenly stricken with worries about mortality. Overnight, she develops bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet, disrupting her usual routines the next day. She seeks out Weird Barbie, an outcast due to her disfigurement, who tells her she must find the child playing with her in the real world to cure her afflictions. Ken stows away in her convertible to join her, to which Barbie reluctantly agrees.

Arriving at Venice Beach, Barbie punches a man for groping her, leading to her and Ken's brief arrest. Alarmed by their presence, Mattel's CEO orders their recapture. Barbie tracks down her owner, a tween girl named Sasha, who criticizes her for encouraging unrealistic beauty standards. Distraught, Barbie discovers that Gloria, a Mattel employee and Sasha's mother, inadvertently catalyzed her existential crisis after Gloria began playing with Sasha's old Barbie toys in a similar state. Mattel attempts to put Barbie in a toy box for remanufacturing, but she escapes with Gloria and Sasha's help and they travel to Barbieland with Mattel executives in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Ken learns about patriarchy and feels respected for the first time. Returning to Barbieland, he persuades the other Kens to take over, and the Barbies are indoctrinated into submissive roles, such as agreeable girlfriends, housewives, and maids. Barbie arrives and fails to convince everyone to return to the way things were. She becomes depressed, but Gloria gives her a speech about society's conflicting expectations of women, restoring Barbie's self-confidence.

With the assistance of Sasha, Weird Barbie, Allan, and the discontinued dolls, Gloria's speech deprograms the Barbies from their indoctrination. They then manipulate the Kens into fighting amongst themselves, distracting them from enshrining male superiority into Barbieland's constitution, and the Barbies regain power. Having now experienced systemic oppression for themselves, the Barbies resolve to rectify the faults of their previous society, emphasizing better treatment of the Kens and all outcasts.

Barbie and Ken apologize to each other, acknowledging their mistakes. Ken bemoans his lack of purpose without Barbie, so she encourages him to find an autonomous identity. Barbie, who remains unsure of her own identity, meets with the spirit of Ruth Handler, Mattel co-founder and creator of the Barbie doll, who explains that Barbie's story has no set ending and her ever-evolving history surpasses her roots.

Barbie decides to become human and return to the real world, and is bidden goodbye by the Barbies, Kens, and Mattel executives. Sometime later, Gloria, her husband, and Sasha take Barbie, now going by the name "Barbara Handler", to her first gynecologist's appointment.

Cast

Production

Development
The idea of a live-action Barbie film had been in development at Cannon Films in the mid-1980s; little is known about it, other than a promotional blurb (with the plotline centering around Barbie showing her owner how all her dreams could come true), and it is unclear how far into development it got before Mattel ceased working with Cannon, following Cannon's live-action adaptation of Masters of the Universe (1987) flopping at the box-office.

Development on a film based on the Barbie toy line began in September 2009, when it was announced that Mattel had signed a partnership to develop the project with Universal Pictures and with Laurence Mark as producer, but nothing came to fruition. In April 2014, Mattel teamed with Sony Pictures to produce the film, which would have Jenny Bicks writing the screenplay and Laurie MacDonald and Walter F. Parkes producing through the Parkes+MacDonald Image Nation banner they created. Filming at the time was anticipated to begin by the end of the year. In March 2015, Diablo Cody was brought onto the project to rewrite the screenplay, and Amy Pascal joined the producing team. Sony would again have rewrites done to the screenplay later that year, hiring Lindsey Beer, Bert V. Royal, and Hillary Winston to write separate drafts.

In December 2016, Amy Schumer entered negotiations to star in the title role with Winston's screenplay; Schumer helped rewrite the script with her sister, Kim Caramele. In March 2017, Schumer exited negotiations, blaming scheduling conflicts with the planned June 2017 filming start; in 2023 she revealed she left the project due to creative differences with the film's producers at the time. That July, Anne Hathaway was under consideration for the title role, with Sony hiring Olivia Milch to rewrite the screenplay and approaching Alethea Jones to direct as a means to interest Hathaway into signing on. Jones was attached to direct by March 2018.

In August 2018, Robbie Brenner had been hired as producer by Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz with the rights reverting to Mattel, with Kreiz having the intention to repossess the rights following the expiration of Sony's option. Later, Brenner was hired to run Mattel Films. The expiration of Sony's option on the project in October 2018 and its transfer to Warner Bros. Pictures would see the departures of Hathaway, Jones, Macdonald, Parkes and Pascal. Margot Robbie would enter early talks for the role, with Patty Jenkins briefly considered for the director position. Kreiz was determined to cast Robbie in the titular role after meeting with her following his hiring as CEO as both he and Brenner felt that Robbie's appearance resembled that of a conventional Barbie doll and were impressed by her ideas. Initial meetings occurred at the Polo Lounge located in The Beverly Hills Hotel. Brenner eventually partnered with Robbie's production company, LuckyChap Entertainment, with Robbie's husband Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara also being enlisted as producers. Robbie's casting was confirmed in July 2019.

In her capacity as a producer, Robbie pitched Barbie to Warner Bros. herself. During the green-light meeting, she compared the film to Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993) and also jokingly suggested that it would gross over $1 billion. Later on, she approached Greta Gerwig—whose previous films, particularly Little Women (2019), Robbie enjoyed—to be the screenwriter. Gerwig was in post-production for another film, and took the assignment on the condition that her partner, Noah Baumbach, also write the script. Gerwig would sign on to also direct the film in July 2021. Robbie said the film aimed at subverting expectations and giving audiences "the thing you didn't know you wanted". In August 2023, it was announced that Robbie would earn "roughly $50 million in salary and box office bonuses" as the star and producer of the film.

Writing

Gerwig and Baumbach were given full creative freedom in writing the film. They collaborated on the screenplay during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns of 2020–2021 and described the writing process as "open" and "free". Gerwig's film treatment consisted of an Abstract Poem on Barbie influenced by the Apostles' Creed. For the narrative arc, she was partially inspired by the non-fiction book Reviving Ophelia (1994) by Mary Pipher, which accounts the effects of societal pressures on American teenage girls. She also found inspiration in classic Technicolor musicals such as The Red Shoes (1948) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and said: "They have such a high level of what we came to call authentic artificiality. You have a painted sky in a soundstage. Which is an illusion, but it's also really there. The painted backdrop is really there. The tangibility of the artifice is something that we kept going back to." The script also contains candid criticism of Mattel, which created skepticism among Mattel officials when they received the first version. However, Kreiz decided to trust Gerwig. Brenner noted that "being safe in this world doesn't work" as she interpreted Barbie to be a "bold" and "trailblazer" figure. As a result, Will Ferrell's portrayal as the Mattel CEO was meant to be an allegory for corporate America. Kreiz praised Ferrell and said that while Mattel officials took their brands seriously, they did not take themselves seriously. Gerwig and Robbie had both felt the film was "most certainly a feminist film" but Mattel officials had rejected the description. Both Gerwig and Robbie informed the studio that they would also explore the controversies and problematic parts of Barbie, but also convinced the studio that they would respect the product.

Gerwig was also influenced by her childhood experiences with Barbie; her mother would discourage her from purchasing such dolls, but eventually allowed her to. Opting to acknowledge the controversial nature of the Barbie doll, Gerwig chose to create a film in which she would be both "doing the thing and subverting the thing", in the sense that she would be celebrating the feminism behind Barbie while also noting the controversial beauty standards associated with it. She was also fascinated by the idea that humans create dolls, which in turn imitate humans, feeling that "we're in constant conversation with inanimate objects" while also conveying an affirmative message to the audience to "just be yourself and know that that's enough". The film deliberately juxtaposed contradictory messaging, such as critiquing consumerism yet glamorizing plastic products, and in the ending of the film, in which Barbie desires to be more than just a plastic doll. Gerwig made the film as an "earnest attempt to make amends" with the intention of affirming the worth of women and conveying the impossibility of perfection, which some perceived to be standards associated with Barbie. Reflecting upon the maximalism of Barbie, Gerwig said the "ontology of Barbie" was similar to what she perceived as Shakespeare's maximalism, which she enjoyed in his works. She grounded the film in what she described as a "heightened theatricality that allows you to deal with big ideas in the midst of anarchic play".

Gerwig described the film as being anarchic, unhinged, and humanist. She felt the film originated from the "deep isolation of the pandemic", opining that the line in which Barbie says "Do you guys ever think about dying?" exemplifies the film's anarchic nature. She also found the idea of Barbie being "constrained in multitudes" as "all of these women are Barbie and Barbie is all of these women" to be "trippy" and felt as a result, Barbie did not need to have her own personal life, as she was attuned to her environment. She also described the story as mirroring a girl's journey from childhood to adolescence, though she did not deem it to be a coming of age film and felt that the film ultimately "ends up, really, about being human".

Primarily, she began her writing by interpreting Barbie as living in a utopia and eventually experiencing reality, where she would have to "confront all the things that were shielded from them in this place [Barbieland]". She also drew parallels to the story of Adam and Eve and taking inspiration from John Milton's Paradise Lost, particularly being inspired by the concept that there is "no poetry without pain". To underscore the tragic elements of Barbie and Ken facing the real world, she focused on elements of dissonance. As such, she chose to keep a scene featuring Robbie's Barbie telling an older woman that she is beautiful after being requested to remove it, as she felt that the scene epitomized "the heart of the movie". She also desired to provide a "counterargument" to Barbie by featuring a scene in which Barbie learns that some women do not like her, and felt it gave the film "real intellectual and emotional power". As such, a scene is featured in which Barbie is being stared at inappropriately on the Venice Beach, which Gerwig chose to feature as she felt it was a universal experience, being especially relevant for actors. She was inspired by an audition she did in which she wore overalls and felt that she did not perform well in. The ending of the film features Barbie saying the line "I'm here to see my gynecologist", with Gerwig describing it as a "mic drop kind of joke". She had chosen to include the line as she had wanted to instill confidence in younger girls, as she had been embarrassed about her body when she was younger.

