The Secret of Raquelle's Heroine's Journey

 Warning: Spoilers!! 

Barbie: A Fairy Secret (2011) is the 20th film in the Barbie Cinematic Universe, and the second movie starring Barbie as herself (not counting the Barbie Diaries). In the Barbie Cinematic Universe canon, at least for the older films, Barbie is an actress, and the fantasy films, such as Barbie: Fairytopia (2005), are movies she’s “acted” in, while this movie follows the real Barbie and her personal life. A key part of Barbie’s personal life is her relationship with long-time frenemy Raquelle. In this movie Raquelle, usually a one-dimensional villain with no life outside of trying to one-up Barbie and steal Barbie’s boyfriend Ken, gets a redemption arc. Barbie’s character in this movie is pretty uninteresting, as always, but Raquelle’s emotional journey almost completely follows Maureen Murdock’s version of the heroine’s journey. In this blog post, I plan to explore how it fits and its implications. 

Barbie: A Fairy Secret (2011) starts with a montage of Barbie and her stylists getting ready for a red carpet event while the theme song “Can You Keep A Secret” plays in the background. In this scene, through its general “girliness”, Barbie is established as a symbol of traditional femininity. The scene switches to Raquelle on the red carpet. She’s getting interviewed, but the reporter is obviously more interested in Barbie. Raquelle is clearly constantly overshadowed. Raquelle, in a jealous fit, rips Barbie’s dress (but since Barbie’s stylists are secretly fairies, they’re able to mend it without issue). The next day, the villain, Crystal, secretly gives the fairy queen a love potion, causing her to kidnap Barbie’s boyfriend Ken and try to marry him. Barbie, her fairy stylist friends, and Raquelle travel to the fairy city of Gloss Angeles to get him back. 

Here’s a quick rundown of Raquelle’s heroine’s journey: Raquelle’s separation from the feminine and identification with the masculine happen before the events of the movie. When she and Barbie make up near the end of the movie, Raquelle explains that “Maybe when I thought you didn’t like me, I started being mean to you so I’d be the one doing the rejecting.” Raquelle had a fundamental misunderstanding of femininity (Barbie) and so she separated from it. At the start of the movie, we see that Raquelle is a successful actress, but she is still constantly overshadowed by Barbie. She isn’t content and takes this out on Barbie. Some might call this an illusory boon of success (she’s not happy, so that makes her successful acting career seem less good). Crisis falls upon the heroine when Ken gets kidnapped. Raquelle sees this as a chance to win over Ken, so she pushes her way into the quest. She has to act nice to Barbie on the quest, though, and so she begins to “reconcile with her feminine side.” Barbie and Raquelle make up, healing the split, but Raquelle is still her own person with her own skills (in this movie, being good with horses and sarcasm). In the final scene of the movie, Barbie and Raquelle become friends in the human world as well after they were made to think their fairy adventure was all a dream, and Raquelle makes a sarcastic joke, showing she is still herself and not Barbie (integration of masculine and feminine). 

As nice as the Barbie-Raquelle getting back together is, it’s also somewhat sinister- the misunderstanding wasn’t really anyone’s fault, but the audience is still made to feel that Raquelle, who questions Barbie’s world, is the bad one. Never Barbie. This illustrates the problem with both Murdock’s heroine’s journey and Raquelle’s story- they don’t exist in a vacuum. Taking into account the broader context of Barbie’s effect on the body image of girls and her status as a symbol of ideal white femininity, the way the villain of Fairy Secret is the only one who dresses alternatively, and how this message of the antagonists being visibly different is reinforced throughout every single Barbie movie, suddenly Raquelle’s heroine’s journey becomes a message that either you become friends with Barbie and fit nicely into her perfect world, or you are bad. Also, since Barbie is the ideal, no matter how enlightening Raquelle’s heroine’s journey is, she will always be nothing compared to Barbie. In one scene, Barbie says Raquelle is the only person who can lead them through one of their obstacles, but the audience knows that Barbie could complete the whole quest by herself anyways– she’s Barbie, after all. Raquelle may be having all this personal growth and coming to realizations, but she is only a miniscule part of Barbie’s world. Murdock’s heroine’s journey models a very specific experience that cannot be applied to all heroines, and trying to use it universally or even broadly pushes stereotypes about masculinity and femininity, and assumes that all heroines need an integration of masculine and feminine to be complete. But Barbie and Raquelle are besties now, and that’s all that matters. I guess the real fairy secret was the friends we made along the way. 

Note the design of Raquelle and Barbie vs Crystal, the villain