Abstract
I highlight and discuss some of the scientific references made in the film Barbie (2023), with a particular focus on Einsteinian physics and quantum mechanics. I compare such references to similar ones made in the film Oppenheimer (2023) and make some suggestions for possible directions for further study.
In the montage forming the opening section of Oppenheimer (2023), the eponymous character declares that, as an unhappy PhD student at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, he was ‘troubled by visions of a hidden universe’. The hidden universe being referred to is the physical world, but considered on a scale so small that the mere act of observation (interaction with a particle of light known as a photon) destroys any information one could hope to retrieve; at this scale, it is a world where the behaviour of its objects is governed by the physical theory of quantum mechanics. Hidden though this universe may be, the consequences of its existence for the observable ‘Real World’ are evident throughout the film, perhaps most memorably in the sequence where Oppenheimer is troubled by the vision of a sports hall full of his colleagues at Los Alamos who are burning to death as a result of a nuclear attack. In Barbie (2023), in the montage depicting a (the) typical day in Barbie Land, the eponymous character is also troubled by visions of a hidden universe, or at least by thoughts of dying. The next day, unusual physical consequences of the hidden universe manifest themselves in Barbie Land, though these effects are seemingly only experienced by Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie): water has changed temperature (the water in her shower is either too cold or too hot), gravity appears altered (she falls rather than floats from her Dreamhouse) and her feet have changed shape. As is explained subsequently, for Stereotypical Barbie, the hidden universe is, from the point of view of the audience, our observable Real World, and it is the actions and thoughts of the Real World character Gloria (America Ferrara) that drive much of the plot of the film.
Faced with the unpleasant, possibly catastrophic, consequences of the physics of their hidden universes, both Oppenheimer and Stereotypical Barbie seek advice from an expert. Beside a lake in the grounds of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (an academic version of a Barbie Dreamhouse), Oppenheimer consults Albert Einstein, asking his opinion on the veracity of calculations made by Edward Teller which suggest that the chain reaction of nuclear fission set in motion by the proposed Trinity Test will ignite the Earth's atmosphere, thus destroying all life on the planet. Einstein does not actually give an answer: ‘And here we are, lost in your quantum world of probabilities’. At the end of the scene, he hands the piece of paper with the calculations back to Oppenheimer, saying ‘This is yours. Not mine’. On the outskirts of Barbie Land, Stereotypical Barbie, having formed ‘conjectures on the causality of adjacent unfolding events’, consults with Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), an eccentric figure with a notably distinct hairstyle like Einstein who appears to be able to explain things that other Barbies cannot. The causes of Weird Barbie's eccentricity are shown in cutscene just before the meeting with her, and some of her explanations are foreshadowed: a Barbie doll has been played with ‘too hard’ by a girl in the Real World and the physical effects of the play on the doll (such as cutting its hair) have somehow altered the appearance, and possibly the personality, of Weird Barbie in Barbie Land.
The first part of Weird Barbie's theory of what has happened to Stereotypical Barbie contains various allusions to Einsteinian physics. Weird Barbie describes ‘a portal’ which is ‘a rip in the continuum that is the membrane between Barbie Land and the Real World’. The word continuum is often preceded in popular scientific discourse by the word ‘spacetime’ (most notably in various iterations of the Star Trek franchise), a reference to Einstein's theory of general relativity. This is the theory that gravity arises because of the curvature of four-dimensional shapes (manifolds) formed by combining three spatial dimensions with one of time (see the first chapter in Wald, 1984). It is difficult to visualise four-dimensional shapes, but an oft-reached-for attempt is to think of spacetime as a taut sheet of rubber (i.e. a membrane); placing a mass, such as a planet, on the sheet causes the sheet to distort, and this distortion is what we detect as the gravitational ‘pull’ of the mass. What was revolutionary in Einstein's thinking was to combine space and time, and so mass in general relativity does not just bend space but it also bends time. The mathematics used to describe four-dimensional shapes predicts that, given enough mass, it is possible to warp spacetime to such a degree that light gets trapped within the gravitational pull of the massive object and a black hole is formed (Wald, 1984: 298). Black holes have been ‘observed’ (even recently pictured; Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration et al., 2019), thus suggesting that Einstein's theory, as difficult as it is for beings who think that they inhabit a three-dimensional world to comprehend, is nevertheless a good way of thinking about gravity. The mathematics of general relativity also allows for portals to form between distinct points of spacetime; these portals or ‘wormholes’ sound a lot like the rip in the spacetime continuum that connects Barbie Land to the Real World.
If the first part of Weird Barbie's theory shows her facility with Einsteinian physics, the second part demonstrates a knowledge of quantum mechanical phenomena. Weird Barbie explains that each doll in Barbie Land is being played with by a girl in the Real World: Weird Barbie: ‘We’re all being played with! Usually there's some kind of separation: there's the Girl, aka the Player, and the Doll, aka the Playee. And never the twain shall cross’. Stereotypical Barbie: ‘The twain is crossing?’. Weird Barbie: ‘Yes! The girl playing with you must be sad and her thoughts and feelings and humanness are interfering with your dollness. Am I being too technical?’.