Barbie also explores the negative consequences of hierarchical power structures, with Gerwig saying that she extrapolated that "Barbies rule and Kens are an underclass" and felt it was similar to the Planet of the Apes. Ken has low self-esteem and seeks approval from Barbie, which Gerwig identified as a good source for a story. Gosling compared Gerwig's vision to Milton Glaser's I Love New York logo as he felt Gerwig created the film's characters as a way of understanding the contemporary world. Ken has the only power ballad in the film, and Gerwig had identified it as the moment in which she felt the film transcended what a Barbie movie traditionally should have been.

Casting
During the casting process, Gerwig and Robbie searched for actresses with "Barbie energy" (which they described as "a certain ineffable combination of beauty and exuberance"). In October 2021, Ryan Gosling entered final negotiations to play Ken in the film. America Ferrera, Simu Liu and Kate McKinnon were cast in February 2022. Liu auditioned for the film after his agent raved about the script being one of the best they had ever read. In March 2022, Ariana Greenblatt, Alexandra Shipp, and Emma Mackey were revealed to be in the cast. Will Ferrell joined the cast in April, along with Issa Rae, Michael Cera, Hari Nef, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Rhea Perlman, Ncuti Gatwa, Emerald Fennell, Sharon Rooney, Scott Evans, Ana Cruz Kayne, Connor Swindells, Ritu Arya and Jamie Demetriou. In April 2023, a trailer revealed that John Cena had joined the cast. It was later reported that Cena had spontaneously been offered a part in the film after paying for Robbie's meal in London during production. Helen Mirren narrated the film's trailer and the film itself. Robbie and Gosling were each paid $12.5 million for their participation as actors.

Robbie wanted Gal Gadot to play a Barbie in the film, but Gadot was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts. Gerwig wanted her frequent collaborators Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan to make cameo appearances, but neither was available; Gerwig later revealed that during a visit to the set, Chalamet said he should have been in the film. Additionally, Bowen Yang, Dan Levy and Ben Platt were considered for Ken; Jonathan Groff was the first choice for Allan but turned it down.

Set design
Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer serve as set designer and decorator, respectively, on the film. For the Barbie Dreamhouse, the pair drew inspiration from the mid-century modernist architecture found in Palm Springs, including the Kaufmann Desert House by Richard Neutra, as well as the photography of Slim Aarons. Gerwig wanted to capture "what was so ridiculously fun about the Dreamhouses", alluding to its previous models, and referenced Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud, and the apartment of Gene Kelly's character in the Technicolor musical An American in Paris (1951). "Everything needed to be tactile, because toys are, above all, things you touch", Gerwig was quoted saying of the use of practical effects instead of CGI to capture the sky and the San Jacinto Mountains. The set design is also noted for its extensive use of a specific shade of pink paint, Pantone 219. The company already had an international shortage due to COVID-19-related supply chain issues as well as freezing temperatures damaging stock; set design for the film used up the company's entire remaining stock of pink. She also sought to use practical builds and had to first film sequences in miniature models and then composite the footage onto the actual image. She had already discussed the production design with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, Greenwood, and costume designer Jacqueline Duran a year beforehand to prepare for the film. Gerwig also called the director Peter Weir for inspiration on Barbie Land, with the idea of creating it as an "interior soundstage world".

Costumes

Costume designer Jacqueline Durran, who previously collaborated with Gerwig on Little Women (2019), employed a practical approach to create Barbie's wardrobe: "The defining characteristic of what she wears is where she's going and what she's doing, [i]t's about being completely dressed for your job or task." To match the film's Barbieland setting, Durran and her team created costumes made of roughly fifteen color combinations "that riffed off the idea of a French Riviera beach in the early 1960s" and drew inspiration from actress Brigitte Bardot. For Ken's outfits, Durran zeroed in a look composed of colorful sportswear from the 1980s, while actor Ryan Gosling suggested a Ken-branded underwear for the character. Durran closely adapted outfits from past iterations of Barbie dolls, such as the 1993 "Western Stampin dolls and the 1994 "Hot Skatin dolls. She noted the Barbie dolls as "a very useful way to look at different ideas of femininity: what that means, who owns it, and who it's aimed at" and reflected this idea in how she dressed the characters. While the majority of the clothing featured in the film were sourced by Durran and her team, they also pulled pieces from the fashion archives of Chanel.

Hair and makeup
Ivana Primorac was the lead hair and makeup artist for the film.

Filming
Principal photography began on March 22, 2022, at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden in England and wrapped on July 21, 2022. Among the notable filming locations was the Venice Beach Skatepark in Los Angeles, California. Rodrigo Prieto served as cinematographer. Prior to filming, Gerwig had organized a sleepover with the female cast members for them to establish positive relationships while also feeling that it "would be the most fun way to kick everything off". She also opted to use filming techniques from the 1950s, as Barbie has been a popular toy since 1959, with the intention of recreating a period-accurate look. Additionally, she watched Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946) to understand how older visual effects were used to provide a sense of theatricality. To highlight the tragic nature of Barbie and Ken facing the difficulties of the real world, she directed Robbie and Gosling to play their characters as if they were in a drama. Reshoots took place in Los Angeles in April 2023.

Music

Alexandre Desplat, who collaborated with Gerwig on Little Women (2019), was set to score Barbie in early September 2022. However, by May 2023, Desplat had left the project, with Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt taking over scoring duties. The score was released by WaterTower Music on August 4, 2023.

In addition to the score, Ronson was tasked with curating a compilation soundtrack that matched Gerwig's vision for Barbie. As the film was being edited in post-production, Ronson and Gerwig would show scenes from the film to artists they wanted on the soundtrack. The film's soundtrack, Barbie: The Album, was released on July 21, 2023. The album features songs by artists Ava Max, Charli XCX, Dominic Fike, Fifty Fifty, Gayle, Haim, Ice Spice, Kali, Karol G, Khalid, Sam Smith, Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish, Pink Pantheress, Tame Impala, the Kid Laroi, and cast members Ryan Gosling and Dua Lipa. "Dance the Night" by Dua Lipa was released as the album's lead single on May 26, 2023. It was followed by "Watati" by Karol G on June 2, 2023. "Angel" by Pink Pantheress was released on June 9, 2023, as the first promotional single. "Barbie World" by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice was released as the album's third single on June 23, 2023. The album's second promotional single, "Speed Drive" by Charli XCX was released on June 30, 2023. On July 6, 2023, the album's third and final promotional single, "Barbie Dreams" by Fifty Fifty and Kaliii was released. On July 10, 2023, Warner Bros. released a preview clip of Ryan Gosling singing "I'm Just Ken". The album's fourth single, "What Was I Made For?" by Billie Eilish, was released on July 13, 2023.

Despite fan expectations for the 1997 song "Barbie Girl" by the pop band Aqua to feature in the film, Ulrich Møller-Jørgensen, manager for Aqua lead singer Lene Nystrøm, said that it was not used, while Variety speculated that this was due to bad relations between Mattel and MCA Records, the song's American publisher, who engaged in a series of lawsuits over the song from 1997 to 2002. "Barbie World", a rework of the song, was instead featured in the film. It samples "Barbie Girl"; Aqua is credited as a performer and co-writer on the track.

The film features multiple renditions of the 1989 song "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls and the 1997 song "Push" by Matchbox Twenty, the latter of which Ken adopts as his favorite song after visiting the real world, which becomes "a tongue-in-cheek anthem of patriarchal dominance" in the fictional Barbieland. While many reviews of the film interpreted this as a critique of the song, director Greta Gerwig said that she was a fan of Matchbox Twenty and "I never put anything in a movie I don't love." "Spice Up Your Life" by Spice Girls plays in a flashback scene where Sasha destroys her mother's Barbies. Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" plays when Barbie is about to leave her Dreamhouse and head to the real world.

Marketing

Barbie was promoted with an extensive marketing campaign. In the months leading up to the release of the film, Mattel entered into several Barbie-themed promotional partnerships and collaborations with various brands, including Airbnb, Aldo, Bloomingdale's, Burger King Brazil, Chi Haircare, Forever 21, Gap, Hot Topic, Krispy Kreme Philippines, Primark, Progressive Insurance, Spirit Halloween, Ulta, and Xbox. Additionally, studio parent company Warner Bros. Discovery engaged in cross-promotion for the film through its TV channels, most prominently with an HGTV renovation reality competition series titled Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge, coproduced by Mattel Television, which premiered shortly before the film's release. Trade publication Variety reported that Warner Bros. spent $150 million on marketing for Barbie—more than the $145 million budget used to produce the movie itself.

A first-look image of the film was revealed during a Warner Bros. presentation at CinemaCon in April 2022. Released to the public on April 27, 2022, the image saw Margot Robbie as Barbie, sitting behind the wheel of her iconic pink 1956 Chevrolet Corvette. Collider complimented Robbie in the image, stating: "This photo is just further proof that Robbie was made to play this role. She just looks like a Barbie doll come to life—it's almost uncanny". On June 15, 2022, a second still featuring Ryan Gosling as Ken was released. Despite noting similarities between his look in the image and his previous roles, The Guardian asserted that "there is a very strong chance that this will be [Gosling's] defining role".

