Have you ever noticed that the pacing, tone, and story development of the Barbie series is filled with bizarre and inexplicable moments? That the continuity between episodes seems lacking, suggesting there is no real passage of time? I have a theory.
In this episode of Barbie, which I have dubbed the Grand Revelation of the show, all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly connected once I realized the true events that lie behind this episode and the shocking, disturbing light it casts on the entire series.
Please, watch this episode intently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mux__bUO_8
For you who would rather not, allow me to explain: On an unassuming summer day, Barbie decides to take two of her sisters, Skipper and Stacie, with her to the beach, leaving her youngest sibling, Chelsea alone. Chelsea is initially saddened, but quickly realizes this means she has the house and the pets all for herself and chooses to take advantage of that fact. She decides to ride a surfboard off a staircase and out of a window into a pool, and what follows are some other scenes of her having fun, such as playing cards with her pets or warding off neighbours Raquelle and Ryan who are invading her house, thinking someone must have broken into Barbie's house, since it was meant to be unoccupied and catching the criminals might get Raquelle her own soda line. After successfully repelling the well-intentional duo, Barbie returns and takes Chelsea to the beach at last, finally remembering she forgot to take her.
Doesn't all this seem strange to you, incongruous even? Like the rest of the show, abnormal events occur without having the consequences they should. I always found this aspect of the show disturbing, often I would find myself sleepless at night, feeling that something was amiss, but what could it be? What about this show was so despair-inducing, what secrets lie beneath that pink and plastic exterior? It was then that I discovered that horrifying truth and my life forever changed.
Chelsea is in a coma.
Now, I know this might sound ridiculous, but it actually explains everything. After Chelsea rode the skateboard out of the window, she never landed in a pool filled with water... The pool was drained of water that day. That was when poor, innocent Chelsea crashed right into the ground, filling the pool with her blood as she lied unconscious.
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| Scene of the incident |
Raquelle and Ryan never meant to break into her house, they actually witnessed the events and saved Chelsea... Though perhaps saved is a big word, as now she lies in a coma in the Barbie Hospital.
It is my belief that this episode is actually the first episode in the Life in the Dreamouse chronology, and that all other events of the Life in the Dreamhouse series are Chelsea's mind trying to cope with her inner demons in a child-like struggle between Good, Evil and Nothing.
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| Terrifying |
Every aspect of the show, every character represents a part of Chelsea's mind. Barbie, for example, is Chelsea's perfect big sister. She is always there for her, she is the woman who can take on any job, she is the world's biggest star, she has a loving boyfriend and she herself also loves everyone else. This highly idealized image only shows how deeply Chelsea feels overshadowed by her talented big sister, an overworked doctor at the local hospital who always seems busy with things beyond Chelsea's grasp, to her it must seem like she has a dozen of BFFs and jobs. Barbie has it all, Barbie is all, Barbie is Everything, Barbie is Perfection.
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| Perfection |
BFFs. Is it not odd how many friends Barbie has, yet Chelsea never seems to have friends herself? In her own mind, Chelsea idolizes friendship, Barbie can maintain a best friendship status with half a dozen people, but that ideal does little to hide the fact that when Chelsea tries to imagine friends of her own, her mind cannot conjure any image. The only time she tried, her friends ended up being colour-swapped clones of herself.
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| Blond, brown, black |
As you can plainly see, Chelsea never had any friends, and now she's in a coma, she never will...
Chelsea has two other sisters, Skipper and Stacie. It is my belief that they represent Evil and Good respectively. Skipper is a girl who is all about technology and teen-like apathy, to Chelsea she represents fear of going through puberty, fear of growing up, fear of time itself, that she too will one day become rotten like her older, unappreciative sister.
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| The face of Evil |
Meanwhile, Stacie, the sister we see less of, is enthusiastic, likes to plan in advance and is always up for a game of sports or hanging with Barbie. She is the antithesis to Skipper, and in Chelsea's mind the opposite of Evil is Good. This is all what Stacie represents to Chelsea now.
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| The face of Good |
So, Evil and Good. What remains? Nothing. That's right, Nothingness itself. Ken might seem like he is perfectly made for Barbie, like he is almost like a part of her. But the truth is that Ken never existed in the first place, he is a figure Chelsea made up to cope with the concept of love, but in doing so, she made Ken a lesser form of Barbie, he is just as loving as her, but where Barbie is competent, Ken is incompetent. Where Barbie has a whole, rich life of her own, Ken is defined almost solely by his relation to Barbie and those related to Barbie. In a world where Barbie is the center of all, where Barbie is everything, Ken can only ever be Nothing.
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| The face of Nothing |
Now, I mentioned the concept of love before, but it is my belief that Chelsea struggles with the concept of love herself. Though she is still a small girl, she is already questioning her sexuality in a world of a perfect match between Everything and Nothing, a man and a woman. But Chelsea knows deep down she doesn't want a man, she wants a woman. But this clashes with her image of Barbie, her image of Everything. To cope with these feelings of anxiety, she created a deceitful duo who intend to stop at nothing to break up the pair of Barbie and Ken: Raquelle and Ryan. Though they are dutiful neighbours, in Chelsea's fantasies they are a pair or perpetual apples of discord, Raquelle doing everything she can to undermine Barbie while Ryan does the same with Ken. Though at first glance it seems Raquelle lusts after Ken, and Ryan after Barbie, it is actually the other way around.
Throughout the whole show, Raquelle does everything she can to one-up Barbie, to not just equate but triumph over her in the field of attention, affection, fabulousness, anything that is Barbie, but Barbie is ever ignorant of it and sees her as just another BFF, not a candidate for love. Meanwhile, as a sort of sick copy of a copy, counterpart to a counterpart, Ryan secretly lusts after Ken, but his personality is doubly vacuous, his sole trait being vanity for his own, male form, a form Ken shares, a fact that drives him to madness yet also peculiar arousal.
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| The faces of Love |
Of course, this has only accounted for the important human cast. Though the animals exist and they can talk, I believe this to be Chelsea's childlike innocence and her interest in anthropomorphism, perhaps she is a budding furry, but I do not believe I can give a conclusive answer to that effect. More worrying, however, is how everyone else, every other human who is not a part of Chelsea's life, is actually exactly identical. They all use the same base models, Raquelle and Ken's specifically. I do not believe this to be a coincidence, they are the closest to Barbie without being Barbie, the perfect filler.
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| Who are these people? |
All-in-all, I think it's quite clear now what is really going on in Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse. I do not know if I shall sleep well tonight, or if I shall ever sleep again, but day after day, my mind is haunted by the thought of the torment Chelsea is going through... Forever is she trapped in a world of plastic and fakeness, of dolls and deceit, of endless friends yet no friends, forever being pulled apart by the forces of Good, Evil, Nothing and Love, as Barbie watches on forever, smiling and showing all the concern a loving sister would, just like the real Barbie is as she looks over the real Chelsea, her hands in her hair, unable to cope with the reality of what her forgetfulness had caused.
Truly, Chelsea is living inside of a Dreamhouse, because nothing what goes on in her house is real anymore...
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