Want to visit Barbie land?
Because I figured out where it is.
No roller blading required.
Though, fair warning.
You might want to bring your passport.
Hello Internet!
Welcome to Film Theory.
The show that accepts
that in a world full of Barbies and Kens, sometimes it's best to just be an Alan.
Man, the Internet was hyped for the Barbie movie, weren't they?
I swear, you couldn't scroll for more than 2 seconds on Twitter...
X... threads?
I don't know.
You couldn't scroll for more than 2
seconds on insert generic social media feed here without being bombarded
by someone unleashing their inner Kenergy or rockin’ their newest hot pink outfit.
So of course, I had to see if all the hype was warranted.
And as I walked out of the theater, I realized, yeah, I kind of loved it.
Sure, the theme was a bit on the nose for my taste, but man, the movie was just fun
across the board, an awesome cast of characters
that are just dropped into the middle of one of the coolest and most interesting
fictional worlds that I've seen in a long time.
A world that I and many others would probably want to visit
if only it were real.
Except it is real.
Now,
right off the bat, I might have lost you on that one.
Barbie Land is clearly meant to be a fictional location, right?
They even explicitly distinguish
between the real world in the movie and Barbie Land.
So aren't they clearly trying to tell us that Barbie Land is a fake world?
Well, that's what I thought initially, too.
But everything else that we see in the film gives more evidence to the contrary.
When Margot Robbie's Barbie meets with Kate McKinnon's
Weird Barbie to discuss the odd things that have been happening in the world,
Weird Barbie describes the passageway between the real world
and Barbie Land as a portal.
Considering the fact that portals don't, you know, tend to exist here on Earth,
that would seem to tell us that
Barbie Land is in some separate dimension from the real world.
However, this is immediately contradicted a few moments later
when Weird Barbie admits that the portal was just a metaphor.
She then whips out her trusty instruction manual, courtesy of Mattel,
to tell Barbie the step by step directions for how to get from Barbie Land
to the real world, specifically Los Angeles.
I've been to Los Angeles.
I wouldn't exactly call it the real world, but then again, who am I to judge?
To get from Barbie Land to L.A.
the instructions tell us that Barbie needs to take a sports car, a speedboat,
a rocket ship, a tandem bicycle, a camper van, a snowmobile.
And then finally don a pair of roller skates to blade all the way to Santa
Monica Beach.
Now, these aren't
so much Google map directions as they are just a list of modes of transportation.
It’d be like me telling you how to get to my house
by saying you have to take a plane, a bus and a car.
You're missing a few key details there.
We can also rule out
that these comically pink propulsion devices are meant to be magical.
Both Kens and Barbies as well as real human for able to travel
freely back and forth between Barbie Land and the real world, provided
they follow these instructions either forward or backward.
So while the idea of trying to find the real world
Barbie Land might seem dumb at first, it is possible
according to the canon of the movie, and that's the kind of fine line
that we love to ride on this channel.
So instead of finishing my Barbenheimer double feature,
I bid my family adieu and rushed home, unfurled the world map
and tried to pinpoint exactly where Mattel is hiding Barbie Land.
And let me tell you.
Despite the movie
seemingly going out of its way to dissuade theorists like us from doing exactly
that, they gave us just the perfect amount of breadcrumbs
that led us right to the doorstep of that pink paradise.
Oh ho, I figured you out, Mattel.
You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that
to keep your boy MatPat
from going to live out his dream of being a Barbie girl in a Barbie world.
So grab your pink stilettos, Birkenstocks and Google Maps
dear theorists, as I once and for all chart a course to Barbie Land.
Let's start by throwing out some possible locations that Barbie Land can't be.
In the movie, one of the characters asks if Barbie Land is in an alternate reality.
Basically asking the movie the exact question that I desperately needed.
The CEO of Mattel, played by Will
Ferrell, says that “you can think of it as a small town in Sweden”.
