OSCAR WATCH 2024 — “Based on ‘Barbie’ by Mattel”: Adaptation, Franchising, and 'Barbie' (2023)

This post is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards.

Barbie is a cultural icon. Invented by Ruth Hadler and first released in 1959 by toy manufacturer Mattel, ‘Barbie’ is a fashion doll that has had transformative impact on how children tell stories through play. In this context, Barbie is culturally polysemic: “brim with multiple meanings capable of attracting multiple types of individuals” (Rogers 1999, 2). According to Mary F. Rogers in the book Barbie Culture, such cultural icons are paradoxical, whereby “icons become such because of their versatility, thick folds of meaning, adaptability to diverse individuals’ needs or interests, ultimate ambiguity, and open-ended nature” (1999, 2). This cultural multiplicity and ambiguity of Barbie, in tandem with its nature as a toy, provokes an interesting discussion about the adaptation status of the blockbuster movie, Barbie (2023). As director and co-writer Greta Gerwig reflects, “It’s an object…It’s a doll. There’s no character, no story. The very nature of Barbie is that it’s a toy to be projected onto” (Pond and Lopez 2023; original emphasis). This perceived lack of story or character suggests that Barbie is an original screenplay, but it is still based on a pre-existing intellectual property. As an opening title card reads, Barbie is “Based on ‘Barbie’ by Mattel” (Figure 1). Barbie is also a part of the ‘Barbie’ franchise, which means it has a material, industrial and historical story that works in concert with the polysemic, ambiguous and open nature of Barbie as a toy. Barbie is therefore shaped by the creative interpretation of Barbie as a culturally iconic toy and ‘Barbie’ as a franchise property owned by Mattel.

figure 1: opening title card in Barbie (2023)

The question of Barbie as adaptation or ‘original’ has been most especially provoked by its nomination in the Best Adapted Screenplay category at the 96th Academy Awards (the Oscars). Barbie has been nominated in eight Oscar categories, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, and two nominations for Best Original Song (its absence in the Best Directing and Best Actress categories is another topic that has incited commentary). What has provoked interest with regards to its screenplay nomination is that the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) deemed Barbie eligible for contention in the Best Adapted Screenplay, despite a campaign for Best Original Screenplay by Warner Bros (Davis 2024). In contrast, Barbie successfully entered the ballot for Original Screenplay at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards, the Critics’ Choice Awards, and the Writers Guild Awards. Moreover, Barbie was not entered for consideration in the USC Scripter Awards, which honors accomplished adaptations (Davis 2024); this perhaps aims to distance Barbie from associations with adaptation and may reflect the broader branding campaign to push its ‘original’ status. This messaging is reinforced in multiple interviews during the Oscars campaign, such as with The Wrap, where Gerwig reiterates the point that there was ‘no character’ and ‘no story’ to adapt, so her and co-writer Noah Baumbach “would have to invent a character and a story that felt somehow part of it but had to go beyond it” (Pond and Lopez 2023) – a similar point is made in their interview with 60 Minutes. However, for me a statement like this makes a stronger case for its status as a franchise adaptation then it does for its ‘non-adaptation’ campaign because it articulates a critical aspect of story development in the franchise mode: being part of something bigger while also extending beyond its scope to reconfigure its boundaries. This is central to what I think makes Barbie so compelling as an adaptation and as part of a franchise.

