Welcome to #TransTuesday! Tillyvision chugs along with THE INTENTIONAL (!) TRANS ALLEGORY OF BARBIE (the movie), PART 4! You’re going to get two really important visual clues as to what Barbie’s going through, more Matrix connections, and problems abound!
Here’s your starting context in PART 1.
The beginning of timestamp-o-rama in PART 2.
And getting into some heady stuff in PART 3.
29:39 – Barbie and Ken get outlandish western outfits. After the rough experience being perceived as trans, Barbie pulls back to all PINK. Ken’s neckerchief is also PINK. No no, that was too hard, I can’t live like that. Back to telling myself I’m cis! (still won’t work)
29:48 – “Hey man, you guys gotta pay for that stuff.” They run because they HAVE NO MONEY. A little thing, sure, but, y’know… guess what lots of trans people don’t have? Because we lose our jobs and homes once the world knows we’re trans? And people won’t hire us?
30:08 – Barbie: “I just need to clear my mind so I can think.” And to do that, she needs Ken away from her. ANYWHERE away from her.
31:04 – Ken sees all the manly-man stuff, including two cops on horses. He just repeatedly saw cops sexually harass Barbie but he’s not put off by that. He sees men are everywhere, and in charge of everything.
This is Barbie realizing all the ways society REWARDS you for conforming to the false cis binary. Look! You can have power, prestige, riches, control! This is how society works for cis men.
MATRIX RELOADED, REVOLUTIONS, and RESURRECTIONS also explicitly deal with the ways society rewards you for conforming to the cis binary and denying your transness, and the new problems that causes.
31:40 – Barbie’s at the bus stop with eyes closed, listening to herself. She’s getting in touch with what she THINKS is the little girl inside, Sasha, who’s becoming distant as she ages. Note Sasha starts in earth tones, and moves to a BLUE AND PINK DRESS.
32:32 – When Sasha is dropped off at school by her mom, Gloria, they’re in a ROYAL BLUE car. Barbie is connecting with her inner self. And Sasha goes to Davy Crockett junior high school.
Look at that sign. Davy Crockett. “Home of the frontiersmen.” Barbie’s little girl inside spent her childhood in a place dedicated to being a tough manly man, doing what was expected of her, and it disconnected her from the girl she was inside.
32:45 – Barbie cries, feeling the loss of, and reconnecting with, her inner little girl that she didn’t get to be. “That felt achey, but good.” PHEW, if that ain’t TRANS GRIEF over lost childhoods we didn’t get to experience, I don’t know what is. See the trans tuesday on it.
33:15 – Barbie’s noticing the world, the real world, for the first time. And how beautiful it all is. Sharing and feeling the emotions of those around her. When dysphoria lessens due to transition, even just a little, a whole new world opens up to you.
See the trans tuesday on INTO THE UNKNOWN (aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD) for when this exact thing happened to me.
And you can see it continue in FREEING UP MY BRAIN (aka LUNCH WITH TILLY) when less dysphoria opened me up to even more experiences that I’d missed out on for my whole life.
33:36 – Barbie turns to the older woman at the bus stop with her. The older woman is in EARTH TONES. She’s real. The truth. Barbie: “You’re so beautiful.” Older lady: “I know it.” They share a smile and a laugh.
This is Barbie connecting with her possible future, and thinking it would be BEAUTIFUL (because it is, and she is). And I hear you saying “BUT TILLY, HOW CAN THERE BE CONNECTION IF BARBIE ISN’T IN ROYAL BLUE?”
What do you think I am, some kinda rube? I’d have thought you’d trust me by now. BECAUSE DID YOU LOOK AT THE BUS STOP THAT BARBIE IS IN??
Before Barbie can think any more about this future she longs for…
33:59 – Ken comes crashing back. That false shell of a dude is still hangin’ around, damn it.
34:32 – The Mattel offices. Here’s another direct visual reference to THE MATRIX.
I need you to understand what BARBIE is telling you here. If you’ve not read BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX, here’s a very brief summation… YES I am going to quote myself, SHUT UP:
“The cortex is the outermost layer of an organ (the surface level). Most commonly known is the cerebral cortex, which among other things controls our perception and memory… things vital to our own knowledge of our true self.
