One of the queer cultural events of the summer just dropped a trailer!
Director Greta Gerwig‘s highly anticipated film Barbie promises to serve up the Southern California fantasy in style.
The film stars Oscar-nominees Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell. The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne , Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, Jamie Demetriou, Connor Swindells, Sharon Rooney, Nicola Coughlan, Ritu Arya, Dua Lipa and Helen Mirren.
We get a tantalizing overhead view of BarbieLand, looking very Malibu-esque.
Over on Instagram, actor Hari Nef told a great story about how hard she lobbied for trans inclusion until she was cast as the doctor:
when i heard i was cast as a barbie in the barbie movie, it looked like i was maybe not going to be able to do the film because of a scheduling conflict. so i wrote greta and margot a letter essentially begging them to fudge the schedule a little bit, as i had big feelings about wanting to join this film. part of what i wrote was:
‘This is a big movie, made by a team whose work has played no small role in cultivating my love of sitting in the dark in front of big screens for an hour or two. But that’s just a part of why I want–my heart says “need”–to join in the making of this film. Identity politics and cinema aren’t my favorite combination, but the name BARBIE looms large over every American woman. Barbie’s the standard; she’s The Girl; she’s certainly THE doll. Me and my girlfriends–okay, yeah, me and my other transgender girlfriends– we started calling ourselves “the dolls” a couple of years ago, though the phrase stretches back into the language of our foremothers in the ballroom scene. “The Dolls.” Maybe it’s a bid to ratify our femininity, to smile and sneer at the standards we’re held to as women. It’s a joke, of course; we throw our voices: “the do-o-lls!” But underneath the word “doll” is the shape of a woman who is not quite a woman–recognizable as such, but still a fake. “Doll” is fraught, glamorous; she is, and she isn’t. We call ourselves “the dolls” in the face of everything we know we are, never will be, hope to be. We yell the word because the word matters. And no doll matters more than Barbie.’
Whether by rollerblades or convertible, get yourselves to theatres on July 21!
Watch.
Image: YouTube / Warner Bros. Pictures