This exchange could be seen as a description of a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement (see: Swanson, 2023). Roughly speaking, it is possible to produce particles where their particular quantum mechanical states are not independent from each other; knowing the state of one particle could determine the state of another particle, even if the two particles are in totally different parts of the universe. This seems consistent at least with Barbie Land as it is described in relation to the Real World; Weird Barbie explains that it is not a different universe but merely a different part of the universe that can be accessed by standard modes of travel (possibly through a wormhole). The coupling of states (albeit emotional states) in different regions of the universe is highly suggestive of some form of quantum entanglement: ‘Well however it happened, you and she are becoming inextricably intertwined. You have to help her to help yourself’. Another feature of quantum mechanics that is relevant in particular to the problem of ‘the twain crossing’ is the principle of wave-particle duality (Swanson, 2023: 2–14). At the subatomic scales considered in quantum mechanics, it is possible for objects that have a mass and that have characteristics of particles (think of an electron here which we picture in high-school chemistry textbooks as being like tiny planets ‘orbiting’ the much larger nucleus of an atom) to nevertheless exhibit the behaviour of waves. Waves interfere with each other; peaks and troughs cancel out in a phenomenon known as superposition. A famous experiment that fired electrons through two slits, the ‘double-slit experiment’, demonstrated that the particle-like electrons seemed to interact with each other as if they had become electromagnetic waves as they passed through the pair of slits: the twains appeared to have crossed.
Einstein's name is associated with the theory of quantum entanglement in the form of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox. He argued that quantum entanglement was problematic as a theory because it appears to allow for information to travel faster than the speed of light, something prohibited by Einstein's theory of special relativity. Special relativity was a forerunner to general relativity in which Einstein postulated that all observers would measure exactly the same speed of light when it is travelling in a vacuum (see: French, 1968). This is totally counterintuitive if one considers how the speed of objects appears to us to be ‘relative’, that is, dependent upon the speed of the observer: the person sat opposite you on a moving train appears stationary; to someone on the platform of a station you pass through, they appear to be moving very quickly indeed. Working through the mathematical implications of the invariance of the speed of light, one finds that information is prohibited from travelling faster than light (French, 1968: 117). In quantum mechanical theory, the probability of finding a particle in a particular quantum state is described by an object known as its wave function, and making a measurement of the state of a particle is to cause its wave function to ‘collapse’. Einstein was troubled by the idea that, with a pair of entangled particles, one could measure the state of one of them, collapsing its wave function, and thus simultaneously collapse the wave function of the other particle somewhere else in the universe, without making any measurement of it at all; the simultaneous collapsing of wave functions seems as though information is being transmitted instantaneously, and therefore faster than light. Einstein famously described his objections in a letter written to the physicist Max Born describing entanglement as ‘Spooky action at a distance’ (158); Einstein thought that quantum mechanics was weird (Born et al., 1971). Fundamentally, the mathematics of quantum mechanics describes only the probability that you can find a particle in a particular state at a particular point in spacetime; Einstein disliked this aspect of the theory, hence his reply to Oppenheimer in the film, and his assertion that ‘God does not play dice with the Universe’. Prior to the 1930s, scientists were used to ‘deterministic’ theories, especially concerning the dynamics of particles, and found it hard to think about the consequences of a theory governed by probability; for example, Schrödinger's cat, which exists in a box in a state neither dead nor alive, demonstrates the difficulty that scientists had, and still have, in ‘interpreting’ quantum mechanics.
The films Oppenheimer and Barbie will remain always and forever entangled (Barbenheimer!) by more than simply coming into existence at roughly the same coordinates in spacetime (see: Faux, forthcoming this issue), and there are other Einsteinian themes in Barbie that could be commented on. Time is constantly referred to in the film; the very first line spoken by the Narrator (Helen Mirren) casually implies that time had (has) a beginning. Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling) becomes mildly obsessed with measuring time and is shown at one point sporting an armful of watches; of course, he is really interested in the power that comes from knowing the time. Much of the narrative in Oppenheimer concerns the relationship of the scientists at Los Alamos to the politicians using their science to pursue and retain power. Ken's time fixation shows that the science-political-power correspondence exists in the Barbie Universe, and indeed the relationship that time and its measurement has with power and global politics in the Real World is an established subject of inquiry already (see: Withers, 2017). The veneration of scientists through scientific awards is at least gestured at in Barbie, many of the Barbies being awarded Nobel prizes (this itself is also an entangling of Barbie Land and the Real World with the prize named after a Real-World historical figure – how do the Barbies know about Alfred Nobel?). Robert Oppenheimer never won a Nobel prize for his scientific work; one could wonder if the scientific figures in Barbie have any more power and influence than those depicted in Oppenheimer.
It might seem surprising, weird even, that Barbie, or at least the dialogue of the beings represented within the film, is quite so scientifically inflected; perhaps it is not surprising that a film entitled Oppenheimer is also full of beings discussing, for example, quantum mechanics. Whatever the nature and the precision of the language used, however, both films describe the passage of their protagonists from innocence to experience (see: Connolly, forthcoming this issue), and at multiple points in each narrative the question is posed: after such knowledge, what? Both films seem to conclude that revealing the hidden universe precipitates the destruction of what exists already, but it is Barbie that appears to choose apocalypse. What is it that Barbie knows about the Real World that makes life worth living?