“Meta” means to go beyond, to transcend. Neo is trapped in a drab, mundane life he hates inside Metacortex. To become his true self he has to transcend the boundary of his memory and perception of himself by escaping the building.”
This is NOT A FLUKE. BARBIE references THE MATRIX here, as everywhere else, with intent. They’re telling you exactly what Mattel stands for in Barbie’s life. Mattel is Barbie’s own Metacortex, trapping her in a false perception of herself!
And once you see the inside, it’s drab and lifeless. This is more than just a joke about office culture and corporate drones, but we’ll get there in a bit.
34:34 – The split screen between Mattel and the FBI offices. What I love about this shot is that it shows you the ENFORCERS of the system of oppression (police, FBI, security guards, etc) are JUST AS MUCH DRONES as the office workers are. Look how they’re BOXED IN.
But when you INTENTIONALLY choose to uphold the systems of oppression, you are REWARDED for it and “allowed” to express yourself and liven up your work area. But you’re no less a puppet of the system. And we talked about those societal rewards before.
35:22 – The button to go “all the way up” and see the people in charge. If you look closely, the numbers for other floors go up to 100. So what floor would “all the way up” be, based on the numbers? 101.
In THE MATRIX, when Neo began his journey of realizing and accepting his transness, his apartment number was 101 (he later successfully makes it to 303, where we first met Trinity, and begins his new life as an out trans woman).
In MATRIX RELOADED, the Merovingian (a trans person who squashed their truth and continued pretending to be cis to attain the rewards of society, and to stomach it had to pretend he never had the choice to transition) was also on floor 101.
Like, I don’t even know how to explain to you how significant this is. Not only are they showing you the executive floor is the start of the journey, it’s also a place people get trapped by denying their own truth, be it intentionally or by lying to themselves.
Do you SEE what they’re telling you about Barbie going in there? This is HUGE. And if you really want to feel the weight of it, the full impact of it, listen… I don’t know what to tell you, read BEGIN TRANSMISSION. That’s what I wrote it for! 😌
35:29 – Gloria is drawing Barbie in her PINK western outfit. Look how SAD the drawing looks in her facial expression. Look at the drawing on the left, with ROYAL BLUE tears. And do you remember what I said to you about BLUE AND PINK TOGETHER?
Gloria is drawing (upholding) the lies of society by working at the company that oppresses Barbie. That it’s Gloria doing this is super important. There’s more evidence for this later, but that Gloria drew those ROYAL BLUE tears shows you CONNECTION. To who?
Who’s she drawing? BARBIE. If Gloria’s daughter, Sasha, is the little girl inside Barbie that she never got to be, what does that make Gloria? THE ADULT WOMAN BARBIE IS INSIDE.
Unlike the Matrix where Trinity was a manifestation of Neo’s self-actualization and who he wanted to be after transition, Gloria is not that. She’s Barbie’s INTERNAL adult woman, if that makes sense. Which it will, moreso, later on. Just trust me for a bit. We’ll get there.
But Gloria is here working at Mattel, as Neo worked at Metacortex, crushed and upholding the systems of oppression without realizing it. Because Barbie hasn’t yet woken up to the truth of her own transness and societal transphobia.
34:45 – “Irrepressible thoughts of death Barbie,” “full-body cellulite Barbie,” “crippling shame Barbie.” If Barbie thinking about dying was her thinking about change, or transition, “irrepressible thoughts of death” means I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT TRANSITIONING.
If cellulite appearing on Barbie was symbolic of her desire to transition to being a human woman, then “full-body cellulite” equals full transition. And how does society make trans people feel when we realize we’re trans and want to transition? Like it’s SHAMEFUL and WRONG.
And there’s also something to be said about how when you can’t stop thinking about transition, and what you should, could, and hope to be? “Irrepressible thoughts of death” and “crippling shame” on the surface level also ring of…
GENDER DYSPHORIA, which is going to wash over you and threaten to drown you in the darkened deep if you don’t do something about it. These few simple lines are so genius because of all the levels they work on. Here’s more on GENDER DYSPHORIA if you need it.
