Barbie Has No Knees (and Superman has no genitals): Reflecting on the historical significance of the iconic doll through an exhibit at the Vittoriano

With Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" scheduled to open tonight in theaters, well, everywhere, we are re-posting Bill's 2016 post below, which is chock-full of historical cultural analysis as well as photos of some of the many Barbies we saw at the exhibit. Yeah, go to Rome and see Barbies! We loved it. (Review here: https://www.2filmcritics.com/post/barbie)

Sign for the Barbie exhibit in the Vittoriano - which features a permanent exhibit of The Risorgimento -
Italy's battle for statehood.  Interesting contrast of Barbie and Garibaldi.

60s Barbie, Barnaby Street look

It was 1959 when the first Barbie appeared.  A bit late, it would seem, to catch the wave of conservatism, conformity and consensus that hung over the American nation through much of the postwar era.  When Barbie went on sale, the civil rights movement was well under way, with lunch-counter sit-ins to begin in 1960.  Just two years later, Tom Hayden launched the student protest movement with the Port Huron Statement and Betty Friedan rang the opening bell for the latest version of feminism with her book, The Feminine Mystique.  By 1965 U.S. bombers were pounding North Vietnam.  Barbie should never have survived "the '60s."  But she did. The "Barbie" exhibit at Rome's Complesso del Vittoriano provides some explanations for Barbie's longevity.  One is that Barbie was a well-made and beautifully dressed creature, her every incarnation

a fine-tuned fashion statement.  Having never had a Barbie (I was 16 when she made her debut, and a boy), and having decided that the exhibit was one I hardly cared to see, I was impressed--astounded even--at the "look" of the hundreds of Barbies on display: style, color, elegance, precision, all in abundance.

Right, Barbie as bullfighter.  Left,
hipster exec

Clearly, too, Barbie was flexible, especially in relationship to the burgeoning feminist movement. Barbie could be teen model, a housewife and homemaker, or a stewardess, but over the years she tracked American women as they took on a wider variety of occupations and pursuits--some 180 occupations in all.  Barbie became a pilot, a no-nonsense professional, an astronaut, an eco-friendly architect, a race car driver, a hard rock musician, even a bullfighter, albeit a stylish one.














Barbie's facial expression changed, too, perhaps most famously in the 1970s, when Barbie came to look a bit like Farrah Fawcett, the star of the popular TV series, Charlie's Angels.

Barbie as Hitchcock's Tippi, attacked
by birds

Other Barbies were modeled after celebrities. among them Twiggy, Audrey Hepburn, Madonna, Tippi Hedren (in Hitchcock's The Birds), Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, and Elvis, Barbie could be the Statue of Liberty, too.

And after 1980, Barbie's look had much to do with multiculturalism and globalization. (See the African Barbie at the end of this post). Even so, the curators of the exhibit go too far in claiming that Barbie was on the cutting edge of political and social change. The first black Barbie appeared in 1980, 12 years after the March on Washington, 16 years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations such as restaurants and hotels, and 26 years after the Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional.  In the racial arena, at least, Barbie was a follower, not a leader.


Nonetheless, as a cultural historian, I enjoyed the curators' efforts to link the evolving Barbie with historical movements and trends, from feminism to globalization to the emergence of a culture of celebrity. However, I must admit that my first reaction to Barbie had to do with her physique, and not just her thin-ness.  Indeed, my first thought--and first words in the exhibit--was "Barbie has no knees."  It occurred to me, then, that Barbie was knee-less because the knee is the least attractive part of the leg; knees have bumps and lumps and stick out here and there.

interrupting the attractive flow of the woman's leg from thigh to calf to ankle (admittedly, also somewhat knobby--as it turns out, Barbie doesn't have ankles, either).











No genitals.  Could be model for
Superman Barbie

I'm writing this today because this morning's New York Times carried an obituary for Noel Neill, the actress who played Lois Lane on the Adventures of Superman TV series.  In the accompanying photo, Superman (Steve Reeves) demonstrates his strength by holding Miss Lane off the ground with one arm.  Then I noticed that Superman has no genitals.  


Bill

The exhibit closes October 10.  It's not cheap: Euro 12 or, if you qualify for a reduction, Euro 10.  Most of the hundreds of Barbies in the exhibition come from 2 major Italian collections.

TEX in Rome: an American Western Icon Still Sells

The comic character Tex has been part of our Rome experience since 1993.  It's remarkable to us that Tex is still around.  He showed up on the side of our local newsstand (edicola), along with the reminder that here you can get more money on your prepaid phone (RICARICHE on the side here).

Clearly Tex is still a publishing hit, because a poster for a new collection of Tex comics showed up a few days later on a nearby electrical pole, the one the newsstand regularly uses to draw in customers from nearby via Gallia.

We tried to figure out the source of this current interest in American Westerns.  Tex goes back to 1948, when the character was created by Gianluigi Bonelli.  The Bonelli publishing house is now big business, part of it built on Tex's back.  They have characters of more modern currency, such as Dylan Dog and Dr. No (the latter a kind of anti-hero, and not Ian Fleming's Dr. No).  But Tex takes the prize as the longest running comic character in Italy.  What was being advertised at our newsstand is one of several new compilations, this one "Tex Gold."

The May 2015 Tex, a reprint of 1985.
The front and back covers are in color, but
the panels are black and white - still.

