Ever since the phenomenon of Oppenheimer and Barbie took over social media and actual movie theaters in the summer of 2023, the media and casual viewers alike couldn't stop talking about Greta Gerwig's film. It was at the center of the recent awards season and remains one of the most talked about films of the past year.
The problem that many of the viewers who have already seen Barbie have with the film is that it didn't seem to take the feminist ideas in its base far enough to be meaningful. Instead, many left-wing activists ended up dismissing it as populist, and many conservatives still hated it for criticizing the patriarchy.
Now that some time has passed, Shonda Rhimes has returned to the Barbie theme, but with a very different angle.
Black Barbie: A Documentary Netflix Premiere
Though the project was shown to a small audience back in 2023, when it...
The problem that many of the viewers who have already seen Barbie have with the film is that it didn't seem to take the feminist ideas in its base far enough to be meaningful. Instead, many left-wing activists ended up dismissing it as populist, and many conservatives still hated it for criticizing the patriarchy.
Now that some time has passed, Shonda Rhimes has returned to the Barbie theme, but with a very different angle.
Black Barbie: A Documentary Netflix Premiere
Though the project was shown to a small audience back in 2023, when it...
- 5/20/2024
- by virginia-singh@startefacts.com (Virginia Singh)
- STartefacts.com
Black Barbie: A Documentary is heading to Netflix thanks to the streamer and Shondaland’s leading lady Shonda Rhimes. The film directed by Lagueria Davis has landed an overall deal with the streamer with Rhimes and Shondaland’s Betsy Beers attached as executive producers. A work-in-progress cut of the film debuted earlier this year at SXSW, garnering early critical acclaim, and now, viewers will be able to see the finished product on the streaming platform which also houses Shondaland’s original series such as Bridgerton, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, and Inventing Anna among others. (Credit: Lovely Day Films/Courtesy Everett Collection; Jason Mendez/Getty Images ) Black Barbie: A Documentary celebrates the transformative impact three Black women at Mattel had on the evolution of the Barbie brand as people know it. Through these charasmatic insiders’ stories, the documentary serves to tell the story of how the first Black Barbie came...
- 10/10/2023
- TV Insider
Black Barbie: A Documentary, which details Mattel’s introduction of a Black doll to its Barbie collection and the women that brought it to life, has landed at Netflix and Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland.
Lagueria Davis directs the doc and produces alongside Aaliyah Williams.
The logline for the project reads: “Black Barbie celebrates the momentous impact three Black women at Mattel had on the evolution of the Barbie brand as we know it. Through these charismatic insiders’ stories, the documentary tells the story of how the first Black Barbie came to be in 1980, examining the importance of representation and how dolls can be crucial to the formation of identity and imagination.”
The film premiered at SXSW 2023. The Hollywood Reporter‘s review out of that festival reads: “Topics of conversation include the Barbie vlogs on racism during the height of the 2020 protests and feeble attempts to give Black Barbie her own stories.
Lagueria Davis directs the doc and produces alongside Aaliyah Williams.
The logline for the project reads: “Black Barbie celebrates the momentous impact three Black women at Mattel had on the evolution of the Barbie brand as we know it. Through these charismatic insiders’ stories, the documentary tells the story of how the first Black Barbie came to be in 1980, examining the importance of representation and how dolls can be crucial to the formation of identity and imagination.”
The film premiered at SXSW 2023. The Hollywood Reporter‘s review out of that festival reads: “Topics of conversation include the Barbie vlogs on racism during the height of the 2020 protests and feeble attempts to give Black Barbie her own stories.
- 10/10/2023
- by Mia Galuppo
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In yet another high-profile acquisition from Netflix, the streaming giant and Shondaland have nabbed global rights to “Black Barbie: A Documentary.” The film comes courtesy of director Lagueria Davis with Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers as executive producers.
The feature celebrates the momentous impact of three Black women at Mattel had on the evolution of the Barbie brand. The documentary tells the story of how the first Black Barbie came to be in 1980. It further examines the importance of representation and how dolls can be crucial to the formation of identity and imagination.
As critic Glenn Dunks wrote in The Film Experience, the film “isn’t just about black Barbie dolls. It’s about representation, and about the biases at play in an industry that for so long never ever conceived of the idea of black children wanting a doll like Barbie.”
Critic Clint Worthington noted in The Spool that...
The feature celebrates the momentous impact of three Black women at Mattel had on the evolution of the Barbie brand. The documentary tells the story of how the first Black Barbie came to be in 1980. It further examines the importance of representation and how dolls can be crucial to the formation of identity and imagination.
As critic Glenn Dunks wrote in The Film Experience, the film “isn’t just about black Barbie dolls. It’s about representation, and about the biases at play in an industry that for so long never ever conceived of the idea of black children wanting a doll like Barbie.”
Critic Clint Worthington noted in The Spool that...
- 10/10/2023
- by Scott Mendelson
- The Wrap
‘Black Barbie: A Documentary’ Acquired By Netflix & Shondaland Following Work-In-Progress SXSW Debut
Netflix and Shondaland have snapped up worldwide rights to Black Barbie: A Documentary, a new film from Lagueria Davis that screened a previous cut, to critical acclaim, at this year’s SXSW Film Festival.
Pic is exec produced by Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers as part of their overall deal with Netflix, which was extended in 2021, following the Bridgerton duo’s initial signing with the streamer in 2017. It arrives at a time when the doll made world famous by Mattel has taken on a new level of cultural cachet, thanks to Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy Barbie, which has grossed over $1.43B worldwide since its July 21st release by Warner Bros, coming in as the highest-grossing film of 2023, as well as the top grosser in the history of the studio, and for a solo female director.
While resonating with the themes of that film written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach,...
Pic is exec produced by Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers as part of their overall deal with Netflix, which was extended in 2021, following the Bridgerton duo’s initial signing with the streamer in 2017. It arrives at a time when the doll made world famous by Mattel has taken on a new level of cultural cachet, thanks to Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy Barbie, which has grossed over $1.43B worldwide since its July 21st release by Warner Bros, coming in as the highest-grossing film of 2023, as well as the top grosser in the history of the studio, and for a solo female director.
While resonating with the themes of that film written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach,...
- 10/10/2023
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
It is part of American lore on race and progress: In the 1940s, Kenneth and Mamie Clark set out to study the psychological effects of segregation on Black children. The psychologists conducted a series of experiments famously called the “doll test,” in which they asked hundreds of children, between the ages of 3 and 7, about dolls of different colors. The most well-known and damning revelations from the test — which played a major role in the Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education — came from the responses to the question of preference. After identifying the Black dolls as bad and the white ones as good, most of the Black children said they preferred the white dolls to the Black ones.
Director Lagueria Davis repeatedly references the doll test and its results in her energetic and informative, if uneven, documentary Black Barbie: A Documentary. The experiment anchors her film, which explores...
Director Lagueria Davis repeatedly references the doll test and its results in her energetic and informative, if uneven, documentary Black Barbie: A Documentary. The experiment anchors her film, which explores...
- 3/16/2023
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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