The new Barbie movie features a “divinely ordained match of actor and material”, says Xuanlin Tham in GQ: Ryan Gosling and Ken. The 42-year-old actor has completely captured how the male doll is nothing but “pure surface”. He’s hot, funny, and has no idea what’s going on. If you “peered into his smooth plastic cranium”, you’d find two things knocking about: “Barbie, and beach”. Gosling has a seemingly “preternatural gift” for this “pretty boy empty-headedness”, otherwise known as being a “himbo”. After decades of vacuous female characters, it’s refreshing to see the “gaze of objectification” reversed.
🍋🎬 Gosling’s casting as Ken has one of the “best origin stories for an acting role”. After reading Barbie’s script for the first time, Gosling stepped into his garden and was “given a sign” by the universe: his daughter’s Ken doll was lying face down in the mud next to a squashed lemon. He immediately texted director Greta Gerwig: “I shall be your Ken. For his story must be told.”