Including Allan: How The Barbie Movie Teaches Us About Moral Exceptionalism
The social psychology of Barbie,Allan Ken and in-group dynamics.
“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism
Whether you have seen it or not (yet)….the Barbie movie is part of the American zeitgeist. I don’t just mean the fact that we have a movie about a plastic female toy — but that the zeitgeist is what is culturally important to our time. Before we go any further — let’s explore what a zeitgeist is.
The defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.
In sociology, this is such an overused term and yet misunderstood. Notice how this focuses on the mood or vibe of the time. It’s an ongoing collection of beliefs, ways to identify, values, and norms that a society operates from — or, attempts to change. It really is the patterns that guide a community and have been accepted as the way to be in that society. That’s what the word mood signifies in the above definition.
What does the Barbie movie have to tell us about the zeitgeist of our time? Well, we have to turn film theory to help us understand how human behavior operates in a vacuum. When I use the word vacuum, hear the word: culture or environment.
Too many people have focused on the importance of Barbie as a feminist icon, or Ken as a mirror that exposes how deep patriarchy runs in our society. While these both hold value — there is one character that really gets to the root of our current zeitgeist. This is the character of Allan, played by the actor Michael Cera.
Who was Allan?
The long and short of who A;lan was, is that he was a best friend of Ken - who could wear his clothes with ease. But, he was discontinued.
Keep in mind, that Allan doesn’t have a large backstory, nor does he have a conclusive story in the movie. In one sense, his character doesn’t really belong in the overall narrative. It’s as if he is holding up a mirror that shows an inapparent blindspot — that, we are currently in the middle of such a radical (and necessary) era of social change, that we have forgotten the proverbial middle ground.
This newsletter is not a call for balance, but merely, taking the stance of a social-psychological outsider, This character exposes the underbelly of how society cannot include everyone.
That, in the midst of inclusion, are those who don’t fit within the old or new dominant narrative. The desire for some form of militant inclusion is a form of exclusion - because it does not consider those who don’t want to be included or those who don’t adhere to the newer way to identify within society.
We use stories to determine what we value. Those values then become behaviors. We use those behaviors to measure who is part of the ‘in-group’, or who is on the fringes. These so-called outsiders then have only two choices:
(1) Play the social game…give up their beliefs and identity for the sake of inclusion.
(2) Act as pariahs, outsiders, and social prophets who continuously poke holes in what we assume to be the best version of ourselves in our current time.
But—even in that interpretation, we can easily discover a much more important psychological phenomenology — sociological exceptionalism
The social extremism between feminism and patriarchy is that both systems of belief and practice will have outsiders. Allan stands as a metaphor for exclusion (even in how people don’t spell his name correctly!)l. Not only has history relegated him to irrelevance, but even the script itself, which acts as an ideological border can only seem to tell the story of what is valued at the time. This highlights the importance of how the ‘ingroup’, and ‘outgroup’ dynamics actually work across society. Allan is the metaphorical outsider in the “Barbie group’ who virtually stays silent or just agrees with the direction of the overall group.
So, even though most would like to not take the character of Allan seriously, his role is to be the very reflection of beliefs across a society. Notice his character never really makes a judgment. He simply helps. This is what a mirror does - it simply reflects the beliefs of the viewer.
Remember, beliefs are just perceptions that we keep repeating over and over. They are perceptive lenses driven by our own models of being in the world. Allan is the screen upon which we all play out our deep-seated value systems in society.
This screen of moral exceptionalism tends to be predetermined by the narrative of our time. People identify with their stories. The stories of their childhood. The stories of the groups that align with. The stories of the society they identify with. Some research shows that people are willing to give up their own beliefs to go along with the groups they desire to be a part of.
Our moral exceptionalism becomes a way we can create groups around values that normalize who is in the group and who is out. Notice both Barbie and Ken inadvertently marginalize Allan but focus only on their own character arc.
Exceptionalism works because it is all-encompassing. It is not just an idea we practice (rightly or wrongly), but it’s something we end up experiencing in every part of our lives. Exceptionalism sustains its dynamics through the process of moral signaling, as was shared above. A simple way to think about this is that a group relies upon confirmation bias to sustain its relevance. If someone does not represent or resonate with the values of the overall trajectory of a group they get ostracized. Placed outside the group, and their behaviors are responded to as taboo.
Our definition of moral exceptionality implies that any morally laden psychological construct has the potential to capture some morally exceptional actions or action tendencies. By ‘psychological constructs,’ we refer to dispositions, or dimensions of interindividual variation describing the tendency to think, feel, desire, or act in a particular way. Because there are an indefinite number of morally exceptional actions and action tendencies, it is implausible to expect all to emanate from.
What the above quote is saying is that any idea has the capacity to create in-groups and out-groups. The cool kids and the nerds. The outsiders and the insiders. Society though, forgets the 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. groups that lie outside the outsiders and tends to keep them at bay to promote the illusion of togetherness.
It’s the outsiders that really show us what we believe. If the current zeitgeist, as shown in the movie is how society needs to change towards feminism and patriarchy, then Allan represents the third space - that reminds us, even though this shift is admirable, there are other groups that need to be included in the social discourse to enact true social change.
Ultimately, if we support a binary way of thinking about moral exceptionalism, then equality will always have an outsider. If that isn’t what we want, then we need to open up lines of conversation that include everyone - especially, “Allan”.
WHAT groups should be included? SHARE below.