The nomination of Barbie in both ‘original’ and ‘adaptation’ screenplay categories across awards reflects the blurring of boundaries and nature of adaptation in the franchise era, especially when it involves different modes of storytelling across media platforms. This variable classification of Barbie as ‘original’ and ‘adapted’ reveals inconsistencies in how adaptation is defined by the industry groups associated with these awards: the WGA defines adaptation (i.e., a non-original screenplay) as based on “assigned material,” not including source material that is non-fiction, without a narrative, or used as research material – similarly, the rules specify that where toys without a narrative constitute source material, screen writers can be attributed story by credit, which cannot be attributed when the source material contains a narrative (WGAW 2022); BAFTA defines eligibility in its Adapted Screenplay category as being “based on another pre-existing narrative source,” including “stories based around pre-existing characters” (BAFTA 2024, 15); in contrast, the AMPAS seems to define adaptation as based on existing intellectual property – that is, the adaptation of a pre-existing idea rather than a narrative. This perhaps explains why the screenplays for The King’s Speech (2010) and Spotlight (2015) won in the Best Original Screenplay category despite being adaptations of historical events, and Barbie (2023) is in the Best Adapted Screenplay category based on their connections to ideas; even so, it does not really explain why The Lego Movie (2014) was able to contend in the Best Original Screenplay category (Davis 2023). As Collen Kennedy-Karpat identifies, “what counts as ‘original’ versus ‘adapted’ seems to be ether taken for granted or left open to debate among the voting members, but the Academy’s apparent confidence in the self-evidence of these terms belies decades of fluctuation in the writing categories” (2017, 175). The AMPAS has revised its definition (and name) of the “adapted” screenplay category multiple times since its conception, which points to a changing conceptualization of adaptation over time (and resulting inconsistencies).

The commentary surrounding the AMPAS’ decision to categorize Barbie as ‘adaptation’ also highlights an ideological dimension to this discussion. While fans of the movie have understandably expressed confusion around the inconsistency between awarding organizations, the general protest towards ‘Barbie as adaptation’ reveals something about biases that underpin perceptions of ‘originality’ – or supposed lack of. The most telling response in this regard comes from writer and director Judd Apatow, who says “it’s insulting to the writers to say they were working off of existing material” (Figure 2). This attitude reflects an ideological hierarchy between the two screenplay categories, whereby Original Screenplay categories are deemed of higher status than Adapted Screenplay. As Liam Burke has also noted, “implicit in Apatow’s comments are ingrained biases against adaptations, which are often dismissed as derivative when compared to ‘original’ work” (2024). Apatow’s post implies that it is easier and less creative for screenwriters to work from existing material, but it is more productive to realise that the distinctions between the two categories are based on a differentiation of industrial practice and creative modalities rather than a question of value or difficulty. As the WGA clarifies in its Screen Credits Manual, the original and non-original classification “does not refer to the unique creative quality of a screenplay,” but to the absence or presence respectively of “assigned source material” (WGA 2018, 15). Underlying this discourse is also the assumption that toys lack narrative and therefore do not provide screenwriters with substantial storytelling material to constitute adaptation, and thus to work with a toy property must involve original ideation and development. The problem with this assessment is that it fails to consider the range of ways that different media tell stories: toy-based storytelling might not be expressed in the same form or structure as novels, films or television, but is a form of storytelling that involves creative play and material design.

figure 2: judd apatow’s post on x (FORMERLY twitter) – 01/07/24

Adaptation/Convergence

Adaptation is often understood as the translation of a specific narrative from one medium to another; traditionally, this ‘cross-media’ translation is thought to most-often occur from literature to film, whereby questions of fidelity and creative interpretation function as primary lenses for review and appraisal. This understanding seems to underpin the perception that Barbie is not an adaptation because it does not translate – or ‘retell’ – a discrete narrative from one medium to another. Since the millennial turn, the increasing prevalence of media convergence, transmedia storytelling, remediation, and media franchising has challenged and expanded our understanding of what constitutes adaptation and how we conceptualize dialogic relations between media; while each of these narrative practices reflect distinctive conceptualizes, they are all underpinned by a reappraisal of the dynamics and relations that exist in media multiplicity. Henry Jenkins makes a similar point in the article “Adaptation, Extension, Transmedia”: 

In the age of transmedia franchises, there is much more movement of stories, characters, fictional worlds, core themes, and stylistic elements across media. The borders between textual and promotional practices are breaking down, and this blurring of categories should have some impact on how we think about adaptation. (Jenkins 2017)

