Feminist audio-visual content analysis of the dancing scenes of Barbie 2023: Recontextualization as the 1960s as the background, and self-directed individualism

Abstract

This paper conducts a feminist audio-visual content analysis of the dancing scenes of Barbie, a movie released in 2023, within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. The dancing scenes are recontextualized in the 1960s since Barbie was introduced to the world in the decade where the rise of second-wave feminism (SWF) as a critical cultural context contributed to the philosophy and ideologies of Barbie. This paper narrows the scope of multiple analytical possibilities to the dancing scenes in the initial part of the movie by examining the audio aspect, the song Dance the Night, and the visual aspect including the demographic features of characters of different genders, and their movements and interaction on the dance floor. Conducting feminist content analysis, this paper leverages ground theory to initiate the content coding processing for the two aspects. The major findings are two-fold. The visual aspect lies in the centralization of female dancers with multiple races, body shapes and costumes so that no females are particularly foregrounded and backgrounded (except Margot Robbie’s main character), which symbolizes SWF’s universal links of womanhood and togetherness. Also, male dancers serve as background dancers to support female dancers who dance individually without close physical contact dominated by men, which symbolizes females’ individualism and self-directedness. The 1960s witnessed females’ anxiety against traditional norms. In the audio aspect, therefore, the lyrical contents of the song reinforce the independence by serving as anti-depression by emphasizing themes of “dancing the anxiety away” and “taking risks to be her own self”.