A booth dedicated to Barbie was opened at the 2022 CCXP event in São Paulo, Brazil. The first teaser trailer for the film debuted during preview screenings of Avatar: The Way of Water in December 2022. It featured a parody of the opening "Dawn of Man" sequence in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which Robbie (clad in Barbie's original 1959 outfit) imitates an alien monolith whose influence on the history of dolls is narrated by Mirren. Along with a theatrical poster, the teaser trailer was released to the public on December 16, 2022. Rolling Stone praised the 2001 homage and vibrant colors of the trailer, and remarked on its vague outlining of the plot: "One has to wonder when, or better yet how, it will all get shaken up".

At the 2023 Academy Awards, Robbie co-presented a tribute to Warner Bros with Morgan Freeman. During the montage, each actor reflected on the roles and projects they had attached to the company, and Freeman eventually referred to Robbie as 'Barbie'.

On April 4, 2023, twenty-four character posters of the several Barbies and Kens featured in the film—each tagged with brief descriptions—were shared on the Barbie social media accounts. Empire remarked: "You might have thought that Multiverse fever would be constrained generally to comic book films and never-would-have-called-it Oscar winners [Everything Everywhere All at Once]. But ... it seems Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie will also be flooding the screen with variants, this time of plastic dolls Barbie and Ken". A second teaser trailer was unveiled shortly after the release of the posters. It featured a rendition of the Beach Boys' 1964 surf rock song "Fun, Fun, Fun". The Washington Post noted that the "visually striking" and "polysemic" teaser captivated multiple demographics because of its humor, color palette, and the Barbie doll's cross-generational appeal. An official trailer for the film was released on May 25, 2023. Critics noted for its existential tone set against upbeat music. Ben Travis of Empire said: "There's much to discuss here—not least, that it looks visually impeccable" and speculated Academy Awards attention for its production and costume design.

A parade float was featured at the 2023 WeHo Pride Parade in Los Angeles to promote the film. Two of its LGBTQ+ cast members, Alexandra Shipp and Scott Evans, were present during the event.

In June 2023, a French Barbie poster went viral for including the tagline "", which literally translates to "She can do everything. He's just Ken." However,  is the verlan slang term for "fuck" in French, i.e. the phonological inversion of nique, while c'est ("he is") is a homophone for  ("he knows how"), meaning the tagline could be read as "She can do everything. He just knows how to fuck." Analysts concluded that it was likely that the pun was intentional, as the slang term is common knowledge among French speakers, though Warner Bros. would neither confirm nor deny whether this was the case.

Leading up to the release, pink billboards, blank apart from the film's release date, have appeared worldwide, and a real-world "Barbie Dreamhouse" in Malibu, California became available to rent through Airbnb.

On July 14, 2023, SAG-AFTRA, an American labor union of film, television, and voice actors, declared a strike action, effectively halting any promotional event that involves any member in the guild. Robbie showed her support in the action. SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher later claimed the studios "duped" the guild into accepting a 12-day extension for negotiations to continue promoting summer films like Barbie.

To coincide with the film's release, a stop motion crossover trailer with the animated film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem from Paramount Pictures and produced by Seth Rogen, was released on July 20, 2023.

Release

Theatrical

Barbie had its world premiere at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on July 9, 2023, followed by the European premiere at Cineworld Leicester Square in London on July 12, 2023. It was released theatrically in the United States and the United Kingdom on July 21, 2023, taking over the original release date of Coyote vs. Acme. Previous iterations of the project were set for June 2, 2017; May 12, 2017; June 29, 2018; August 8, 2018; and May 8, 2020.

The film was released on the same day as Oppenheimer, a biographical film about J. Robert Oppenheimer written and directed by Christopher Nolan based on the book American Prometheus, and distributed by Universal Pictures. Due to the tonal and genre contrast between the two films, many social media users created memes and ironic posts about how the two films appealed to different audiences, and how they should be viewed as a double feature. The trend was dubbed "Barbenheimer". In an interview with La Vanguardia, Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy endorsed the phenomenon, saying, "My advice would be for people to go see both, on the same day. If they are good films, then that's cinema's gain."

In August 2023, it was announced that the film would be re-released in IMAX theaters on September 22, 2023, for one week only, along with a new post-credit scene. The IMAX edition starts with an onscreen introduction by Greta Gerwig, who notes the advantages of the IMAX format. The post-credits scene includes an intro of Margot Robbie's Barbie, in her 1959 Barbie bathing suit, taking a human-sized Ken doll on camera, which transforms into Ryan Gosling's Ken; followed by humorous outtakes, e.g. whether Barbie should marry Barney the Dinosaur, and a voiceover by Robbie hoping people enjoyed the experience. Too, as Sarah Little notes on Screen Rant, "The meta post-credits scene features [narrator Helen] Mirren as herself walking in on Midge, played by Emerald Fennell, giving birth."

Home media
Barbie was released on digital download on September 12, 2023, and was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on October 17, 2023, by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

Censorship

Nine-dash line controversy

The controversy over the alleged appearance of the nine-dash line (a depiction of the South China Sea from Chinese perspective) in the film began when Vietnam's film censorship authority banned the film for allegedly displaying such lines. In contrast, the Philippine counterpart instead requested that the lines in question be blurred. Both countries have banned the films Abominable (2019) and Uncharted (2022) for featuring the actual nine-dash line. The nine-dash line is controversial due to maritime border disputes between China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines.

Vietnam
On July 3, 2023, Vietnamese newspaper Tuổi Trẻ quoted , head of the Department of Cinema, as announcing that Barbie would be banned in Vietnam because it contained "the offending image of the nine-dash line." The Tiền Phong newspaper reported that the nine-dash line "appears multiple times in the film". The film was originally scheduled to be released in Vietnam on July 21.

Speaking to Voice of America, Trịnh Hữu Long (founder of the research group Legal Initiatives for Vietnam) said, "The censors will even be praised for overreacting to the unclear map, by both their superiors and the public, because anti-China sentiment runs deep into the country's political culture", and that "the government is surely using legitimate nationalist reasoning to strengthen its entire censorship system", while Michael Caster at the free expression group Article 19 said, "Maps are political, and borders often bear historical wounds, but rather than ensuring free and open discussion, the knee jerk response to censor seldom supports historical or transitional justice".

Speaking to Vox, UC Berkeley professor Peter Zinoman said, "To the Chinese, the nine-dash line signifies their legitimate claims to the South China Sea", and "to the Vietnamese, it symbolizes a brazen act of imperialist bullying that elevates Chinese national interest over an older shared set of interests of socialist brotherhood," while Harvard University professor  said since the producers of the film were aiming for the mainland Chinese market in the hopes that it would be a blockbuster, "they are ready to accept [mainland China's] view of geography. Disinformation works by repetition." New York University professor Kevin Li said, "In my view, banning [Barbie] was a no-brainer."

In response to Vietnam's ban, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated at a press briefing on July 4 that the "South China Sea issue" should not be linked with "normal cultural exchange".

The Philippines
When news of Vietnam's ban reached the Philippines, Senator Francis Tolentino, vice chairman of the Philippine Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told CNN Philippines that Barbie may also be banned in the country because it "denigrates" Filipino sovereignty. Senator Jinggoy Estrada called the film to be banned over the alleged inclusion of the nine-dash line; opposition senator Risa Hontiveros quipped "the movie is fiction, and so is the nine-dash line", and suggested adding a disclaimer to the film instead of banning its release. Senator Robin Padilla, chairman of the Senate mass media committee, suggested that the film producers must edit out references to the nine-dash line or risk the film being banned.

On July 11, the Philippines' Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) came to the conclusion that there was "no basis" to banning the film as the map was simply "cartoonish" and that there was no clear nor outright depiction of the nine-dash line, as the line in the film was "not U-Shaped" and had "eight dots or dashes" instead of nine. The board gave the film a PG rating, as well as allowing it to be screened in the country, however they requested Warner Bros. to "blur the controversial lines in order to avoid further misinterpretations". Senator Tolentino said that he respected the MTRCB's decision, but expressed his dismay at it emerging a day before the seventh anniversary of Philippines' victory in an arbitration over the nine-dash line on July 12, 2016. The film was released in the Philippines on July 19, 2023.

World map drawing and Warner Bros.' statement

With the rising concerns over the alleged appearance of the nine-dash line, several media outlets pointed to a drawing of a world map which appears in a trailer for the film. The Los Angeles Times described the particular image as a "map of 'the real world' [which] looks as if it's been drawn in crayon by a child" with a line of dashes "alongside the coast of what should be China." On July 6, 2023, Warner Bros. issued a statement explaining that the map in the concerned image is a "child-like crayon drawing", with the dashed lines depicting Barbie's journey from Barbie Land to the real world and was "not intended to make any type of statement". Jordan Richard Schoenherr from Concordia University said that while the map might seem innocuous, the repeated presentation of images that supported the goals of the Chinese government risks increasing their acceptance by international publics and is therefore a cause for concern. In the world map drawing, dashed lines can be seen near Asia, the United States, Greenland, Brazil and Africa.

Religious interpretation and LGBTQ+ themes
In some Muslim-majority countries, there were attempts to ban the film on moral grounds or for allegedly showing LGBTQ+ themes, and some of them were successful.

Pakistan
In Pakistan, the film was released nationwide on July 21, 2023. The Punjab Film Censor Board (which handles the censorship in the Punjab province) and other regional equivalents cleared the film for screening. But on July 22, Punjab province's caretaker Minister of Information and Culture Amir Mir used his authority to halt the screenings of the film in the province, alleging that it "[shows] homosexuality." Punjab's Information Secretary Ali Nawaz Malik told Dawn that the film "has been sent to Dubai for a censorship review." On August 1, the final approval was given for the film to be shown in the province.

