for the love of ken

is alan the unsung feminist hero of the barbie movie?

If you thought the Barbie movie was entertaining, wait until you read about some of the male backlash to it. The film hasn’t even been out for a week and it’s already lead to public square shouting, boycotts and maybe arson?

Ben Shapiro, a 40-year-old man who felt so upset at a fictional toy doll, that he lit three of them on fire and their car, compared his stunt to when “someone burns a Quran.” After seeing the movie and complaining he will never get two hours of his life back, he also went on to make a 43-minute long video about it. The response to his crusade against a “woke” movie has become even more ridiculous than the unhinged barbie-burning act itself. “Admit it —you hated the film because Barbie is taller than you,” responded one woman.

Predictably, the anger directed at the Barbie movie is coming from men, more than women. But instead of using this visceral reaction to further divide us, let’s use it as an opportunity to reflect and understand each other better. Yes it’s funny to see a grown man burn his barbies, but I think men’s complicated reaction to the movie is worth taking seriously.

As I wrote in my honest review, I believe the film’s overall message misses the mark because true feminism doesn’t marginalize men, it uplifts them. So in this sense, Ben Shapiro isn’t upset that the Barbie movie is feminist— he’s upset that it’s not feminist enough. If the film had really obeyed the rules of feminism, and created a world that doesn’t liberate women at the expense of men, Ben Shapiro probably wouldn’t have spent hours being sad about it and risked inhaling burnt micro-plastic fumes in the service of expressing it.

I believe the film’s overall message misses the mark because true feminism doesn’t marginalize men, it uplifts them. So in this sense, Ben Shapiro isn’t upset that the Barbie movie is feminist— he’s upset that it’s not feminist enough.

But the disgruntled male response to the Barbie movie doesn’t just show that some men don’t realize they’d be on board with feminism, it also exposes the pain they currently feel about their options as men. They watched a movie where the female characters were ambitious and well-adjusted, and where the male characters were insecure and emotionally unstable, so of course that didn’t feel good.

But here’s what I feel is being missed: I don’t think Ken represents men—I think he represents the patriarchal masculinity that traps them.

Because men haven’t been afforded the tools to separate themselves from the ideal masculinity that they’re told to aspire to, the movie became a metaphor for the seemingly insurmountable challenge of being a modern man today. And that felt very uncomfortable for a lot of men to be confronted with it. Ken’s unravelling felt like theirs. In other words, the issue isn’t that women only want to be Barbie—it’s that men only think they can be Ken.

Not So Special’s inimitable intern Lily Kaplan deserves an award for making this.

After all, you’ll notice that Ken is the only character in the entire movie who is never truly happy. Ken doesn’t ever thrive, even when he gets what he (thinks he) wants. Whether he’s in the subservient position at the beginning, or in the dominating one later in the film, Ken never seems to be at ease with himself. Even when he’s at his most powerful and that he successfully colonizes Barbie’s world, he’s deeply insecure about it. That’s because his freedom is always predicated on someone else’s actions towards him. His self-esteem is not intrinsic, but rather conditional. Even when he’s in charge, he needs Barbie and the others to obey him in order to be okay. Ken’s ugly metamorphosis throughout the film is synonymous with the way our culture deceptively turns boys into men. Drunk on the false promises that the patriarchy convinces him that he will get, Ken slowly realizes that something that was supposed to make him blissful and satisfied, is making him soulless instead. Sure, he’s momentarily giddy when he first finds out about this new system of male supremacy, but soon thereafter, that chirpy mood fades when he actually experiences how it feels to be a man in that world. In this regard, Ken doesn’t represent men— he’s the patriarchal prison of masculinity that cosplays as the freedom he’ll never actually achieve.

Created by Lily Kaplan.

And as a side note, even when Ken is submissive at the beginning of the movie, he’s actually not! He’s still controlling Barbie, and needs her to like him and look at him, and act in accordance to how he wants to be perceived by her. Ken simply is never free (and therefore Barbie isn’t either). He’s either trying to control her to like him or trying to control her to be deferential to him. It’s why the patriarchal promise is ultimately a recipe for male misery.

Now I know what you may be thinking at this point… if men aren’t Ken, then who are they?

