Antisemitic tropes in Barbie movies: a thread — this is important for two reasons: 1. Because I, like thousands of other children, grew up on these movies and thus had these antisemitic tropes casually depicted and 2. Barbie the doll was created by a Jewish woman. (1/15)

I’m only going to cover a few movies, but I’m also going to go over the stereotype and why it’s harmful.

The first movie that I’m going to cover is “Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus” which sends Barbie on a quest to reverse a curse that has her sister turned into a Pegasus (2/15)

In the “Magic of the Pegasus” the evil villain is a sorcerer who has cursed not only Barbie’s sister into a Pegasus, but also his three wives into goblins. He also has two different colored eyes. Barbie, who’s named Annika in the movie, is her usual blonde, blue eyed self (3/15)

So the three wives.

As goblins, they are exact caricatures of antisemitic tropes of Jewish people. The long, crooked noses, the gangly arms and bent backs.

Then we have Barbie, with her blue eyes and blonde hair. It’s how she always is, it screams of master race (4/15)

It’s unsettling at the end too.
In their human forms, one is a WOC, and two are brunettes
I’m not trying to be nit picky, but there’s a vast difference here compared to even Barbie’s sister who isn’t blonde when she’s not a Pegasus

The lack of detail that went into them (5/15)

The goblin antisemitic trope is so problematic and the fact that it’s so casually thrown in is detrimental to so many young girls. I also think it’s harmful that they didn’t give a bigger storyline to these wives who were forced into slavery, nor were they even given names (6/15)

The next movie is “Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper” which is a parent-trap-esque movie that features a sub-plot of a greedy man who wants tries to trick a queen into marriage (7/15)

So I’m going to get right to it. the villains are pictured below. The harm here is, they’re sole intent in this movie is to be greedy, money-hungry villains. They are caricatures are of big noses & sniveling, weak. These are well-known, harmful stereotypes of Jewish people (8/15)

Another harmful stereotype in this movie, though I’m not sure if it’s exclusive to jewish people, is the seamstress here. This is a common stereotype, set in this time period, of independent women who own their own businesses. She is shown as mean and unforgiving (9/15)

The last movie I’ll highlight is “Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow” which features an evil witch trying to cause an eternal winter (10/15)

The evil witch (who is a frog) minion is the main source of contempt here. He is an ugly, scary and mean goblin, doing the witch’s bidding. There are many goblins too (11/15)

So let’s look at antisemitism in history.

The Jewish nose, which I pointed out in the princess and pauper movie, a common stereotype, that dates back centuries, but became incredible prevalent in the early to mid 20th century with the rise of Nazism. (12/15)

The “Jewish Nose” stereotype, when used, is never used by accident.

It wasn’t used by accident here either. (13/15)

I also think it’s incredibly worth noting that with all of these stereotypes lined up, we have Barbie, who is blonde and blue* eyed. She is the picture perfect model of Hitler’s version of the Aryan race.

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/how-did-nazis-construct-aryan-identity

*green eyed in the Fairytopia movie (14/15)

to end this thread, remember that the Barbie doll was created by a Jewish woman, named Ruth Handler.

So not only is it disrespectful to her memory to have these antisemitic tropes in these Barbie movies, it’s also incredibly harmful to everyone watching. (15/15)