COMMODITY FETISH

Die-hard Barbie fans: Funeral home in El Salvador offers pink coffins with Barbie linings

AP
4 Aug, 2023 


According to the funeral home manager, the idea was well received as a joyful atmosphere for losing a loved one. Photo / AP

A funeral home in El Salvador has taken Barbie mania to an extreme, offering pink coffins with Barbie linings.

It’s all designed so you can be a Barbie fan till the day you die — and even after that.

The pink metal coffins are on sale at the Alpha and Omega Funeral Home in the city of Ahuachapán, near the border with Guatemala.

Owner Isaac Villegas said Friday he had already offered the option of pink coffins before the July premiere of the Barbie movie. But the craze that swept Latin America convinced him to decorate the cloth linings of the coffins with pictures of the doll. The coffins are also decorated with little white stars.

A pink coffin featuring a Barbie motif is displayed at a funeral home in Ahuachapan, El Salvador. Photo / AP

“I said, ‘We have to jump on this trend,’” Villegas said of the coffins, noting “it has been a success.”

He said the funeral home has already launched a promotional campaign around the Barbie boxes, and has sold 10 of them. Though that doesn’t mean 10 people have actually been buried in them — many people in El Salvador buy a pre-paid package for future burial.

Villegas said that until a year ago, families had preferred traditional coffins in colors like brown, black, white or gray. But a year ago, he sold his first pink coffin to family who wanted their very happy relative buried in a happier-colored coffin.

Now he has no plans to turn back, though he still offers darker colors.

Ryan Gosling as Ken and Margot Robbie as Barbie. Photo / Warner Bros. Pictures

“We are going to have more pink coffins, because people are asking for it,” he said.

Latin America jumped on Barbie mania with pink-colored tacos and pastries, commercial planes bearing the Barbie logo, political ads, and even Barbie-themed protests.

The famous doll’s theme has also taken a macabre tone.

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In July, anti-government demonstrators dressed up two women in pink and put them in giant Barbie boxes in the main square of Lima, Peru’s capital, to protest President Dina Boluarte, under whose administration police have often clashed with protesters.

And in Mexico, a sister of one of Mexico’s 112,000 missing people began sewing doll outfits to make a “Searching Mother” Barbie, referring to the volunteers who fan out across Mexico’s dusty plains to search for gravesites that might contain their children’s remains. Her creator, volunteer searcher Delia Quiroa, hopes to publicise the plight of mothers who have to carry out the searches and investigations that police won’t do.

 

 

“If you loved Barbie go watch it. If you hated Barbie, go watch it.”

Is the entire world turning Barbie Pink?

SARA JAMIL

PUBLISHED 3 DAYS AGO

So much about Barbie – both the toy and the movie – “mirrors” (a great word used in a recent New York Times article) what it is like to be a woman, or yes, even a man, in the world today. As a designer, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the first marketing design brief was shared. With an iconic global brand like Barbie, so much groundwork is already laid; history, competition and culture has been archived and can be utilised at the right time, using the right approach. A simple case of waiting for the swell and riding the wave, preferably on a pink surfboard.

When I went with my “nearly 13” year old (“Still a month to go, Mama!”) to watch it, I had already been ‘Barbiefied’ online by the likes of the Barbie Airbnb followed by Aldo, Beis, Forever 21, Zara and NYX collections to name a few, and had participated in a rousing discussion on the viral trending of a Pantone Barbie Pink. Collaborative brand alliances are on fire right now in the design world and who better to do it than Barbie, harnessing the power of women, nostalgia and shared experiences? Pink Krispy Kremes that must taste better if had with other Barbies, ‘Barbie CAN’ replacing the word station on the London Underground’s signs adding a smile to her day, Pink UNO, Crocs and an HGTV Barbie Dreamhouse Makeover challenge that no one can resist, and even Xbox coming on board to give gaming a whole new vibe (and market) are just the tip of the collaborative iceberg.

Covering an array of trending “marketable topics” from blatant consumerism to the invisible labour of women, the feminist manifesto to the friend zone, and being stuck in the terminology of old times as the world moves ahead, Barbie the movie also nails Millennial and Gen Z speak. And by weaving in the irrepressible ‘adulting’ aspect of life, it neatly ropes in anyone who has felt the angst, either as a parent or as a teenager themselves of surviving in a world that puts perfection (and men) on a pedestal. The best part? The smartly written dialogue, the juxtaposition of a Barbie world vs Barbie in a human world makes it impossible to disagree with or deny the majority of truth bombs dropped in the film’s 1 hour 54 minutes’ runtime, making this brand – which was teetering on a dangerous precipice – top of mind yet again, this time with a whole new set of relevant conversations.

Barbie has since its inception stood for and about so much that it’s hard to nutshell it, from the “you can be anything” to the “you don’t have to look like this” to the “but maybe you want to.” Other brands have both aligned and dissociated themselves with it, depending on how the world swayed, which is why there was no surprise that bright, colourful collaborations were the way forward when it came to promoting this much-awaited movie. While there has been a healthy amount of criticism around the Barbie brand calling out its push of unhealthy beauty standards (tall, fair, thin girl rishta anyone?) perfection and consumerism, the film somehow also aligns with what is happening today so seamlessly that the marketing team probably nudged the wheels in motion and sat back with their coffee, watching the world explode pink, as more names, trends and conversations jumped on board, both officially and unofficially, fearing missing out on the Barbie campervan party.

The movie will surprise most who have assumed this will feed an existing narrative around the brand. It starts off with the Barbie perfection for sure but then slides smoothly down a spiral into real life. One doesn’t think they will ever relate to the stereotypical Barbie, but as the movie progresses, we do empathise with her, root for her, and eventually cheer her journey back to ‘perfection’ but this time, it’s the human kind – flawed and with cellulite.

A final clap here for the well thought out tagline that ties it all up in a bow, including the fans yes, but also challenging the haters with a tongue-in-cheek “If you loved Barbie go watch it. If you hated Barbie, go watch it.”

Sara Jamil is a career freelance designer and currently also teaches typography at IVS. jam.designs@gmail.com