I think most men actually fall in the category of the feminist hero of the Barbie movie: Allan! Played by Michael Cera, Allan was introduced as Ken's best friend in 1964 and was later discontinued, with some rumors swirling that it was because he became too close to Ken without a romantic interest of his own. Regardless of the reason he was taken off the shelves, Mattel did end up rebranding him inexplicably as “Alan” in the 1990s and since the movie came out, his sales have been through the roof. Alan only had a few lines in the movie, but I believe he’s the most significant feminist easter egg of the entire movie.

Created by Lily Kaplan.

Alan represents who men could be, if they were free of the patriarchy. After all, he exhibits all the masculine virtues that men say that they cherish, such as being an independent thinker (he doesn’t just follow the Kens in their self-destruction), as well as protecting and defending women from danger. Alan is also neither controlled by the women or put down by them. He doesn’t require women to know who he is, which effectively makes him the character with the fullest sense of self. Alan doesn’t have to work hard to feel Kenough, he just is. In that sense, Alan is far more emotionally stable and far more stoic than Ken and is in the truest sense… a man! He also straight up beats up a dozen construction workers for the greater good of his community. Alan is self-sacrificing and service-oriented, constantly putting others before himself. He’s the only one who is steadfast in recognizing the true enemy (the patriarchy) and tries to protect both the Kens and the Barbies from it. In my eyes, this makes Alan the unsung feminist hero of the Barbie movie.

And while Ken is conventional and mass-produced, there is only one Alan. One of the most important lines in the film comes from the film's narrator Helen Mirren. "There are no multiples of Alan," she says. "He's just Alan." While it’s intended to be a lighthearted comedic moment, it felt profound to me because it personifies that indescribable feeling that so many men have told me they’ve felt their whole life: feeling a deep sense of loneliness amongst other men.

I texted the closest thing I know to a real life Alan, my friend Chris Collins, and he confirmed my suspicions about the character representing the malaise of a man who simply doesn’t fit into a patriarchal world. “I totally always felt like an outsider when it comes to men,” he told me. “Bad at sports. Not into guy culture. And so a lot of my friends tended to be women. Still do.”

People have referred to Alan as “gay-coded” but it’s worth reflecting on why we assume that the only male character who isn’t trying to destroy women’s progress, must be gay. While anyone is free to claim any character as representative of their own, why can’t straight men be expected to love women the way that queer men do?

The casting choice of Alan being played by a straight man who can’t seem to find his place within any system, also speaks volumes. “Alan is sort of like a person without a group that he belongs to,” Cera said in an interview about his character before the SAG-AFSTRA strike. “[He’s] sort of this marginalized person in this world of Kens.” If you watch the film, you’ll notice that the Kens never speak to Alan directly. Only the women acknowledge his existence, despite Alan being Ken’s friend. “I love that he just wants the best for Ken, even if that means Ken not being near him,” Cera said in the same interview. “He wants Ken’s happiness. I thought that was sort of a life of servitude in a way. Distant yearning.” While Alan would like to be included by the other men, it’s his inability to be accepted by them, that’s his distinction. In world full of Kens, only a few men dare to be Alan.

Alan isn’t just a strong modern man, he’s a true feminist. As I’ve expressed before, Barbieland’s promise of women doing all the jobs and men doing none of the jobs, isn’t a feminist utopia, it’s just a flipped patriarchy. This makes Alan’s integrity and desire for the common good of both the Barbies and the Kens seem far more aligned with the the integrity of true feminism, where we’re all free regardless of our gender. Maybe the feminist future we deserve isn’t Barbieland, and rather something akin to Alantopia.

Despite all the brouhaha around Gerwig’s cinematic masterpiece, I have compassion for the men who feel disturbed by Barbie because they’re identifying with a flawed patriarchal definition of masculinity that’s performed and co-opted by the Kens. I don’t think men who dislike the Barbie movie hate women, I think they just hate patriarchy. But male supremacy’s ultimate goal is to make men conflate the two so that they continue to buy into a system that ultimately robs them of their joy.

Men will stop hating Barbie, when they realize they don’t have to be Ken. It’s only by turning the volume down on the expectations society has of them, that a truer sense of self can arise for men. In other words, maybe the best way for men to feel Kenough, is to accept their inner Alan. So regardless of your gender or what you thought about the movie, go be the Alan you want to see in the world.