Barbie, what is Ryan Gosling’s “kenergy”?

It will in all probability be the film of the summer, hopefully it will also be the one that will save the now deserted cinema halls and perhaps it will be the one that will make men and women argue about the feminist sense of history. Of course, the film of Barbie is the new phenomenon of pop culture of our times. And he has already produced a neologism: «kenergy»in Italian the «kenergy». Ken’s energy, which in the feminist fable of Greta Gerwig has the features and spirit of Ryan Gosling. It was he himself who spread the word: «I doubted my kenergy. I didn’t see her », he had said a few months ago. In the end though, convinced by the director and the protagonist Margot Robbieaccepted the role and the transformation began: «I was living my life quietly and the next moment I found myself bleaching my hair, shaving my legs and skating on Venice Beach».

What is «kenergy»? “Blonditude”, ability not to take oneself too seriously and the serene acceptance that the world belongs to Barbie and he can only be a appearance. Ken exists as a function of Barbie, he was created because she needed a male counterpart, but he is everything superfluous at Barbieland. In short, in the provocative reversal of Greta Gerwig, perhaps the most brilliant idea of ​​the film, the Kens occupy the place that women have always inhabited: the margins of society. The Kens simply have no power of decision or influence in the pink world dominated by Barbie. I am accessories good for being on the beach flexing their muscles, while women win Nobel prizes, are presidents of state, sit on the Supreme Court. Does it remind you of anything?

There «kenergy» it is perhaps the best provocation of the super feminist Greta Gerwig, who stubbornly follows her project (mission?) from one genre to another to tell women’s stories: the girl in search of herself Frances Hathe rebel Jo of Little Womenthe maverick teenager of Ladybird. And now Barbie, the most famous and at the same time the most criticized doll, the one accused of having created unattainable aesthetic models and “plastic” aspirations, the most successful product of patriarchy, as we would say today. Turning her into an ultra-feminist symbol was an operation, on paper, with a high risk of failure. But kenergy – that mix of induced silly desires, cult of appearance and submission to the role of extra attributed for once to men – is one of the keys to staging the satire of our falsely equal times. Under the banner of pop and irony.