I loved the irony of an almost feminist barbie with a different voice. This barbie was the ’spokes doll’ of the B.L.O (the barbie liberation organisation). She explains on screen how in 1993 there was a ‘corrective surgery’ that took place where the Barbies and G.I Joes swapped voices and were put back in there boxes then shipped out world wide and put on shop floors to sell. This was done in an attempt to revolt against the creators of these toys as they were used to ‘brain wash kids’.
This action of switching the voices of Barbie and G.I Joe almost makes this protest interactive, involving the kids who are receiving and experiencing these toys, in a sense forcing them to recognise a fault in one of the most notorious children’s brand there is. I found this to be one of the most unique ways of protesting shown in the exhibition, mainly because of the simple fact that young children were unwillingly central to this protest, even though they wouldn’t yet understand the concept of protesting. A child’s form of protest would be to rebel and in a sense this idea is mimicked as the spokes doll claims they’ve ‘turned against our [their] creators’.
miatessema 