Middle East
In the Middle East, the film was initially scheduled to be released on July 19, 2023, before being delayed to August 31. Later, Vox Cinemas, the distributor of Warner Bros. films in the region, announced that the film would be released in the region on August 10. Although the film censorship authorities in the region initially did not specify any reason, it was suggested that the inclusion of a transgender actress in one of Barbie roles, and the narrations and dialogs related to LGBTQ+ matters might have been the issues with the film.

On August 9, 2023, Lebanon's Minister of Culture , who is backed by Hezbollah, proposed that the film be banned in the country for "[promoting] homosexuality and sexual transformation" and "[contradicting] values of faith and morality" by "diminishing the importance of the family unit". Following Mortada's proposal, the Minister of Interior and Municipalities Bassam Mawlawi asked the relevant authority (which is under the scope of Interior Ministry's General Security) to review the film and give its recommendation. On August 11, it was reported that the Lebanese authority, comprising the representatives from the General Security and the Ministry of Economy and Trade, found no reason to ban the film in the country. On September 1, the film was formally approved for screening in Lebanon for audiences aged 13 and above. Barbie was released in Lebanese theaters on September 7.

Also on August 9, 2023, the Kuwaiti authority formally announced the ban of both Barbie and Australian horror film Talk to Me (which stars a transgender actor), with the head of the authority Lafi Al-Subaie accusing the former of "carrying ideas that encourage unacceptable behavior and distort society's values."

Algeria
On August 13, 2023, just three weeks after its release on July 19, the screenings of Barbie were halted in film theaters in Algeria. According to Reuters, the official source was quoted as saying that the film "promotes homosexuality and other Western deviances" and that it "does not comply with Algeria's religious and cultural beliefs."

Reception

Box office
, Barbie has grossed $635.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $805.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.441 billion. This was described by Warner Brothers as "reaching a 'Barbillion'''".

It was described as a "record-breaking" box office success during its opening weekend, and set the record for any film that was not a sequel, remake, or superhero property. Barbie became the highest-grossing live-action comedy film of all time, smashing the domestic record formerly held by Home Alone (1990) and the worldwide record formerly held by The Hangover Part II (2011) simultaneously. It has also become Gerwig's highest-grossing film, overtaking its predecessor Little Women (2019). The film crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide on August 6, 2023, making it the first film by a solo female director to do so. This was also the fastest Warner Bros. film to reach $1 billion, beating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011). In late August, Barbie surpassed that same film again, becoming Warner Bros.'s highest-grossing film, not adjusted for inflation. By September 2, the film surpassed $1.365 billion at the global box office, replacing The Super Mario Bros. Movie as the highest-grossing film of the year. Additionally, it became the highest-grossing film by a solo female director, surpassing the previous record held by Hi, Mom (2021).

 United States and Canada
In the United States and Canada, Barbie was released alongside Oppenheimer, and was originally projected to gross $90–125 million from 4,243 theaters in its opening weekend, with Warner Bros. predicting a $75 million debut. The week of their release, AMC Theatres announced that over 40,000 AMC Stubs members had pre-booked tickets to both films on the same day. It earned $70.5 million on its opening day, which included $22.3 million from Wednesday and Thursday night previews, both of which were the best of 2023. Barbies opening weekend gross of $162 million marked the largest opening since Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($181.3 million in November 2022). It was also the biggest opening ever for a film helmed by a female director, besting Captain Marvel (2019), and surpassed Suicide Squad (2016) to have Robbie's highest opening weekend, as well as Blade Runner 2049 (2017) to have Gosling's largest opening weekend. It scored the third-highest July opening weekend at the time, behind The Lion King (2019) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. This also marked the third-highest opening weekend for a Warner Bros. film, after the latter film and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Barbie also scored the biggest opening for a film based on a toy, surpassing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009). Furthermore, it dethroned The Secret Life of Pets (2016) to achieve the biggest non-sequel July opening weekend. The Barbenheimer phenomenon was widely credited with boosting interest in the film, with a total of 79% of tickets sold over the weekend (52% for Barbie) being for the two films, a total of 18.5 million people.

Following its opening weekend, Barbie surpassed The Dark Knight (2008) as the highest Monday gross ever for a Warner Bros. film, collecting a total of $26.1 million. Plus, it quickly beat La La Land (2016) to become Gosling's highest-grossing film of all time. In its second weekend, the film earned $92 million, dropping by 43%, which was the largest sophomore weekend ever for a Warner Bros. film and the seventh-largest ever. The film remained in first place with $53 million in its third weekend, and $33.7 million in its fourth weekend. On August 16, 2023, Barbie once again surpassed The Dark Knight; this time as the highest-grossing domestic release in Warner Bros. history, having earned $537.5 million. The film was dethroned in its fifth weekend by newcomer Blue Beetle ($25 million), though it continued to hold well with a gross of $21.5 million. On August 24, 2023, Barbie surpassed The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($574 million) to become the highest-grossing film of the year in North America. Barbie finished in second place again in its sixth weekend, this time behind newcomer Gran Turismo.

 Other territories

Outside of the United States and Canada, Barbie earned $194.3 million from 69 offshore markets in its opening weekend. Of the 69 markets, it was the number one film for the weekend in 58, scored the largest opening weekend for a Warner Bros. film in 26 and marked the largest opening for a 2023 film in 24. In the United Kingdom, the film opened with $24.2 million, which was the year's largest opening. In France, it opened with $10.2 million, marking the largest debut for a Warner Bros. film since Joker (2019). The following weekend, Barbie earned $127 million, dropping by just 31%. It remained the number one film of the weekend in 57 markets. Within its sophomore weekend, it became the highest-grossing film of 2023 in Brazil, as well as the highest-grossing Warner Bros. release ever. In Australia, the film scored the largest second week ever, for a running total of $30.6 million after two weekends. In the UK, Barbie began outpacing the ten-day total of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Warner Bros.' highest-grossing film in the country, in its second weekend. In its third weekend, Barbie grossed $74 million from 69 markets for a drop of 41%. As of September 9, 2023, the highest-grossing overseas markets were the United Kingdom ($120.8 million), Germany ($56.5 million)  Australia ($55.6 million), Mexico ($54.3 million) and France ($47.6 million). In Ireland, Barbie became the highest-grossing film in history with $9.57 million, surpassing Avatar (2009).

By contrast, in South Korea (where the film opened on July 19, 2023), Barbie underperformed at the box office. During the period between July 28 and 30, 2023, the film recorded around 81,000 admissions (earning $667,000) and finished in the fifth place in the South Korean box office, falling behind Smugglers (around 1.17 million admissions; $9.31 million), Elemental (around 360,000 admissions; $2.85 million), Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (around 300,000 admissions; $2.43 million) and the twenty-sixth theatrical feature film from the Case Closed animated series (around 89,000 admissions; $703,000). It was suggested that the animosity against feminist messages in the film, and the lack of popularity of Barbie dolls in South Korea have contributed to the film's under-performance there. Film critic Youn Sung-Eun told Yonhap News Agency that 'in [South] Korea, where the recognition of feminism is not good, [people] don't want to accept that an amusement like film has a message [about social issues]', and that 'the film uses its later half to preach [about sexual discrimination], which might be hard to accept [to South Koreans]'. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kang Hye-jung, the producer of Smugglers, said "I couldn't understand why Hollywood went so wild about Barbie, perhaps because it has never been our [toy]."

In Japan, Barbie ranked at no. 16. Prior to the release date, public opinion of Barbie had soured after the official Twitter account for the Barbie film had responded positively to several Barbenheimer memes, all of which depicted atomic bombings comically. This was seen as an endorsement of such jokes, and, in turn, was met with disapproval from the Japanese public, who criticized their ignorance, particularly due to their negligence towards the history of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mitsuki Takahata, who provided Barbie's voice in the Japanese dub of the film, stated on her Instagram account that she was disappointed and had considered dropping out of one of the film's promotional events.

 Critical response Barbie received critical acclaim upon its release. According to The New York Times, critics praised the script for addressing past criticisms of the Barbie brand's portrayal of women and lack of diversity while infusing humor, but there were also critics who felt that it did not go far enough in critiquing consumerism and beauty standards. The performances of Robbie and Gosling received widespread acclaim.

  Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave it an 89% overall positive score, with 79% saying they would definitely recommend the film.

In his review for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips called Barbie "a lovely, eccentrically imaginative example of brand extension and raw, untrammeled commercialism", applauded the production design, and summed: "The crucial partnership here is the one between director and performer, Gerwig and Robbie; anything Gerwig and Baumbach's verbally dexterous script requires, from Barbie's first teardrop to the final punchline, Robbie handles with unerring precision". Richard Brody of The New Yorker called it "brilliant, beautiful and fun as hell", claiming the "giddily stylized vision of a doll coming to life makes a serious case for the art of adapting even the most sanitized I.P." and commended the "free and wild" direction as well as the "profuse and exquisite" visual aesthetics. Charlotte O'Sullivan of the Evening Standard hailed the film as "easily the comedy of the year" with a large amount of fun, where "star and producer Margot Robbie, and writer-director Greta Gerwig, have done themselves proud" with a "breezily outrageous" film "about a woman's right to be 'weird, dark and crazy'." Eileen Jones of Jacobin said that the film "manages to overcome cumbersome plotting and feminist pieties to provide a delightful spectacle of funny moments that add up to something pretty good." In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw awarded Barbie a 3 out of 5 stars, describing it as "beamingly affectionate and deliriously pink-themed" but "perhaps a giant two-hour commercial for a product" and highlighted Gosling as a scene-stealer, being given "all the best lines". In India Currents, Amann Mahajan notes, "Perhaps the most impactful ... moment[] is one in which Barbie is calmly eviscerated by a teenage girl who dubs her a 'fascist.' [I]t's this scene (though not that particular comment) which comes closest to actually critiquing Barbie's legacy. ... And that's just it: the movie is hemmed in by the fact that it is, at the end of the day, produced by Mattel."

