The Barbie movie hasn’t even hit theaters yet and it’s already making headlines, such as for the worldwide shortage of the color pink it caused. But, the most recent news involves actor Ryan Gosling as Ken: some people think he’s too old for the role. And it makes us wonder if it really is 2023 and we continue to criticize people’s looks for no apparent reason.
Gosling (42) handled the issue quite cleverly; he is Ken’s main defender and says that no one cared at all about Ken. And it is true, no one thought about what he looked like, how old he was and no one even played with him.
“And everyone was fine with that, for him to have a job that is nothing. But suddenly, it’s like, ‘No, we’ve cared about Ken this whole time.’ No, you didn’t. You never did. You never cared,” Gosling said in an interview with GQ.
“If you ever really cared about Ken, you would know that nobody cared about Ken. So, your hypocrisy is exposed. This is why his story must be told.”
Ken has no age, he is a doll, even so, some people on social media are using their fingers to type very fast a few criticisms about Gosling’s age and how he looks — an issue that apparently is not exclusively aimed at women.
Nobody played with Ken anyway, now you care about his age?
“It is funny,” Gosling said. “This kind of clutching-your-pearls idea of, like, #NotMyKen. Like you ever thought about Ken before this?”
The La La Land actor, Ken’s main representative these days, takes the criticism with a sense of humor.
“I would say, you know, if people don’t want to play with my Ken, there are many other Kens to play with,” he said.
The online conversation began in April, when the Barbie trailer was released, and has been gaining momentum in recent days. Some media and social networks users are pointing to Generation Z as the culprit of these criticisms. However, age should be one of the least important points about the film that, with its comedic tone, also represents female power.
Gosling admitted that he decided to take the role because it is a movie that puts female characters in the foreground. Plus, his two daughters play with Barbie and one day he saw something that inspired him; when he was offered the role of Ken: “I walk out in the backyard and, do you know where I found Ken? Face down in the mud next to a squished lemon.”
He sent the photo to Greta Gerwig (director) saying, “I shall be your Ken, for this story must be told.”
Ryan Gosling says when he was offered the role of Ken in ‘BARBIE’ “I walk out in the backyard and, do you know where I found Ken? Face down in the mud next to a squished lemon.”
Gosling sent the photo to Greta Gerwig saying, “I shall be your Ken, for this story must be told.” pic.twitter.com/ACUQ2p07QT
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) July 22, 2022
It seems no actor has ever taken a character so seriously. Barbie is a comedy and Gosling jokes a lot about Ken’s life, but he also knows about the lack of depth of the doll who is just an accessory to Barbie. While Barbie is a scientist, doctor, lawyer or photographer, Ken just tans on the beach.
“He’s an accessory — and not even one of the cool ones,” Gosling said to Jimmy Fallon. The kids want the different versions of Barbie, the house, the car and all the outfits. Meanwhile Ken is abandoned.
Fallon and Gosling joked about how neglected Ken was all his life. “Nobody plays with Ken,” Gosling added.
“He was… available,” Fallon replied.
“And yet?” Gosling asked.
“He stayed in the toy box,” Fallon concluded.
In a previous interview he told Entertainment Tonight that Ken’s life is hard: Ken has no job, his job is the beach, he has no house, no car, no money. “Those are not plot details. These are just objective facts about Ken. That’s the Ken life,” Gosling said. “Ken life is even harder than the Gray Man life, I think,” comparing Ken to his previous role as a fugitive assassin.
“Ken wasn’t really on my bucket list. But in fairness, I don’t have a bucket list. So, I thought I’d give it a shot,” he told Vogue. The actor admitted that he doubted about his Ken-ergy at first. He knew Ken from afar, not from within, and he didn’t see it. However, he confirmed getting help from Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig: “They conjured this out of me somehow.”
He joked during a Warner Bros. presentation: “It was like I was living my life and then one day I was bleaching my hair, shaving my legs and wearing bespoke neon outfits and rollerblading down Venice Beach. It came on like a light scarlet fever. Then I woke up one day and was like, ‘Why is there fake tanner in my sheets? What just happened?'”
Barbie promises to become a summer box-office hit. It’s not a movie particularly for kids, instead it tries to reach out to nostalgic generations who played with Barbie and her accessories during their childhood.
It doesn’t sound like there was much of a story for Ken in a world where Barbie is the main character, but Gosling seems to want to take the doll off the beach, soften the plastic a bit and make people laugh with this role that goes hand in hand with Barbie, but a few steps further back.
Image: Gage Skidmore
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