And look at the drawing Aaron holds up. PINK AND BLUE TOGETHER, transness. But she’s LOOKING AT THE YELLOW LINE AND THE YELLOW BY THE OTHER WOMAN, and the black splotchy darkness separates them.
The yellow is an earth tone. The trans woman is looking at the truth that she IS in fact a woman, but can’t see it clearly due to the darkness of the dysphoria swimming around her head. THIS ONE IMAGE SAYS SO DAMNED MUCH.
36:03 – The “top brass” that are “all the way up” are a bunch of cis men, talking about “empowering girls” without actually talking to any women or girls. They’re deciding what’s best for everyone without our input or consent. They’re in suits. AGENTS of the system.
YES, like THE MATRIX. You knew I was gonna say it, c’mon. There’s more evidence for this in a little bit, but I want to take a second to point out how cis men deciding what’s best for girls and women without talking to them… is also exactly what they do to us trans people.
36:10 – They believe they sell dreams and imagination and sparkle… “female agency,” but only as long as you conform to what their ideas of that are. What they actually sell is indoctrination into the false cis binary.
Look at the Pink drumsticks, the CEO’s pink shirt, and pink tie. The pink chairs. The pink heart light over the table. lies Lies LIES LIIIIIEEEEES.
37:41 – Gloria overhears them talking about Barbie in the real world and is confused. “That’s impossible.” She thinks you can’t self-actualize and leave the fantasy (Barbie) land of the false cis binary, which is what so many of us are raised to believe.
38:00 – The CEO cishet white man in charge says Barbie getting out would be CATASTROPHIC. He knows the danger of letting trans people self-actualize and disprove the lies of Barbie Land aka the false cis binary.
38:18 – CEO: “No one rests until this doll is back in a box.” They’re LITERALLY BOXING US ALL IN. You will conform and fit in your box! Because to not is a danger to everything cishet white men built and control.
38:59 – Barbie finds the little (now teen) girl, Sasha, at a table with her friends.
39:30 – The response from the kids is not what Barbie’s hoping for, it’s all stunned silence and looks. Sasha, “Who are you?” The little girl inside doesn’t recognize her, because conforming to the rigid gender binary was never what she wanted or who she was.
40:35 – Sasha: “You’ve been making women feel bad about themselves since you were invented. You represent everything wrong with our culture. Sexualized capitalism, unrealistic physical ideals.”
Barbie: “Barbie is so much more than that.”
Sasha: “You set the feminist movement back 50 years. You destroyed girls’ innate sense of worth…”
Okay so there’s this thing that trans women especially have to deal with, where society says A Woman Is X, and so to be seen as the women we are, we feel we have to conform to those things… even if they’re not who we really are.
Cis society upholds this in all kinds of ways. If I put MAKEUP on before going out, I’m much more likely to get gendered correctly by people I interact with because I am CONFORMING to their idea of a woman (even though I personally like makeup, that’s irrelevant).
See the trans tuesday on MISGENDERING AND PASSING for more info.
And somehow EVEN WORSE than that is that we used to be required, YES DAMN IT, ***REQUIRED*** to conform to stereotypes just so cis people would ~ALLOW~ us the medical care we need. AGAIN see the trans tuesday on TRANSMEDICALISM (and WPATH standards of care 1).
So when we DON’T want those things, don’t want to BE those things, it can be extra hard to even realize our transness, much less figure out who we really are. MATRIX RESURRECTIONS deals with this too, about the EXPECTATIONS OF WOMEN affecting trans women.
And so you think… I don’t want to be THAT kind of woman, so maybe I’m NOT a woman (even though we are). And do you know what so many of us do then? Try to double-down on manhood and playing the part that wounds us. So what does Ken do?
41:43 – Ken gets books, “Why Men Rule (literally)” and “The Origins of the Patriarchy.” If you look at the shelf of books they’re all about things that conform to the narrow idea of what society says men can be. Let’s learn how to be a man and do that, that’ll make transness go away!
Next week you’re going to get strong, irrefutable proof (truly!) of transness in Barbie, a whole lot more Matrix connections, and we’ll see if Barbie can escape her own Metacortex, and what that means for her.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com