Lovia Gyarke of The Hollywood Reporter called the film a "tricky balancing act of corporate fealty and subversion" lauding Gerwig's direction, the set design, costumes, soundtrack and lead performances, but criticizing the "muddled politics and flat emotional landing". Variety critic Peter Debruge praised the humor for giving "permission to challenge what Barbie represents" and lauded Gosling's physical performance, but concluded that the film is "an intellectual experience, not an emotional one, grounded largely in audience nostalgia." In the Vulture component of New York, Alison Willmore commended the lead performances, particularly that of Robbie, whom she characterized "as capable of heartbreaking earnestness as humor, and who sometimes effortlessly achieved both at once", but lamented the themes of the film, opining that it "doesn't ultimately want to do much more than talk itself in circles about these themes". On a similar note, Stephanie Zacharek of Time praised Robbie's "buoyant, charming performance", Gosling's "go-for-broke" effort, and the "inventive production design", but criticized the "self aware" nature of the film especially following the first half-hour, concluding that it is a feminist film "only in the most scattershot way", and that it's not "subversive". Camilla Long of The Times wrote that the film featured Mattel's "pink, squealing, corporate grasping", trying to be "ahead of the sexism curve", but "ended up feeling sexist itself" for its portrayal that "men are stupid, go to the gym, run everything and don't care about women, while women are sensible, striving but ultimately conflicted victims." In the review of Kyle Smith of The Wall Street Journal, he stated: "As bubbly as the film appears, its script is like a grumpier-than-average women's studies seminar", exemplified by the Mattel employee character's "long monologue on how miserable it is to be female". MovieWeb ranked it number 1 on its list of the "Best Comedy Movies of the 2020s (So Far)," writing that "Gerwig's ode to the Barbie girl and her Barbie world ... is as surprisingly modern and introspective as audiences have come to expect from her work. Scrunching 60 plus years of history into a two-hour time frame aside, this film gets straight at the heart of what it's like being a woman today while providing more than a laugh or two in the process."

Chinese film critic Li Jingfei () praised the film's humor and criticism of patriarchy, qualifying that its themes were too-often advanced by slogans rather than the experiences of its characters.

Accolades

 Themes and analysis

As with the doll itself, feminism and related themes in the film were the subject of discussion. Some reviews for the film saw it as a satire that pokes fun at capitalism, while others perceived it as a satire that cleverly uses capitalist themes.

 Philosophy Barbie has been characterized as exploring themes of existentialism. Lucy Ford of GQ wrote that the film "ruminates on the very idea of what makes us human, the idea of 'the other', whether there's truly such a thing as autonomy or if we're all simply pawns to be picked up and disposed of when we are no longer useful". Ford observed that, in the film, Barbie and Ken go on "opposite but equal" journeys of self-discovery, after venturing out into the Real World and learning that it is an oppressive patriarchal society as opposed to the matriarchal utopia that is Barbieland, and get "caught in the crosshairs of being both sentient and someone else's idea, battling with free will and the omnipresent predetermined rules about where to go and how to act".

In Vogue India, Varya Srivastava applied Beauvoirian concepts of existentialism and individualism to Barbie, arguing that "individualism makes you question societal norms and expectations [...] Even for Barbie, this has been brewing for a while. She has tried to be inclusive and representative. She has tried to acknowledge the feminist critique and now has jobs like being the President, a scientist, and a doctor. But the burden of being a role model in a world that is questioning morality and embracing multiplicity is a lot. Existentialism thrives in that gap between what is and what ought to be". Clark University professor of philosophy Wiebke Deimling compared a scene in the film, in which Barbie has to make a choice between going back to her perfect life in Barbieland or learning the truth about her existence in the Real World, to the experience machine, a thought experiment by American philosopher Robert Nozick. Diemling also observed that gender in Barbieland is performative, noting how the Kens behave before and after a patriarchy is established.

Alissa Wilkinson of Vox compared Barbie land to the biblical Garden of Eden, with Barbie and Ken as inverted parallels of Adam and Eve. She saw Barbie and Ken's first impression "that they're suddenly self-conscious and aware of being looked at" in the Real World as the film's version of the Fall. Chinese film critic Li Jingfei () compared Barbie's sudden awareness of death to the moment when Siddhārtha Gautama left the palace of his birth and first learned of suffering and death, which eventually led to his enlightenment.

 Feminism
Katie Pickles of The Conversation said that Barbie shows how the matriarchy can be "as bad" as the patriarchy, with the Kens being the objectified and excluded sex in Barbieland. Pickles further comments that the true heroes were outcasts such as Weird Barbie and Allan, who deprogrammed the Barbies from tolerating the status quo. She believes that this aligns with Gerwig's conception of feminism, where "everyone stands in the sunshine".

Jack Butler of National Review rejected the perception of the film as a "shallow, man-hating, and repulsive screed" and argued that the film is instead a "post-feminist satire of what feminists imagine a perfect world looking like and of what they imagine male dominance is like", noted that in the Real World, "Ken is rebuffed in all of his attempts to join the male hierarchy that purportedly dominates the world. He must return to Barbie land to institute it; what he institutes there is so shallow that it collapses almost as quickly as it is set up. Meanwhile, though Robbie's Barbie restores female dominance in Barbieland, she chooses not to stay there, electing instead to become fully human".

Many journalists coupled Barbie with the Eras Tour by Taylor Swift for the concurrent representation of recontextualized mainstream femininity. Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times described the launch of the film and the tour, their rave public reception, and the associated critical discourses as the biggest cultural phenomena of 2023 summer, explaining that "beneath their slick, exuberant pop surfaces, [both the film and the tour] tell female coming-of-age stories marked by existential crises and bitter confrontations with sexism." Ben Sisario considered both the works as critiques of patriarchy, while Talia Lakritz of Business Insider said both of them "reclaim girlhood without rescinding power". Similarly, Chris Willman stated that both use patriarchy as a subject of irony "while being utterly friendly to and welcoming of men as much as anybody", eventually becoming a billion-dollar-earning phenomenon.

 Masculinity
In the Los Angeles Times, Jean Guerrero presented a subtext to the film's feminist exterior, in which "a world that disregards men and their feelings is an inverted form of patriarchy and also cruel", and added: "The film is a rare product of mainstream culture that invites men to reimagine masculinity for their own sake. It acknowledges the identity crisis and loss of hope, economic promise and life purpose among American men. These struggles are often ignored by progressives, but conveniently and poisonously exploited by right-wing manfluencers from Andrew Tate to Josh Hawley [...] The film's reception has focused on its messages of women's empowerment, but what makes it a radical story is that it also invites women to reimagine feminism so that it doesn't ignore male struggles".

Nicholas Balaisis contended in Psychology Today that Barbie provides a "relatively nuanced portrayal of masculinity" in two cases that resonated with issues and concerns frequent in clinical psychology and therapy: In the first case, which concerns the "over-valuation of a woman's gaze and attention on male sense of self-esteem, and even an existential sense of identity", Ken turns to patriarchal expression and masculine dominance "over other men, women or objects" because he does not receive the "sense of attractiveness, worth, and general self-value" he wants from Barbie's gaze and attention. In the second case, which concerns "the relationship to shame or existential solitude and the conversion to sex-as-soothing", when Barbie approaches Ken in the third act of the film for consolation, he interprets it as a sexual advance and tries to kiss her, which Dr. Balaisis likened to "the same way that shame can quickly morph into resentment and anger, here we see loneliness and existential angst being converted into a sexual plea — for sex to solve and resolve these bad feelings".

Megan Garber of The Atlantic found Ken and his journey of self-discovery "mimics adolescence", describing "Like any teenager, Ken is figuring out who he is, and trying the world's possibilities on for size. But his immaturity is not contained, and this is its problem. His adolescent approach to the world, instead, inflicts itself on everyone else". Garber concluded that Ken embodies a "core idea" in the film "that patriarchy is a profound form of immaturity". Eliana Dockterman of Time'' noted that Ken's radicalization resembles the men's rights movement, particularly in his "feelings of emasculation" and evangelization of the patriarchy.

See also
 Existentialism in film and television
 List of Barbie films
 Self-reflection

Notes

References

External links

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Barbie (film)


The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is a musical composition by the American composer Aaron Copland.  The work was commissioned by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky who was then music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  It was first performed on January 28, 1927, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Koussevitzky with the composer himself as the soloist.  The piece is dedicated to Copland's patron Alma Morgenthau Wertheim.

Composition

Background
Copland completed work on the piano concerto in November 1926.  It is cast in two connected movements: a short, slow first movement, with a tempo marking of Andante sostenuto, and a large, fast second movement, marked as Molto moderato (molto rubato).  Like George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (composed two years prior), the piece demonstrates an early use of jazz and blues in an orchestral setting.

Instrumentation
The work is scored for piano and a large orchestra consisting of two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone (doubling soprano saxophone), two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, five percussionists, celesta, and strings.