Here Jenkins reflects on the unrealized synergies between adaptation and transmedia storytelling to enrich the critical relations between the two classifications. Earlier scholarship on transmedia storytelling makes a distinction between adaptation and transmedia storytelling, which is largely to emphasize the redundancy of adaptation when compared with the additive dimension of transmedia storytelling (Jenkins 2003). Christy Dena surveys the discourse surrounding this distinction and challenges the principle of ‘adaptation exclusion’ that is often central to understandings of transmedia storytelling: Dena explains, “a key theme of the adaptation-exclusion reasoning is the unfounded claims, inaccurate framing of what adaptation is, and the denigration of adaptation practices” (2018, 291). As such, the notion that adaptation practice is redundant and lacks an additive dimension is inconsistent with adaptation scholarship: for Linda Hutcheon and Siobhan O’Flynn, adaptation “is always a double process of interpreting and then creating something new” (2013, 20); moreover, for Robert Stam, “adaptation is automatically different and original due to the change of medium” (2000, 55). Indeed, these understandings not only express the fundamental capacity for additive ‘newness’ in adaptation, but also speak to how this ‘newness’ is driven by media’s “unique contribution to the unfolding of the story,” which is a crucial aspect of transmedia storytelling (Jenkins 2011). While distinctions between adaptation and transmedia storytelling may have served to delineate the expansive force of the latter in earlier discourse, it is also productive to realize the range of additive and original opportunities that are inherent within the broad spectrum of adaptation practices, from working with toy-based source material to franchise production.

‘How do you adapt a doll?’

The conversations around Barbie as adaptation or ‘original’ reveal the complexities of defining adaptation and originality, but they also signal how important it is to acknowledge the formal qualities of media in such conversations. The challenges of envisioning Barbie as an adaptation stem from more than just its apparent lack of a discrete story and characterisation, but also a lack of consideration for toys as a media platform. To recall Gerwig’s comment mentioned above, Barbie is an object­ with no character or story – more specifically, Barbie is a plastic object designed to represent a specific version of a female-appearing adult. Barbie is thus already an adaptation of a particular image of human experience.

The moulded materiality of the plastic toy is an aspect of its form; for the Barbie doll, its ability to be dressed, posed, and freely relocated between spaces is part of formal capabilities and capacity for narration. As Jenkins says of the action figure, once it gets into a child’s hands it becomes “an authoring tool” (2017) – although being myself an adult collector of action figures, maybe this is not just reserved for children. Toys are therefore objects that interface narrative and play (much like adaptation itself) and so it is appropriate that the adaptation of toys would embody (and remediate) the playful openness of the toy medium. This dimension relates not only to the finished film but also to its processes of creation. When asked in interview “how do you adapt a doll?” Gerwig’s response is an expression of creative play: “I thought there was something in it that was just strange enough that it might have something brilliantly off-kilter in it as a possibility”. Just like the hands that move a Barbie doll around a Dreamhouse playset (Figure 3), the hands of the film’s creators embody this experience in a live-action film where Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) flies through space – not because of a superpower but a remediation of the toy form (Figures 4). The stylistic influence of the child’s playing hand is also apparent in the fragmented editing style of Transformers (2007) or the perception of a lower frame rate in The Lego Movie (2014). The playing child and the creative process of adaptation share an authorial relationship that raises compelling questions about how toys and adaptation mediate and shape narration.

