Part I. Corporate propaganda, public museums, and a sex doll
In Edward Bernays’s seminal if sinister book, Propaganda (1928), one of the points considered is how the ‘new propagandist’, or ‘public relations counsel’, contrives to sell a product to the public through a variety of mechanisms drawing on mass psychology. One of Bernays’s key principles was the importance of what would today be called brand recognition. ‘At whatever point a business enterprise impinges on the public consciousness,’ he wrote, ‘it must seek to give its public relations the particular character which will conform to the objectives which it is pursuing.’
A century later, there seem to be few institutions of civil society, in countries around the world, into which powerful corporations, states or other political groups with an agenda, have not penetrated. Of all such institutions, though, you might have thought that, in a well-functioning democracy, museums and other houses of culture ought to be jealously guarded against the undue influence of commerce or political power. One of their functions, surely, is to provide independent, learned, objective and critical insight into all of society, including the place of commerce and power in it. If the latter are permitted to influence a museum’s presentation and interpretation of cultural products, and of their history, then an exhibition risks degenerating from scholarship or art into mere entertainment, in which product placement and the promotion of a brand or doctrine are routinely accepted as part of the ‘fun’, rather than being muted because they hinder the viewer’s ability to form an independent judgement.
Unfortunately, in these days of badly funded arts institutions, commercial interests inevitably have an easier time of it. Two possible reasons for this are, firstly, that such institutions need sponsorship for exhibitions; and secondly, that there is always the threat of a lawsuit to dangle over anyone who does not co-operate in telling a brand’s story the way its directors want it to be told. Both these considerations, naturally, come down to an imbalance of wealth.
One example of the influence which corporate patronage can have over the presentation of a subject, or so it would seem, is provided by the show currently on at the Design Museum, London, entitled Barbie®: The Exhibition. (Similar questions were raised, on a smaller scale, by an earlier exhibition in partnership with Mailchimp.) According to the museum’s press release, the exhibition is presented in partnership with Mattel’ and aims ‘to mark the 65th anniversary of the Barbie brand’; the first doll, conceived by Mattel’s co-founder and first president, Ruth Handler, came out in 1959. Mattel describes itself on its website as ‘a leading global toy and family entertainment company’, which owns a large number of successful children’s toy brands. It is a big business, with a market capitalisation of around US$ 6.61 billion at the time this article was published.
The exhibition is curated by Danielle Thom, a curator at the museum, and designed by Sam Jacob Studio, an architecture and design studio. The Acknowledgements section thanks, among others, ‘the many people at Mattel who have contributed to this exhibition including the Archives, Brand Design, Product Design, Package Design and Location Based Entertainment teams,’ and particularly ‘Frederica Peters’, who appears from her LinkedIn page to be the Location Based Entertainment Lead for Mattel in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It would be curious to know whether, in Mattel’s terms, ‘location-based entertainment’ was how it viewed the exhibition.
Certainly, according to the museum’s website, the Barbie exhibition is proving ‘very popular’; visitors are warned to book ‘in advance to avoid disappointment on the day’. When I was there on a Friday morning in July, the rooms were packed with grandmothers, mothers and their daughters (and a few men), the older among whom were happily reminiscing about the Barbies they had played with as children.
Although ‘Barbie’ is nowadays practically a common noun, like ‘Biro’, the inclusion of the ‘®’ in the exhibition’s title indicates that it is about a brand, not the wider place of Barbie in popular culture. Who knows, perhaps there is a subversive element there, warning us that an exhibition about a brand owned by a powerful multinational is necessarily constricted in scope, enclosed within tight boundaries of the commercially acceptable like the letter ‘R’ in the symbol.
