Two films that deviate from this reality and build another parallel in which the impossible becomes possible have been “Red, White and Royal Blue” (2023) by Matthew López and “Barbie” (2023) by Greta Gerwig. In both there is no guilt regarding what the characters are and represent because the environment is inclined to accept and celebrate them.
In López's film, not only the personal but also the political is transformed into a fairy tale, when Alex (Taylor Zakhar Pérez), son of the first female president of the United States, played with pleasure by Uma Thurman, falls in love with Henry (Nicholas Galitzine), brother of the future king of England. Based on the bestseller by Casey McQuiston, the film traces the sweetened style of the novel where a balance is sought between the inclusive and the exclusive, favoring an equally balanced mix between race and gender under the parameters of political correctness. The establishing shot that closes the film with Alex's mother, a Texan of humble extraction re-elected as president, his father proud to be the son of Mexican immigrants and him holding hands with Prince Henry like a happy interracial gay couple for this millennium, calms momentarily the anxieties of those who do not belong to the dominant heterosexual white group and are therefore rejected.
The equally sweetened cinematography and a camera that caresses with its pans and chopped shots the perfect bodies of Álex and Henry complete the fantasy, validating the differences and the different, in an era where intolerance keeps them under harassment. In the direction of playwright Matthew López, who makes his debut here as a filmmaker, the imagery around the struggles to challenge prejudices and openly manifest the direction of desire, developed in his award-winning play “The Inheritance” (2018), leaves the ghetto and comes to light from the flashes of mobile phones with its wide range of social networks, constituting a language parallel to the hyperreality of the film. This brings to the fore the importance of new languages ​​to put pressure on the status quo, in the battle for recognition on par with that of historically accepted groups, and impose a new normality much more in line with contemporary cultural interests and developments.
“I'm sure that if I had had access to a character like Álex when I was a teenager, my life would have been much easier,” declares the director, reiterating the need to promote multisexual and multicultural models in Hollywood, especially when the competition from Virtual platforms are taking over the market. In fact, the production of “Red, White and Royal Blue” is from Amazon Prime, which reaffirms the reluctance of traditional studios to support this type of projects.
For its part, “Barbie” is a Warner Bros. production and has the powerful support of its machinery. In fact, it is the film that has ever produced the most money for this studio, being one of the highest grossing of all time. This, given the iconic importance of the doll in the collective imagination as a toy, but also as a repository of the most hidden fears, as observed in the Todd Haynes documentary “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” (1988), where the An existence marked by anorexia that led to the singer's death is represented using Barbies instead of actors.
Greta Gerwig's film reverses the equation. Margot Robbie (Barbie) and Ryan Gosling (Kent) are flesh and blood dolls living happily in a world where everything is presented in pastel colors until they have to move to the real thing; although they remain at the corporate level where economic affluence continues to isolate them from authentic reality. Wide angles on Venice Beach and the glass-enclosed Mattel skyscraper, sequences of chases in luxurious cars through the avenues of Los Angeles, scenes in a residential area school, are compared with their simulation in Barbie's toy kingdom. In any case, it will be in ours where the dolls will find answers to their questions. An infinitely more dysfunctional realm, in which the games include war, ecosystem destruction, mass migrations and, yes, the subjection of women and racial and sexual otherness to patriarchal power; a power eagerly embraced by Kent in the different versions of him, when he realizes that he has been subject to Barbie's dominance for more than six decades, at the same time that she will be faced with the sexism prevailing in this contemporary era.

The musical numbers mirrored films of the genre such as “Top Hat” (1935) by Mark Sandrich, “An American in Paris” (1951) by Vicente Minnelli and “Les Demoiselles de Rocheford” (1967) by Jacques Demy; as well as its reinterpretation in “La, La Land” (2016) by Damien Chazelle where Gosling had a starring role. In this sense, the sequences of the Kents dancing with each other holding hands, facing off in a beach war dressed in rainbows and throwing pink plastic arrows at each other. or singing by the light of a bonfire on the beach with their colorful guitars more in love with their look than with the Barbies around them, they point towards narcissism and sexual ambiguity leading to the banning of the film in numerous countries in Asia and the Arab world, for “promoting homosexuality and other Western deviations” and “minimizing the importance of the family unit.”
An outburst certainly, especially with regard to the latter since the director's filmography includes such iconic films as the seventh version of “Little Women” (2019) and “Lady Bird” (2017), in addition to reaffirming with “Barbie ” the mother-daughter bond and her transition to adulthood. According to Gerwig: “The pain of contradictions, of not being able to fully close that gap between adulthood and childhood, is also present in the film. It's this overflowing feeling of joy, and then saying to yourself: 'I'll never be able to go back there.'” A certainty as current as the celebration of differences—Doctor Barbie is played by a transgender actress—that this and the other films have addressed as a reaction to a time full of injustices and uncertainties, but in struggle against those who seek to impose their narrow vision of reality.

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