figure 3: hands moving barbies through the dreamhouse in advert

figure 4: Impression of barbie being moved by a hand in Barbie

The ‘Barbie’ Franchise

Upon the successful theatrical release of Barbie, some commentators considered its blockbuster success to be a welcomed change from the dominance of franchises. While The Wall Street Journal noted that Barbie “trounced franchise films” at the box office (Whelan 2023), Screen Rant claimed that it is “WB's first $1 billion movie that's not part of a franchise (yet)” (Hunt 2023). These are curious responses since the live-action blockbuster joins a long multiplatform list of works across toys, feature film, short film, web series, streaming series, video games, and comic books, unofficially making up what fans call the ‘Barbie Cinematic Universe’. Indeed, Barbie is a franchise movie; what’s more, it is a franchise movie that have been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards – the significance of this has perhaps been diluted by discourse surrounding its adaptation or original status, as well as the lack of nominations for Gerwig as director and Margot Robbie as actress (while this is appropriate criticism, many seem to ignore that Robbie is nominated as producer – a notable achievement). I think this general lack of emphasis on Barbie as a franchise is part of the same conversation about its adaptation status: the resistance to embrace something that feels so creatively different, unexpected and compelling as a franchise adaptation. Conversely, maybe this just tells us something about the opportunities and scope of franchise adaptation.

The practice of adapting the Barbie doll as a material object works in tandem with the adaptation of ‘Barbie’ as an immaterial intellectual property (IP). Perhaps the immateriality of IP is as hard to conceptualize as a source for narrative adaptation as a plastic toy. However, while the toy line might not have provided Gerwig and Baumbach with a distinct story or character to work with, the pre-established IP provided a long creative, cultural, and organizational story to draw from. Through my doctoral research, I came to understand this dimension of the franchise mode as the ‘IP object’, which is the dynamic source material of the franchise mode. The IP object is the creative and industrial nucleus of a franchise and is made up of its authorial and organizational histories, narratological dimensions and legal-industrial conditions. Therefore, the IP object of the ‘Barbie’ franchise represents the familiar characters, settings, design, and costumes of Barbie’s world, the organization history of Mattel and its leadership, as well as the socio-cultural iconicity and perception of the ‘Barbie’ brand – warts and all. As that opening title card reads, Barbie is “based on ‘Barbie’ by Mattel”. This is the context that Gerwig and Baumbach got to play in when they set out to create a character and story that was part of the ‘Barbie’ world “but had to go beyond it” (Pond and Lopez 2023). The practice of “going beyond” is supported by the pre-established familiarity and awareness that audiences have with the idea of ‘Barbie’. Short of a distinct story and plot, Barbie draws from the story of ‘Barbie’ as an idea – an iconic idea with which audiences have a pre-established relationship. Hutcheon and O’Flynn note that “in the end, it is the audience who must experience the adaptation as an adaptation’ (172; original emphasis). For me, Barbie’s critical and commercial success, as well as its award nominations, are achievements in adaptation and franchising – perhaps its lack of obviousness as such is also part of its achievement.

References

Dena, Christy. 2018. “Transmedia Adaptation: Revisiting the No-Adaptation Rule.” In The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, edited by Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato. New York: Routledge.

Hutcheon, Linda and Siobhan O’Flynn. 2013. The Theory of Adaptation. Second Edition. London: Routledge.

Kennedy-Karpat, Collen. 2017. “Trash Cinema and Oscar Gold: Quentin Tarantino, Intertextuality, and Industry Prestige.” In Adaptation, Awards Culture, and the Value of
Prestige, edited by Colleen Kennedy-Karpat and Eric Sandberg, 173-191. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rogers, Mary F. 1999. Barbie Culture. London: SAGE Publications.

Stam, Robert. 2000. “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation.” In Film Adaptation, edited by James Naremore, 54–76. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

See hyperlinks for online references

Biography

Tara Lomax is the Discipline Lead of Screen Studies at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). She has expertise in blockbuster franchising, multiplatform storytelling, and contemporary Hollywood entertainment and has a PhD in screen studies from The University of Melbourne. She has published on topics such as media franchising, the superhero and horror genres, licensing, transmedia storytelling, storyworld building, and digital effects. Her work can be found in publications that include the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (forthcoming), Senses of Cinema and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and the edited collections Starring Tom Cruise (2021), The Supervillain Reader (2020), The Superhero Symbol (2020), Hannibal Lecter’s Forms, Formulations, and Transformations: Cannibalising Form and Style (2020), The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production (2019), Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal (2019), and Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling (2017).