Reception
The piano concerto was not a critical success upon its premiere and remained virtually unperformed for three decades.  The piece was nevertheless admired by the conductor Leonard Bernstein, who featured it in the New York Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts and later produced the first recording of the concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Copland again performing the piano part.  The piece has since grown more popular and has been recorded many times.  In 2008, the music critic Peter Dickinson of Gramophone reflected, "The first of its two movements is a spacious outpouring of fanfares and blues and the second is a crazy kind of supercharged ragtime that really upset the Boston audience and critics. It shows how Copland exploited the jazz age to brilliant effect."

References

Compositions by Aaron Copland
1926 compositions
Copland, Aaron
Jazz compositions
Music commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky or the Koussevitzky Music Foundation

Piano Concerto (Copland)


Claude Marcelle Jorré, better known as Claude Jade (; 8 October 1948 – 1 December 2006), was a French actress. She starred as Christine in François Truffaut's three films Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970) and Love on the Run (1979). Jade acted in theatre, film and television. Her film work outside France included the Soviet Union, the United States, Italy, Belgium, Germany and Japan.

Early career
The daughter of university professors, Jade spent three years at Dijon's Conservatory of Dramatic Art. In 1964 she played on stage 40 times the part of Agnès in Molière's L'école des femmes. In 1966 she won the Prix de Comédie for Jean Giraudoux's stage play Ondine, performed at the Comédie Boulogne. She moved to Paris and became a student of Jean-Laurent Cochet at the Edouard VII theater, and began acting in television productions, including a leading role in TV series Les oiseaux rares.

Films with François Truffaut

While performing as Frida in Pirandello's Henri IV, in a production by Sacha Pitoëff at the Théâtre Moderne, Jade was discovered by New Wave film director François Truffaut.  He was "completely taken by her beauty, her manners, her kindness, and her joie de vivre", and cast her in the role of Christine Darbon in Stolen Kisses (Baisers volés, 1968). During the filming, Truffaut fell in love with her, and there was talk of marriage. Truffaut dubbed Claude Jade "French cinema's little sweetheart" and the director and his muse were soon a couple in real life, although Truffaut changed his mind about marrying her the night before their wedding.

American critic Pauline Kael wrote that Jade "seems a less ethereal, more practical Catherine Deneuve".

Playing the same character at different stages of her life, Jade appeared in three Truffaut films: loved from a distance in Stolen Kisses; married and misled in Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugal, 1970); and divorced but still on good terms in Love on the Run (1979).

The late 1960s in film
Some months after Truffaut's Stolen Kisses Claude Jade starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz (1969), as Michèle Picard, a secret agent's anxious daughter, married to a reporter (Michel Subor). Recommended to Hitchcock by Truffaut, she was 19 years old when cast, with Dany Robin playing her mother. Hitchcock said he chose the two actresses to provide glamor, and later quipped, "Claude Jade is a rather quiet young lady, but I wouldn't guarantee [that] about her behavior in a taxi". Jade recounted that they "talked in a Paris hotel about cooking, and I gave him my recipe for soufflé and told him I liked Strangers on a Train, and that was that."

Hitchcock said she resembled his former star Grace Kelly, and in France she was a younger Danielle Darrieux. Some of her scenes were deleted and restored for the director's cut of Topaz in 1999. Topaz was Jade's only Hollywood film. Universal Pictures offered her a seven-year contract, which she turned down reportedly because she preferred to work in French.

Director Tony Richardson's film Nijinsky (a.k.a. The Dancer) (1970), based on a screenplay by Edward Albee, was canceled during pre-production by producer Harry Saltzman. It was to have starred Jade as Vaslav Nijinsky's wife, with Rudolf Nureyev as Nijinsky and Paul Scofield as his lover Sergei Diaghilev.

She had a leading role as Linda in Sous le signe de Monte-Cristo (Under the Sign of Monte Cristo) by André Hunebelle, a modern version of Alexandre Dumas' novel. Here the 19 years young actress starred alongside French cinema's veterans like Pierre Brasseur and Michel Auclair.

Jade starred in Édouard Molinaro's My Uncle Benjamin (Mon oncle Benjamin, 1969) alongside Jacques Brel. As Manette she refuses Brel's advances until he produces a marriage contract. At the End Manette realizes she prefers happiness to a marriage contract after all.

Her career continued in Belgium, where she played a young English teacher who is fatally intrigued by a murderer (Gérard Barray) in the 1969 film The Witness. Her fiancé is this movie was played by Jean-Claude Dauphin, to whom she was engaged at this time. Also in 1969, she starred as Helena in a film adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream by Jean-Christophe Averty, Le Songe d'une nuit d'été .

The 1970s in film and TV
In 1970 she reprised her part as Christine from Stolen Kisses in Truffaut's Bed and Board as a married woman. The Truffaut films influenced her type as lovingly gentle modern young woman in contemporary cinema, which she contrasted in ambivalent figures: Critic Vincent Canby praised her in work in Gérard Brach's The Boat on the Grass (Le bateau sur l'herbe, 1971), in which she starred as Eleonore, a young girl between two friends (Jean-Pierre Cassel, John McEnery). She starred in Hearth Fires (Les feux de la chandeleur, 1972) as Laura, a daughter who wants to reconcile her parents (Annie Girardot, Jean Rochefort) and who falls in love with her mother's best friend (Bernard Fresson). Alongside Robert Hossein she played the priest's love Françoise in Forbidden Priests (Prêtres interdits, 1973). In Home Sweet Home (1973), she played a hardened nurse who is changed by a love affair with a social worker (Jacques Perrin).

Jade played a dual role in The Choice, 1976). She starred in three Italian films: as a private investigator in Number One (1973), as Tiffany, the girlfriend of a private eye (Frederick Stafford, her father from Topaz) in La ragazza di via Condotti (1973), and as Maria Teresa, an unhappily married woman in Eriprando Visconti's A Spiral of Mist (Una spirale di nebbia, 1977). She played a nun in Kita No Misaki - Cap du Nord (1976) by Japanese director Kei Kumai. In the same year, she starred as Penny Vanderwood in Thinking Robots, based on a horror novel by George Langelaan. Among other films of the 1970s were Malicious Pleasure (Le malin plaisir, 1975), Trop c'est trop (1975) and the romantic comedy The Pawn (Le Pion, 1978), in which she starred as a young widow who wins the heart of her son's teacher (Henri Guybet). One year later Claude Jade played the part of Christine Doinel for the third time in Truffaut's Love on the Run.

In 1970 she starred as Orphan Françoise in mini-series Mauregard, directed by Truffaut's co-writer Claude de Givray. Other TV roles in the decade were Sheherazade (in Shéhérazade) and Louise de La Vallière (in Le chateau perdu), Lucile Desmoulins (in La passion de Camille et Lucile Desmoulins). She starred in such television movies as Mamie Rose, La Mandragore, Monsieur Seul, Fou comme François, Les anneaux de Bicêtre, Ulysse est revenu, and, in her biggest success of that decade, as heroine Veronique d'Hergemont in the 1979 series The Island of Thirty Coffins (L'île aux trente cercueils).

The 1980s in film and TV
In the 1980s, Jade moved to Moscow for three years with her husband Bernard Coste, a French diplomat, and her son Pierre Coste (born in 1976). She starred in two Soviet films. In Teheran 43 (1981) she played the mysterious terrorist Françoise, with Alain Delon and an international cast. For Sergei Yutkevich's Lenin in Paris (1981), she played the French Bolshevik Inessa Armand, but without the rumored love affair with Vladimir Lenin.

Among her other film roles in the 1980s were the arrested philosophy prof in Schools Falling Apart (Le Bahut va craquer, 1981), the lawyer Valouin in A Captain's Honor (L'honneur d'un capitaine, 1982),  the Vicki Baum-heroine Evelyne Droste in Rendezvous in Paris (1982) and the mysterious Alice in René Féret's thriller The Man Who Wasn't There (L'homme qui n'était pas là, 1987).

She also appeared in TV movies, such as the thriller La grotte aux loups (1980); the drama Nous ne l'avons pas assez aimée (1980); Treize (1981); a dual role in Lise et Laura (1982); A Girl in the Sunflowers (1984); the Italian miniseries Voglia di volare (1984); the French-Spanish-Canadian-German miniseries Le grand secret (1989) and in episode L'amie d'enfance of the series Commissaire Moulin.

The 1990s in TV and film
During the 1990s Jade worked mainly in television, such as the TV series La tête en l'air and Fleur bleue, as guest star in Une femme d'honneur (ep.Mémoire perdue), Inspecteur Moretti (ep. Un enfant au soleil), Julie Lescaut (ep. Rumeurs) and Navarro (ep. Sentiments mortels). TV movies included L'Éternité devant soi, Le bonheur des autres, Eugénie Grandet and Porté disparu. From 1998 to 2000 she was the lead actress in the series Tide of Life (Cap des Pins). Her last U.S. acting part was a guest appearance on The Hitchhiker: in the episode Windows she is Monique, who shoots her neighbor David Marshall Grant at the end.

Jade's film roles in cinemas in 1990s included Gabrielle Martin, a mother betrayed by her husband, in Tableau d'honneur. This was followed by her performance as shy lesbian Caroline in Jean-Pierre Mocky's Bonsoir. In 1998, she played a governor's wife, Reine Schmaltz, who saves herself on a lifeboat in the historical movie The Raft of the Medusa (Le Radeau de la Méduse, 1998).

The 2000s in TV and short films
In her last decade, Jade's work included the TV movie Sans famille (2000); the series La Crim (episode "Le secret" in 2004), and Groupe Flag (episode "Vrai ou faux" in 2005). She also appeared in an episode of the short film series Drug Scenes (Scénarios sur la drogue, episode "La rampe", 2000); and in the short À San Remo (2004).