Gianluigi Bonelli's family continued Tex. The kingmaker of the publishing house, Gianluigi's son, Sergio, took over the writing of Tex, and the May 2015 (really 1985) issue I just bought was written by yet another Bonelli, Mauro. But Gianluigi clearly formed the character in the late 1940s and 1950s.  The backstory is that Tex was a Texas Ranger, but quit that and "now" operates for them on some special assignments--often working outside the law to hunt down the really bad guys, who are sometimes themselves "lawmen."

The story in my hands is "Il Pueblo Sacro" - The Sacred Pueblo.  Like most Tex stories, it is set in the American Southwest.  Tex ("Night Eagle" is his Indian name) is accompanied, as he often is, by Kit Carson ("Silver Hair"), his "pard" (the same word in Italian and English).







Tex can be seen as a reflection of many different values.  First is the love of all things American in post-WWII Italy; what could be more American than cowboys and Indians?  Our Roman friends tell us they played "cowboys and Indians" - as did we.  Though by the 1960s, one told us, she would play only an Indian, not a cowboy.  In our day, the cowboys were the good guys and the Indians the bad guys.  Bonelli was ahead of most people here too.

The wise old Zuni:  "But if young Juanito [the young Zuni]
has brought you here...
It isn't for a meager supper of  millet bread and pemmican..."

Starting in the late 1940s, Bonelli reinterpreted the traditional "cowboys and Indians" narrative by having the Indians (we would now say Native Americans) be wise men - although Tex looks like the wisest of them all, since - through marriage to an Indian princess - he is "now" chief of the Navajo tribe.

The bad guys:  Ricky, the Mexican, and the Sheriff

Il Pueblo Sacro has all of these characteristics.  Tex, with grumpy and skeptical Kit, asks his young Indian companion - the "young Zuni" - to take him to the tribe's "sciamano" ("shaman" - or we would say "medicine man") to interpret a valuable diadem.




In the meantime, an upstanding rancher's (Thomas Harrison) not-so-upstanding son (Ricky) and the sheriff ("lo sceriffo") of the town - Rio Lobo - team up with a Mexican (Mexicans don't come off too well in Tex) to try to get a trove of gold that can be found via the secret of the diadem.

The medicine man knows how to interpret the diadem, but the gold is corn, the secret space beneath the pueblo is full of poisonous spiders, and the bad guys end up dead.

The poisonous spiders

In the last line of the episode, Tex says: "Even though we weren't elected, Kit and I keep order at Rio Lobo."

Some have suggested that Italians continue to love Tex because he represents the fight against corruption, and corruption often is IN the system itself.   No doubt this characterization is part of Tex's appeal, but it still doesn't explain to me Tex's almost 70-year endurance.  Yes, Tex doesn't sell as it once did (from 700,000 copies per month at its peak to 220,000 in 2010), but then what print publications do?

One of our Roman friends, who knows a lot about Italian culture and sociology, suggested that it's not young people who buy Tex.  Rather it's their parents, engaging in nostalgia, especially when one considers the many reprint series.

Bonelli's comics also tell us something about censorship in Italy.  He had to lower skirts, cover up cleavage (not that there are many women in these stories) and change Tex's name right before publication from Tex Killer to Tex Willer.

Dianne

The last panel, where Tex says:
"Even though we weren't elected, Kit and I keep order at Rio Lobo."

Betty Boop: 1930s icon in Rome and Italy

Betty Boop joins an old Pepsi-Cola sign in an ordinary bar on Rome's outskirts, the "borgata" (something akin to lower class neighborhood) or quarter of Alessandrino (named for the ancient Roman acqueduct that ran nearby).
 Across the street is one of the Vatican's new churches - San Francesco di Sales. 

Rome, and Italy, have long embraced American popular culture and its iconography, with special attention to Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Mickey Mouse, and Snow White.  More surprising, perhaps, is the attention given to a less well-known cartoon character from the dawn of talkies: Betty Boop. 

We found this Betty Boop in the northern Italian city of Trieste. 
Large hips, small breasts, and lots of leg on this version.  Too sexy for Rome. 

We'll spare you the details of Betty's history--the coverage on Wikipedia rivals that of the Kennedy assassination--but here's the gist of it:  Ms. Boop was a Great Depression-era persona.  She made her first appearance on the silver screen in August 1930, in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, created by Max Fleischer as a caricature of the real-life singer Helen Kane.  In this incarnation, Betty was highly sexual yet girlish (she was officially 16), naïve and innocent--even a bit frightened about what might be out there--a well-stacked and curvaceous version of the jazz-age flapper. 

She originally had "poodle" ears, but those became earrings in Any Rags (1932), and in 1934, with the advent of the Production Code, Betty was transformed into a more mature and wiser husbandless housewife, dressed more modestly--soon to be without the earnings.  The final Betty Boop cartoon--there were over 100--appeared in 1939.  The character was revived in the 1980s for television and the comic strip, and Betty made an appearance in the 1988 film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Marketers became interested in Betty at the same time, and her image--usually the ultra-sexy early Boop--became widely used in advertising and in the collectibles market, both in the United States and abroad.  Though most of Betty's cartoons have not been released in the modern era, 22 are in the public domain and available on the Internet.   Bill

A Betty Boop shirt, Rome (Tuscolano quarter) store window.  With earrings--and garters.  Betty as gold-digger.