Barbie fans have been fighting the ick after discovering a very subtle incest twist in the new movie.
With Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling at the helm, the film launched to a massive box office success over the weekend – and has already smashed records with a global total of $337million.
It loosely follows a Barbie who has been plagued with thoughts of death, and must venture out of Barbie Land and into the real world to close a rift in the space-time continuum.
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At the same time, she’s got to look after Ken – played by Gosling – who is discovering what the patriarchy means after living in a matriarchy all his life.
(Image: WARNER BROS)
And Ken is clearly in love with Barbie, reaching in for kisses and asking Margot’s baffled character to stay over at her Dream House.
Which is where that smidgen of incest comes in.
Over the course of the film, we’re introduced to Ruth Handler, the OG inventor of Barbie dolls.
She based Barbie on her real-life daughter, Barbara Millicent Handler, while Ken was based on her son Kenneth Robert Handler.
Which, technically, makes Barbie and Ken brother and sister.
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
It was rumoured Ruth came up for the idea of an adult doll after watching Barbara play with paper dolls and was inspired to create a more realistic version of the toy which represented what girls ‘wanted to be’.
The Handler family was marred by tragedy over their lifetimes, and Kenneth sadly lost his life in 1994.
Ruth said his death was due to a brain tumour, but various biographers claimed Kenneth came out to his parents and was diagnosed with AIDS in 1990, with his death attributed to the disease.
His mother, meanwhile, battled breast cancer in 1970, before inventing a prosthetic breast to sell to women who underwent mastectomies.
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She eventually died in 2002 at the age of 85, from complications of colon cancer surgery.
Ruth was survived by her husband Elliot, who died nine years after her aged 95.
Barbara, meanwhile, outlived her brother and her parents, and she’s even weighed in on Margot Robbie’s role in the new film.
She told TMZ that despite not being involved in the film, it was “great to see her mother’s legacy live on”, and never imagined Barbie being make into a huge Hollywood production.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