Theatrical work
Jade was a member of Jean Meyer's theatre company in Lyon, appearing in plays by Jean Giraudoux (Helena in The Trojan War Will Not Take Place, and Isabelle in Intermezzo); Henry de Montherlant (Port Royal); James Joyce (The Exiles); Racine (Britannicus); and Balzac (Le Faiseur). She took roles in plays by Vladimir Volkoff (The Interrogation); Catherine Decours (Regulus 93); Michel Vinaver (Dissident il va sans dire), Alfred de Musset (Lorenzaccio) and others. She worked onstage in Lyon, Nantes, Dijon and Paris.

Many plays were adapted for TV, such as her performances as Helena in Shakespeares Midsummer Night's Dream; her Sylvie in Marcel Aymés Les oiseaux de lune; her Colomba in Jules Romains's adaptation of Ben Johnson's Volpone; her Clarisse in Jacques Deval's Il y a longtemps que je t'aime; her title role in Jules Supervielle's Shéhérazade; and her Louise de La Vallière in Le château perdu. Her last stage role was as Célimène in Jacques Rampal's Celimene and the Cardinal.

Later life
Jade published her autobiography Baisers envolés in 2004.

Death
On 1 December 2006, Jade died of uveal melanoma, which had metastasised to metastatic liver disease. She wore a prosthetic eye in Celimene and the Cardinal, her last stage performance, in August 2006.

Awards
Jade won an award in 1970 for "Révelation de la Nuit du cinéma", and in 1975 she received the Prix Orange at the Cannes Film Festival. Her contributions to French culture were recognised in 1998, when was named a knight in the Légion d'honneur. In 2000 she won the New Wave Award at Palm Beach International Film Festival for her "trend-setting role in the world cinema", followed in 2002 by the Prix Reconnaissance des Cinéphiles in Puget-Théniers.

Legacy
In 2013, a street in Dijon was named after Claude Jade: Allée Claude Jade, 21000 Dijon.

Selected filmography

References

External links

Claude Jade at Films de France
Claude Jade at DvdToile
Claude Jade orbituary in Variety

1948 births
2006 deaths
20th-century French actresses
21st-century French actresses
French autobiographers
French stage actresses
French film actresses
French television actresses
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Deaths from cancer in France
Knights of the Legion of Honour
Actors from Dijon
Women autobiographers
Deaths from uveal melanoma
Deaths from liver disease

Claude Jade


The dusky caenolestid (Caenolestes fuliginosus), also known as Tate's shrew opossum, is a shrew opossum from South America. The dusky caenolestid is characterized by a dark brown coat with a lighter underbelly, soft and thick fur, and a loosely haired tail. A nocturnal animal (active mainly at night), the dusky caenolestid lives on trees and feeds on insects and small invertebrates and vertebrates. It occurs in alpine and páramo forests in northern and western Colombia, Ecuador, and western Venezuela. The IUCN classifies this shrew opossum as least concern.

Taxonomy and etymology
The dusky caenolestid is one of the five members of Caenolestes, and is placed in the family Caenolestidae (shrew opossums). It was first described by English zoologist Robert Fisher Tomes as Hyracodon fuliginosus in 1863. It was given its present binomial name by English zoologist Oldfield Thomas in 1895. In the latter part of 20th century, scientists believed that Caenolestes is closely related to Lestoros (the Incan caenolestid). Over the years, it became clear that Lestoros is morphologically different from Caenolestes. A 2013 morphological and mitochondrial DNA-based phylogenetic study showed that the Incan caenolestid and the long-nosed caenolestid (Rhyncholestes raphanurus) form a clade sister to Caenolestes. The cladogram below is based on this study.

Three subspecies are recognized:
C. f. centralis Bublitz, 1987: Occurs in the Andean natural region (Colombia) and extreme west of Venezuela.
C. f. fuliginosus (Tomes, 1863): Occurs in central Ecuador.
C. f. obscurus Thomas, 1895: Occurs around Bogotá (Colombia).

Caenolestid fossils date to as early as the early Eocene (nearly 55 mya). The generic name Caenolestes derives from the Greek words kainos ("new") and lestes ("robber", "pirate").

Description
The dusky caenolestid is characterized by a dark brown coat with a lighter underbelly, soft and thick fur, and a loosely haired tail. The head-and-body length is between , the tail measures  and hindfeet are  long. The ears and eyes are smaller and the rostrum is longer than in other caenolestids. The forefeet have five digits each; while two of them are blunt, the other three digits bear sharp claws. The toes of the hindfeet bear sharp claws as well, except for the biggest toe. There are four teats and no pouch. A 2007 study recorded dental anomalies such as missing teeth and supernumerary teeth.

Ecology and behavior
The dusky caenolestid is nocturnal (active mainly at night), and lives on trees. It can be a fast runner, like the Incan caenolestid, though it does not move in leaps and jumps. The dusky caenolestid is reported to have a poor vision, though its sense of smell and hearing are good. Diet consists of lepidopteran larvae, insects, rodents, arachnids and centipedes; plant material may be eaten as well. The tail, though prehensile, may not be able to support the animal when it hangs down a branch.

Distribution and status
The dusky caenolestid inhabits alpine and páramo forests in northern and western Colombia, Ecuador, and western Venezuela. It can occur in an altitudinal range of  above the sea level. The IUCN classifies it as least concern given its wide distribution and presumably large numbers. The caenolestid faces competition from the wandering small-eared shrew, and is thus rare, in montane regions of Ecuador. Cattle grazing is a major factor in habitat degradation.

References

External links

Comparative Mammalian Brain Collections: Shrew opossum (Caenolestes fuliginosus)

Shrew opossums
Mammals of the Andes
Marsupials of South America
Mammals of Colombia
Mammals of Ecuador
Mammals of Venezuela
Mammals described in 1863

es:Caenolestes#Caenolestes fuliginosus

Dusky caenolestid


The Salina Pumped Storage Project is a  pumped-storage power station near Salina, Oklahoma. It is owned and operated by the Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA). Its construction was in response to growing power demands and a lack of dam sites on the Grand River. The first phase was completed in 1968 and the second in 1971. The upper reservoir for the power station is Lake W. R. Holway which was built on Saline Creek and the lower reservoir is Lake Hudson on the Grand River. During periods of lower power demand, water is pumped from Lake Hudson to Lake Holway and released back down through the pump-generators during periods of high energy demand.

Design philosophy
The process essentially consists of pumping water from a lower elevation into a containment at a higher elevation. In this step, the mechanical device used to move the water acts like a conventional pump to lift the water. External power, in this case an electric motor, supplies the needed energy. Later, the external power is switched off and water flows backward through the device, enabling it to function as a hydraulic turbine generating energy to drive an electric power generator. Ideally, the power generated would offset the power consumed in elevating the water. In practice, there are inefficiencies in the system that cause the power consumed raising the water to significantly exceed the energy generated during the reversal of water flow. GRDA has stated that pumping water from Lake Hudson (the source) into Lake W. R. Holway (the receiver) consumes nearly twice the power that can be recovered from the hydraulic generator. The real benefit from the process is that the owner can use power for pumping when overall power demand from customers is lower, and supply electric power when customer demand is higher. It is an effective way to provide peaking power because the system can be brought on line (or taken off line) very quickly.

Construction
The project was constructed in two stages:
Stage 1 consisted of building an earth and rock filled dam in Chimney Rock Hollow  high, creating Chimney Rock Reservoir. A canal  long led from the dam to a forebay structure that had openings for steel penstocks, each  in diameter. Three penstocks led from the forebay to a powerhouse that housed three  horsepower pump-generators, with a total rated capacity of . This stage was completed in 1968.

Stage 2 comprised building three more penstocks, extending the powerhouse and adding three more pump-generators, all identical to those installed in Stage 1. This doubled the facility's capacity to 260 mw. It was completed in 1971.

The SPSP is controlled remotely from the GRDA Energy Control Center at the Robert S. Kerr Dam, which created Lake Hudson.

In 1981, Chimney Rock Reservoir was renamed Lake W. R. Holway, in honor of a noted consulting engineer who had been responsible for engineering several important projects in Oklahoma, including the SPSP.

Effects of drought on operation
Severe drought in 2005 greatly reduced runoff in the entire Grand River watershed. This caused levels of the reservoirs along the river to fall. In particular, the water level of Lake Hudson dropped to  by January 2006. The SPSP agreement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requires that Lake Hudson elevation be a minimum of  in order to pump water into Lake W. R. Holway. This required GRDA to lower Grand Lake by .

References

Energy infrastructure completed in 1968
Energy infrastructure completed in 1971
Buildings and structures in Mayes County, Oklahoma
Pumped-storage hydroelectric power stations in the United States
Hydroelectric power plants in Oklahoma

Salina Pumped Storage Project


Hermann Wilbrand (22 May 1851 – 17 September 1935) was a German ophthalmologist born in Giessen. Wilbrand's father and grandfather were also physicians.

In 1875, he earned his doctorate at the University of Strassburg, and afterwards was an assistant to Ludwig Laqueur (1839-1909) at Strassburg and to Carl Friedrich Richard Förster (1825-1902) at Breslau. Later he moved to Hamburg, where he became head of the department of ophthalmology at Allgemeines Hospital in 1905.

Wilbrand specialized in the field of neuro-ophthalmology and did extensive research involving the pathology and physiology of the eye. He demonstrated that homonymous hemianopsia was caused by lesions in the occipital lobe and optic radiation as well as the optic tract.

Associated eponyms
 Wilbrand's knee: A group of extramacular ganglion cell axons that extend forward into the posterior optic nerve.
 Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome: Syndrome involving visual agnosia and the inability to re-visualize images. Condition due to occlusion of the posterior cerebral artery of the dominant hemisphere. Named with French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893).

