No sooner had the nice and cozy colours of Barbieland with Allan touched the viewers’s eyes than a shudder ran by way of executives, and so they stopped, intent upon the extraordinary factor that was taking place to them: The beautiful Proust Barbie had invaded the display, and audiences had been misplaced. And all from a take a look at screening of Barbie.
Yes, the rumors are true. A Barbie primarily based on the French novelist Marcel Proust, writer of the seven-volume modernist masterpiece In Search Of Lost Time, was largely minimize from Mattel’s Barbie film as a result of take a look at audiences didn’t get the reference. We don’t know what to make of a world extra aware of the Snyder Cut than Proust. Don’t audiences watch Frances Ha anymore?
There is point out of a failed Proust Barbie within the movie, utilizing this esoteric, literary-minded doll for example of issues the general public merely didn’t perceive. Ironically, Lucy Boynton, who performed Proust Barbie however was minimize from a lot of the movie (she seems within the background in Weird Barbie’s home), is talking out about her expertise changing into an untouched madeleine on the reducing room ground. Reduced to a mere crumb that would nonetheless involuntarily conjure recollections of mornings at Combray, Boynton tells EW she might be seen “softly within the background” of the movie as a result of take a look at screenings revealed “up to date audiences don’t know who Proust is, so the joke doesn’t fairly land.”
Boynton referred to as it “a little bit little bit of a heartbreaker that we’re type of shedding contact with that historical past” however hopes studying a couple of Proust Barbie on a website like The A.V. Club will “set off” folks to learn up on Marcel Proust. If there’s one factor audiences wish to do, it’s learn a 4,200-page novel earlier than seeing Barbie. (They ought to in all probability be taught French first to allow them to learn it in French). However, that is the kind of joke that The Simpsons would make for 30 million viewers each week, so possibly, as a society, we’re shedding contact with wider cultural historical past. Or possibly reducing prolonged jokes about Proust within the greatest film of the yr is why we misplaced contact with it.