While some exhibitions at the Design Museum are finished off with a small gift shop at the end, in Barbie®, visitors encounter it first, because the museum’s main gift shop, right at the entrance to the site, has been largely (albeit not entirely) taken over by Barbie-related products. These include, among a relatively small selection of dolls, two ‘65th Anniversary Collectible’ editions, one with blonde silky hair, fair skin and approximately Caucasian features, the other with dark brown plaited hair, brown skin and approximately African features, but both identical in their sweeping monochrome striped ballgown and retro glasses, and in their price tag of over £80 (€95). All the dolls for sale are of course on display in the exhibition. The anniversary doll model has a whole vitrine to itself, which shows the different types of heads and hair used in the two versions, the process of painting the eyes onto the prototype by hand, and details of the inspiration which the male designer, Carlyle Nuera, drew both from the fashion world and from the black and white swimming costume worn by the very first Barbie.
Selling a few products from the exhibition in the gift shop is only to be expected, despite the obtrusiveness of the advertising. Arguably more insidious is the selective manner in which the story of Barbie® is told, both through word, image and object, and the questions which it implicitly raises but does not answer.
The exhibition occupies a large hall with high ceilings in the museum’s basement, which has been partitioned into rooms with the aid of curtains and temporary walls. The dominant colour is pink, on both walls and curtains; several shades of pink are also used in the display cabinets. As is pointed out, this colour did not become fully associated with Barbie until 1977 and the advent of ‘Superstar Barbie’, who wore a hot pink evening gown. ‘Barbie Pink is one of the greatest branding successes of our time,’ a caption boasts. It does not mention the fact that Mattel has attempted to registerPantone 219C, the colour closest to Barbie pink (as also used in the Barbie film), with the US Patent and Trademark Office, leading to debates over whether Mattel might ‘own pink’, or at least one shade of it. Save for one room at the end on Barbie and the media, decorated in crinkled foil, the visitor is immersed in these unremitting rosy hues for the duration of their visit, which passes through a sea of over 180 dolls and a total of 250 exhibits.
The opening placard introduces the show as ‘a design story’ about ‘one of the best-selling dolls of all time’ in the context of ‘mainstream, western consumer culture’ and the Barbie’s ability to shape ‘children’s view of adulthood through imaginary role play’. So far, so unexceptionable, although there is not a trace of a suggestion that there might be any questionable aspects of the influence which the doll has had on children – especially, of course, on girls.
The first object on display is one of the original Barbies made in 1959. As the caption briefly acknowledges, Handler ‘was inspired by several sources, including the German novelty doll Lilli, which she encountered on a trip to Europe in 1956.’ What the caption neglects to record, however, is that the Bild Lilli doll, to give it its full name, was drawn from a cartoon strip about a sexy gold-digger by Reinhard Beuthien in the tabloid Das Bild and incarnated as an adult toy for men, with moveable arms and head, and provocative costumes – although it was later sold as a doll for children. As Der Spiegel relates, Handler saw a Lilli in a shop window in Lucerne, Switzerland, and bought it for her daughter.
You might have thought that, upon realising Lilli’s origins, Handler would have thrown it in the bin, but instead, she saw a business opportunity. Her daughter’s nickname, ‘Barbie’, would be appropriated for the mother’s version, adapted and sanitised for the American market. (After all, if you can name your child Barbara, why not your doll?) Despite this process, judging by photos, the new Barbie’s face and make-up bore a fairly close resemblance to the old Lilli’s, although the lips were painted a little thinner and the curves of the eyebrows reduced – as were the curves of the figure. Mattel obtained the rights to Lilli in 1964, and promptly discontinued its production.
Barbie rapidly became popular, owing not least to Mattel’s advertising campaigns on the television and elsewhere. The first commercial of 1959, as the caption states, ‘sought to reassure parents by suggesting that Barbie encouraged girls to adopt good grooming habits and feminine deportment.’ A number of outfits could be purchased to clothe the doll, from dancing dress to swimsuit to ballgown, presenting her as something between a teenager, a would-be 1950s upper-class housewife, and a glittering movie star.
Part II, on Barbie’s seamless transition into the 21st century, will be published in the next issue.
LINK
- Girl in a Corporate World – Barbie®: The Exhibition, Part 2 - September 20, 2024
- Girl in a Corporate World – Barbie®: The Exhibition - September 6, 2024
- Clerkenwell Design Week - May 24, 2024