Now it's clear that in this moment he's trying to change the subject.
After all, his main
aim in the movie is to make sure that Barbie Land
and the real world stay as isolated as possible.
That said, could Barbie Land actually be in Sweden?
No.
Several times throughout the movie, we see characters taking a sports
car just outside of Barbie Land, only to find themselves in a desert.
Sweden is many things.
A desert, it is not.
This information also allows us to rule out
my sneaky early pick for Barbie Land, which was Wisconsin.
As it turns out, Barbie, the toy’s
canonical Hometown, is the fictional city of Willows, Wisconsin.
Since this movie did such a good job of making deep cut references to past
Barbie lore, it would have been fitting to see
Barbie Land's real location paying homage to her lesser known home.
But alas, Wisconsin is the antithesis of a desert, so our search must continue.
Now, as much fun as it’d be to rule out every single location on Earth one by one,
there has to be a more straightforward approach to solving the mystery.
Eventually, I realized that instead of just trying to eliminate where Barbie Land
couldn't be, we had to follow the route laid out by the movie.
We needed to use each mode of transportation
and then cross-referenc locations on the map to see
if we could create a travel itinerary that would actually find Barbie's Malibu
dream house.
And not to bury the lead here.
But it's not as easy as just being in Malibu.
Since we obviously don't know our starting location,
the only thing we can really do
is go through our pre-established journey in reverse, starting in Los Angeles,
and then working backwards through the modes of transportation
until we eventually stumble our way back into Barbie Land.
The first leg we need to look into
is crossing into California while wearing neon and roller skates.
The way it's phrased in the movie is a little bit odd.
It goes like this, quote, The snowmobile will take you
most of the way to the state of Los Angeles, where you will don
Neon and rollerblades and enter the country of California.
Now, clearly, there are some mistakes there.
A recurring joke throughout the movie is that the Barbies are overall ignorant
to real world things.
So weird Barbie getting confused
about the difference between states and countries is no big surprise.
It's also worth noting that while Weird Barbie is saying this,
she's clearly pointing to the Los Angeles area on the map.
So you could argue that she doesn't
really mean crossing into the border of the state of California at all.
Regardless, I tried to solve this one in two different ways.
The first was taking what she said literally,
and looking at the closest places where Barbie could cross into the state
of California after having just got off of a snowmobile.
The three states that immediately surround California are Oregon, Nevada
and Arizona.
Taking an aerial view of those three potential entry points.
One of these things is clearly not like the others.
While Arizona and Nevada are clearly scorching
deserts, Oregon, it's a much better fit for our snowmobile stop.
It has plenty of snow capped mountains and a thriving snowmobile industry.
It also, conveniently enough, had not just one
but two snowmobile rental spots just across the Oregon-California border
in the town of Medford.
So we drop off our snowmobiles in Medford, lace up our roller skates
and head on down the California coastline until we get to sunny Los
Angeles, is what I'd be saying if it wasn't such a long trip.
See if we're crossing the border all the way up at the north.
We are now forced
to skate the entire length of California, and that is a long trip.
That is taking 11 plus days to get down to Los Angeles.
I mean, Barbie's not one to skip leg day
and if we want to take Weird Barbie at her word, it's our most probable bet.
But is it our best bet?
So I took another look.
If we wanted somewhere that was a bit closer, Lake Tahoe area
tucked right here away in the Sierra Nevada mountains is a slightly closer
possibility for this penultimate leg of the journey, but not by a whole lot.
You see, starting from here, Ken and Barbie are spending about six days
in roller skates trying to get down to Hollywood.
Better.
But still in the realm of ridiculous.
I don't know.
To me, both of these routes just felt too far fetched, which made me think
that weird Barbie was just off in her map reading skills.
I mean, the maps in the movie leave a lot to be desired in terms of accuracy.
Like here, we see that
New York is practically up in Canada and England is down near the equator,
making London a tropical paradise rather than the cool foggy town it normally is.
