The sheer number of records that Barbie has broken is nothing short of staggering. Already one of the top 100 highest-grossing films of all time, it’s had the biggest opening of the year, the biggest opening of any Warner Bros film ever, and now counts as the highest film grossing ever made by a female director.
It’s impressive stuff, but all these superlatives look set to be overshadowed by an even more impressive record. That’s right, Barbie looks set to become the film that will inspire more regrettable coffin decisions than any other.
A year ago, the Alpha and Omega Funeral Home in Ahuachapán, El Salvador, started selling hot pink Barbie-themed coffins. According to undertaker Isaac Villegas, since the movie came out the company has been swamped with inquiries to the extent that they ran out of stock. Meanwhile Funeraría Olivares, a funeral home in Guayaquil, Ecuador, recently went viral with a TikTok of what it calls its “Barbie House” coffin, accompanied by the slogan “so you can rest like a Barbie”.
Which isn’t particularly accurate, because if the Barbie movie taught us anything, it’s that Barbies only rest when they’ve been mauled beyond all comprehension by the children who own them, snapping their legs and tearing out their hair until they’re abandoned forever underneath a sofa. That said, it doesn’t seem to have diminished everyone’s desire to be buried in a bright pink coffin. Another TikTok video by the British firm the Glitter Coffin Company, unveiling a pink coffin that “gives Barbie vibes”, has been viewed over 15m times, inspiring thousands of gen Zers to ask if they do preorders.
This is all well and good, of course, because people deserve to be buried or cremated in whatever sort of container they want. And this is far from unique. Spend 30 seconds Googling novelty coffins and you’ll find Batman coffins, Ghostbusters coffins, Star Wars coffins, There’s one coffin that’s decorated like a massive Twix wrapper. Each to their own is what I’m trying to say.
It’s just that choosing a Barbie-themed coffin now seems a bit premature. Sure, you like Barbie now. But, as anyone who enjoyed The Usual Suspects so much that they went out and got Kevin Spacey’s face tattooed on their leg will tell you, things have a habit of moving pretty fast. To commit to a Barbie-themed coffin now is to bank on Barbie’s legacy staying exactly the same for ever.
And that simply won’t be the case. The movie has been such a success that sequels are inevitable. And, as everyone knows, with sequels come a tangible dip in quality. Perhaps Greta Gerwig feels as if she has said everything she needs to say in this movie, and the next one will be directed by a lesser talent. Perhaps Warner Bros will start valuing revenue more than creative competency, and end up making the Barbie equivalent of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. Maybe Margot Robbie will grow tired of only playing Barbie, and retire from the role and the franchise will have to cobble together a confusing Smokey and the Bandit Part Three-style workaround. Perhaps, I don’t know, Barbie 2 will be extremely racist. It’s just too early to say at this point.
But I’m not going to dictate who gets slung in what after they croak. If the thought of being posthumously shoved into a blazing, bone-incinerating furnace inside a glittery pink coffin is the only thing that soothes your all-encompassing fear of death, then nobody should stop you from doing that.
Perhaps, though, someone should think about broadening the base of this fad. After all, if there’s going to be a Barbie coffin then it stands to reason that there should also be a Ken coffin. What that entails, though, is a different matter entirely. Perhaps it could be clad in fake fur, like Ryan Gosling’s iconic outfit. Perhaps it could be covered in paintings of horses, like Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House. Or perhaps, if this is really going to reach its logical conclusion, anyone requesting a Ken funeral will simply find themselves being flung naked into the mud. After all, you’re just Ken.