Written works
 Die hemianopischen Gesichtsfeldformen und das optische Wahrnehmungscentrum. Wiesbaden, 1890.
 Über Sehstörungen bei funktionellen Nervenleiden. with Alfred Saenger (1860-1921) Leipzig, 1892.
 Die Erhohlungsausdehnung des Gesichtsfeldes. Wiesbaden, (1896).
 Über die Augenerkrankungen in der Frühperiode der Syphilis. with Staelin. Hamburg and Leipzig, 1897.
 Die Neurologie des Auges: ein Handbuch für Nerven- und Augenärtze. (with Alfred Saenger; 9 volumes). Wiesbaden, 1900-1922.
 Die Theorie des Sehens. with Carl Behr (1876-1943) (supplementary volume, 1927), Wiesbaden, 1913.
 Der Faservelauf durch das Chiasma und die intrakraniellen Sehnerven. Berlin, 1929.

References

 Ophthalmology Hall of Fame (biography of Hermann Wilbrand)

1851 births
1935 deaths
German ophthalmologists
People from Giessen

Hermann Wilbrand


Leiren or Leira is a village in the municipality of Grane in Nordland county, Norway.  The village is located at the northern end of the lake Nedre Fiplingvatnet.  The municipal center of Trofors lies about  to the northwest and the village of Majavatn lies about  to the south.  The local Fiplingdal Church is located in Leiren, serving the eastern part of Grane.

References

Villages in Nordland
Grane, Nordland

Leiren


Sugar people (糖人: Tángrén) is a traditional Chinese form of folk art using hot, liquid sugar to create three-dimensional figures.

These fragile, plump figures have a distinct brownish-yellow colour, usually with yellow or green pigment added. They are mainly purchased for ornamental purposes and not for consumption, due to sanitary concerns. Popular figures include animals such as dragons, roosters and pigs, and such objects as machetes and spears.

Similar to the trade of producing sugar paintings, this art form has been practiced in public places for more than 600 years, and can still be seen today. Traditionally, artists set up their point of production and sale in areas such as markets, and outside schools, as the figures appeal to children. These days, this art form is practiced in tourist areas.

Prices can range from one or two, to tens of RMB, depending on the piece. However, during difficult economic times, artists would exchange figures for metal scraps, broken shoes, old clothing, and notably, toothpaste. Children would often scavenge for these items in order to purchase a figure.

Technique

To start, the artist heats the sugar syrup they are using (usually sucrose and maltose) to at least 170 degrees. Next, the artist pulls off a section and uses his or her hands to knead it into a ball. A thin straw is then inserted into the ball, and the artist begins to blow air into it, in order to slowly inflate it. Simultaneously, the artist pinches and pulls parts of the ball, by hand, or sometimes with tools such as tweezers, to produce limbs, and various shapes. Before the figure has completely cooled, colours, typically red or green, are added to the surface, and a wooden stick is inserted into the underside. The straw is then extracted, and the figure put on display for sale.

See also
 Chinese Folk Art
Amezaiku in Japan
Sugar painting
Sugar sculpture
 Tò he

References

External links
 Video

Chinese folk art

ja:飴細工

Sugar people


Kyrano is a fictional character featured in the 1960s British Supermarionation television series Thunderbirds and its 2004 live-action film adaptation.

Depiction

Original series
Kyrano is the father of Tin-Tin and half-brother of The Hood. He is the manservant in the Tracy household, sharing domestic duties with Grandma. He is renowned for serving tea and coffee within the house and is upset when Parker tries to take this duty from him in the episode "The Mighty Atom".

Kyrano was once the heir to a rubber plantation fortune in Malaysia but was cheated out of it by The Hood. After this, he decided to withdraw from the world of material gain and spend the rest of his life in meditation. He lived all over the world, pursuing careers as a chef in Paris, a gardener in England, and a scientist producing synthetic foods from plants for astronauts. When his old friend Jeff Tracy, founder of International Rescue, offered him a position on Tracy Island upon the organisation's formation, he accepted.

The Hood has a hypnotic power over Kyrano, which he sometimes uses to extract information on International Rescue and its secrets. Kyrano never mentions this to anyone, dismissing the Hood's telepathic intrusions as mere "dizzy spells" despite his otherwise unquestionable loyalty to the Tracys.

A widower, Kyrano's full name is never revealed in the series and he seems happy to be referred to by his surname.

Adaptations
In the 2004 film, Kyrano has a wife, Onaha. Kyrano appears to be his given name rather than his surname and he and his family are Malaysian Indian Muslims.

Kyrano does not appear in the 2015 remake series, in which he is said to be retired. However, his daughter (renamed Tanusha "Kayo" Kyrano) and brother are still major characters. In the episode "Signals – Part 1", Kayo mentions that her father was devastated by Jeff's disappearance and hopes that he will come out of retirement if Jeff is found alive.

Reception
Jon Abbott of TV Zone magazine describes the original Kyrano as a "fawning manservant" whom Jeff treats patronisingly, arguing that he represents a negative stereotype. Marcus Hearn regards him as a "poorly sketched character", calling his secret ties to the Hood "another of Thunderbirds weak links" and stating that the series reveals almost nothing of his and Tin-Tin's backstory.

References

External links
  www.fab1.co.nz – Thunderbirds Characters

Fictional chefs
Fictional horticulturists and gardeners
Fictional Malaysian people
Fictional male domestic workers
Fictional scientists
Indian film characters
Male characters in film
Male characters in television
Television characters introduced in 1965
Thunderbirds (TV series) characters

Kyrano


Loretta Pettway Bennett (born December 29, 1960) is an American artist. She is associated with the Freedom Quilting Bee, where her mother, Qunnie Pettway, worked, and with the Gee's Bend quilt-makers. Her quilts Sew Low and Vegetation are part of the Eskenazi Health Art Collection.

Early life
Loretta Pettway Bennett was born on a farm in Gee's Bend, Alabama to Qunnie Pettway and Tom O. Pettway. She and her siblings frequently worked on her grandfather, Tank Pettway's, farm growing cotton, corn, peanuts, and sweet potatoes, among other crops. Bennett remarks on the naming traditions of Gee's Bend using her family as an example: "Aunt Lucy was the sister of my father, Tom O. Pettway, Jr. An interesting thing is that Aunt Lucy's middle name was Tomo. Because so many people in Gee's Bend have the name of Pettway, people get middle names that let others know who their fathers are, so nobody marries a close cousin by mistake. My father and his father carry the middle initial O. for Ottaway, a name that goes back to an original Pettway slave called Ottaway."Bennett's family home did not receive running water or paved roads until 1975, when she was 15 years old. Previously, the family would haul water buckets from neighbors' homes or nearby wells and springs. Gee's Bend schools went through desegregation in Bennett's seventh grade year, and were shut down shortly thereafter. In order to continue her education, Bennett was required to take a crowded school bus two hours each morning and night to reach schools in neighboring counties. This arduous trek made participating in extracurricular activities nearly impossible. Nonetheless, Bennett graduated and married her high school sweetheart, Lovett "Bennett" Bennett on July 7, 1979.

Bennett's husband enlisted in the U.S. Army immediately after graduation, and they spent the next twenty years moving with the military. During her husband's military career, Bennett and her family lived in various cities in Germany, El Paso, Texas, and Georgia. While living in Germany and Texas, Bennett and her family traveled throughout Europe and the American southwest.  They raised three boys and eventually settled down again in Gee's Bend, Alabama after Bennett's grandmother, Candis Pettway, died in 1998.

Career
Bennett was introduced to the quilting tradition, when she was five or six years old, although "At that age we were only allowed to thread the needles for the quilters in my grandmother's and my mother's quilting group." Every summer, her mother and aunts would train more sewing into her skill set, little by little. Her first completed quilt was a baby blanket, which was a Home Economics' project for her Home Economic's teacher's arriving grandchild.

Throughout her travels in Europe and the American Southwest, Bennett always marveled at each culture's distinct use of color. In regards to Germany, she noted that "The Germans were not big on having a lot of different colors, especially not on their houses, cars, and clothing, compared to Americans. But in the springtime things were different. I got to see another side of Germany, as many houses were decorated with flower boxes of red geraniums and pansies sitting on the window ledges, with white and black-trimmed houses in the background." Some of her pieces, such as her early 2000s, duo-tone blocks and strips works, remind the viewer of Bauhaus ways of color usage, or the organization of Piet Mondrien. She exchanged craft traditions with local Germans often, recalling that her neighbors taught her to knit and she sold a few of her mother's quilts among her friends in Germany.

Truly understanding the depth of Gee's Bend's quilts national importance overwhelmed Bennett when she first saw the quilts displayed at the Houston Museum of Fine Art in 2002. She describes that moment as, "There my eyes were opened, and it touched me in a way as to question myself: Can I make a quilt that someday might hang on the wall of a museum?"  Determined to carry on her ancestor's legacies, Bennett applied for and received a fellowship grant from the Alabama State Archive Council on the Arts to study the fine details of Gee's bend quilt-making. From this fellowship, her and her mother created a "Pine Burr" quilt, the state quilt of Alabama. Bennett donated this quilt to the Alabama Council of the Arts, where it now hangs on the walls of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

She is a prolific artist and culture-bearer, dedicated to propagating her community's traditions for future generations.

References

Living people
1960 births
Gee's Bend quilters
African-American women artists
21st-century American women artists
21st-century African-American women
21st-century African-American artists
20th-century African-American artists
20th-century African-American women

Loretta Pettway Bennett