And again, in her directions, weird Barbie already flip flopped state and country,
so I decided to tackle this a second way.
Maybe what she was meaning to say is that after snowmobiling,
you cross into the county of Los Angeles, in the state of California,
which then gives us a lot more realistic possibilities.
Specifically here, the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains,
literally an hour's drive outside of Los Angeles.
Here we have ourselves beautiful
snow capped mountains, perfect for snowmobiling, and better yet, perfect
for rollerblading into the city at a mere 12 to 14 hour journey.
It's certainly long, but it is far more attainable
than the multi-day or even multi-week trips of our other options.
So I'm going to move forward using that as my waypoint.
What's next on the journey?
Prior to heading to Cali-for-nyw-ah.
Ken and Barbie take a tandem bike, followed by a camper van.
While that sounds like a backpacker's dream.
We're back to the same situation we were in with the rollerblades.
You can basically take a bike and a van just about anywhere you want to.
Leading to infinite possibilities.
Luckily, we get ourselves some visual detail
that actually paint for us a much clearer path.
In the movie, we get a montage of Barbie and Ken riding
as they go through each leg of their adventure.
In the tandem bike section, we see them riding through
a field of tulips and windmills.
Now when I see tulips and windmills, the first place my mind goes to
is the Netherlands or Denmark.
But if I thought rollerblading down an entire state seemed ridiculous,
biking across the Atlantic?
Yeah.
I tend to make some dumb theories, but that one is just a bridge too far.
Then I realized, well, sure, it looks Dutch or Danish
that could just be an aesthetic choice.
There must be places that are much closer that look like it came straight
out of a postcard from Europe.
And sure enough, there are.
Doing a quick Google search you see that Holland,
Michigan is riffing off its namesake; tulips and windmills for days.
But still, that's all the way across the country.
There has to be something a bit more realistic,
something a bit closer to the destinations that we've already mapped out.
And indeed, there is.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Solvang, California, a small town located
just outside of Los Angeles that's decked out to look exactly like
a Danish town, complete with the tulips and windmills and apple skiver.
Solvang looks exactly like the tandem bike ride that we see in the movie.
And it's a mere 13 hour bike ride just outside the city limits.
Hmmm.
Looks like we're starting to see a pattern here.
Fun side note, by the way,
Solvang is where our head of production, Jason, actually got engaged.
Good to know that Jason's marriage is unironically helping me
to solve an insane theory about the geography of the Barbie
universe years later.
#BlameJason?
More like #ThanksJason.
Also, on your way there make sure you check out the pea soup
at the nearby restaurants.
That seems random.
And it definitely is.
But it's just what the highway restaurants
advertise over in that area and it's pretty good.
Anyway, after a gentle tandem bike ride through our discount Copenhagen,
our plastic pals can rent a camper van and make their way
to the San Gabriel Mountains, where they’ll
then snowmobile around Mount Baldy before rollerblading down to Hollywood.
So far, so good and all nicely contained within this nice little pocket
of Southern California.
Which brings us to the absolute dumbest leg of the trip, the rocket ship.
In the montage of Barbie and Ken's journey,
we see that they ride a literal rocket into space.
At first, this made me think that Barbie Land
was an interplanetary destination.
But now I'm not quite so sure.
While having Barbie be canonically an alien
would be hilarious and very on brand for where we are in 2023,
the step before this is riding a speedboat and you wouldn't
exactly be able to find any place to run a speedboat over on Mars.
So I think we're still dealing with Earth here.
In fact, in that same scene, we also see a brief glimpse of the Earth
and a suspicious looking pink shape that kind of
looks like the outline of Barbie Land.
If that's true, then that means that the rocket ship
is a bit of a fun detour for Barbie
and Ken, allowing them to launch from and then return back to the same spot.
That being said, we still need to find the place that this
would happen, preferably in tandem biking distance from Solvang, California.
So where could you possibly find a rocket ship...
