Barbie left me with a lot to think about, but one question hadn’t crossed my mind since leaving the theater. That’s the question of where Barbieland is located in the real world. There’s a very good reason I never wondered about that: it doesn’t exist in the real world! Barbieland/Kendom is a magical fantasy dimension that sits entirely outside of our own. That’s why travel between the two worlds requires an absurd journey through multiple planes of hyper reality. I thought all of that was fairly obvious. It should have been, right? Right? Well someone should tell that to Neil deGrasse Tyson, because he took a break from pointing out scientific inaccuracies in movies to determine where on Earth Barbieland exists.
All snark aside, I like when everyone’s favorite mustachioed astrophysicist points out scientific issues in sci-fi movies. Hearing about them doesn’t ruin the film for me, but I usually learn something cool. However, there’s something absurd about deGrasse Tyson’s latest cinematic check (which we learned about at CBR). He used deductive reasoning based on the Sun, Moon, and climate to identify where he believes Barbieland is located in the real world.
He determined that if Barbieland is found in the US (not unreasonable considering Barbie creator Ruth Mandel was from Colorado and Mattel originated in Los Angeles) it exists in the Florida Keys.
Except, it obviously does not. At all. And not because Will Ferrell’s Mattel CEO says Barbieland is like a town in Switzerland. It obviously is not in the Florida Keys because you don’t have to travel through literal outer space to go from Florida to California. That was a requirement for people to travel between Barbieland and Los Angeles in the film.
You’d think an astrophysicist would know this. Space is, like, their whole thing. Well, except for Neil deGrasse Tyson. His whole thing is space and getting way too in the weeds of movies. What’s really funny in this case, though, is that him telling us needless information about Barbieland is a total Ken move.