Oh, will you look at that?
Located just 26 miles outside of Solvang is none other than the Vandenberg Space
Force base, which features rocket launch pads
that are being used by both NASA and Space X.
What are the odds that a space
port, of all things, would be so close to our knock off Denmark?
It's almost like the writers planned it this way.
The launch pads also happen to be just a stone's throw away from dozens of bike
shops that allow for a tandem getaway to the, quote, Danish capital of America.
No, I'm not making any of this up.
This is how cleanly all of this stuff maps onto itself.
The Space Force base
also butts up against the Pacific Ocean, the perfect landing spot for a speedboat.
Putting it all together, it's hard to deny it feels like we're on the right track.
We've made it almost the entire way back to Barbie Land.
We are so close I can practically smell the plastic.
So from Vandenberg, we need to find a boat route
that grants us access to a desert that can
then be crossed via the Barbie sports car.
Then and only then, will
we finally be able to locate the mythical city decked out in pink.
Ladies and gentlemen, toys and girls, I think I found the route.
Barbie Land is located in none other than, drum roll please.
Monterrey, Mexico.
Yeah.
Barbie and the gang are living la vida rosa down in Mexico.
Monterrey, located in the northeastern state of Nuevo
Leon, is a beautiful city, flanked on its western side by what, dear theorists?
The massive Chihuahuan Desert.
By crossing the desert by car,
you'd reach the Gulf of California in about 8 to 10 hours.
From there, you can board a speedboat and ride your way
all the way up the coast to Vandenberg's
Space Force base, then catch a quick ride on one of Elon Musk's rockets,
go into low earth orbit and back before renting a tandem bike to
right all the way to Solvang, catching a view of the tulips.
After that, run a camper van and ride up to the San Gabriel Mountains
where you'll ditch your van for some cool snowmobiles.
Ride around until lacing up some rollerblades
and taking the scenic route through California
to finally reach the, quote, unquote, “real world” of Los Angeles.
Now, why would I choose Monterrey specifically?
Admittedly, when you look at the complete map of the journey,
there are definitely some places that are closer to Southern California
that can still fit the bill of deserts built up against an ocean.
But consider this, what else is located in Monterey, Mexico
but none other than the world's largest Mattel factory.
With over 200,000 square meters of space and over 3,500 employees.
Monterey is the perfect home for Barbie in the movie
because it quite literally is the home for Barbie in the real world.
Literally, Barbie Land; the land that makes all the Barbies and houses all the Kens
and Alans and Skippers of the world.
But as one final point of evidence to seal the deal,
in the movie when Ken starts to go hyper masculine in his Kenergy,
we do see some Kens actively building a border wall outside of Barbie Land.
Now, I recognize that right there's a political landmine.
But don't blame the messenger.
I'm not the one who's doing it.
I'm just saying it's in the movie.
And the subtext is obvious.
An army of Ken dolls building a border wall?
Yeah.
It's just further evidence to prove
that Barbie Land is at or near the US-Mexico border.
Exactly where Monterey and its Mattel factory is.
Where then is Barbie Land?
It's not as crazy of a question as you might think.
It's a rollerblade bike ride, snowmobile, speedboat away from Los Angeles.
Or, you know, a three hour flight from L.A.X.
Even though the movie gives us all
these convoluted directions that seem so lol random.
But they really laid out
for us was a series of breadcrumbs, giving us all the information we needed
to track Barbie back to the source, the literal source; her factory in Mexico.
Sadly, when you look at pictures of the place,
though, it's not coated in neon pink.
Maybe one day we can at least dream.
But hey!
that's just a theory.
A FILM THEORY!
aaaaaand cut.
Hey, if you could do me a favor and focus all your Kenergy
on that subscribe button, that would be awesome.
Or maybe you're in the mood for another video about Barbie.
If that's the case, check out our most recent Style Theory,
again, on the Barbie movie.
That one's on screen right now.