Cooper 1 Today, the U.S., Japan, and China are the world’s leading toy manufacturers selling toys designed in one region (Japan or the U.S.), made in another (a district of China near Hong Kong), and distributed to millions of children world­wide. The globalization of the toy industry has marked a new era in child play whose effects can be seen across the board in economics, anthropology, and psychology because of the cultural and ethnic questions raised by the mass distribution of dolls. Mattel, one of today’s largest international toy companies, headquartered in El Segundo California, sells Barbies to over 140 countries in 40 ethnicities and boasts ownership of brands “including Barbie, Hot Wheels, American Girl, and Fisher­Price”(Mattel, 4). Through most of the last century, Mattel marketed and sold only white, blue­eyed, blond dolls until the early 1990’s when Mattel decided to cash in on questions of racial identity realizing that “there is gold in them thar hills, or more precisely, there is money to be made form exploiting, exposing, and explaining racial difference in American culture”(Rooks, 271). The early nineties marked the creation of Mattel’s first truly “ethnic” series, the Shani doll line. Shani dolls came in three “shades” one being clearly African American and the others being mixes: “Each has a different skin tone and is ‘realistically sculpted from head to toe to reflect the natural beauty of African American women’”(Rand, 68). Shani dolls bring our attention to the local conflicts sparked by the international flow of products and people: firstly, the influx of so many people originally associated with one region and ethnicity into the U.S. forces Mattel to respond locally to the needs of its domestic market; secondly, Mattel, as an international entity, has strings of local markets spread out all over the globe and must place each of them into a global context with each other to preserve economic efficiency (hence 140 countries but only 40 ethnicities). As a result, Gary Cross and Gregory Smits explain, “regional and national traditions of toy and doll making
Cooper 2 have long reinforced ethnic and local identities in children” but the globalization of the toy industry “[has] swept away the traditional dolls and local culture”(2). The plethora of literature assessing the conversation between Mattel and its local markets generally takes the position that Mattel packages and sells racism to children. In conducting her own research about Mattel, Barbies, and the influence of dolls on children, Elizabeth Chin noticed a peculiarity among the dolls of children living in Newhallville Connecticut (which has a dense minority population): “the front section of the doll’s long, silky hair is done up in braids, each held at the end with a small plastic barrette. Like the doll, Clarice has her hair in braids, and like the doll, the end of each braid is secured with a small plastic barrette…Several other Newhallville girls had dolls that…had distinctly un­white hairdos”(314). That a little black girl, named Clarice, should put her doll’s hair in braids just like her own should come as no shock. Clarice’s doll, however, is platinum blond with blue eyes and white skin. Chin noticed a pattern among the minority children of Newhallville who had a selection of “ethnic” dolls available yet still chose to play with white dolls. Chin suggests that new “ways of thinking between and outside of bounded racial categories emerge”(306) as a result of the Newhallville children’s “racial queering” of their dolls. Most critics, though, would align themselves with the classic interpretation generated by the 1930 Clark and Clark studies. The Clarks were the first researchers to do a project directed at studying racial identity in children using dolls. Dolls have been used to study children for over a century in the field of psychology due mostly to Freud, who suggested playtime exists as an adjustment mechanism to soften the transition between childhood passivity and the activity of adulthood (Wilkenson, 98). Children, he suggested, re­enact traumatizing experiences placing themselves in dominant positions to feel control over threatening situations. Watching a child
Cooper 3 play with a doll can then give a psychologist information about traumatic experiences. Today this technique is used mostly to diagnose sexual abuse. This basic principle, however, that dolls can be used to communicate with children or act like a microscope into their psyche, led to research starting in the 1930’s, which hoped to discover when during an individual’s life span racial identities are formed, when children become aware of racial differences in other people, and how these concepts affect their behavior. In the tests conducted, more black children than white children chose white dolls when asked to identify which doll they look like the most, which one was a “good” doll, and which doll was a “nice” doll. Clark and Clark have been cited in nearly every major race­doll study because of two groundbreaking conclusions: the Clarks suggested that children begin to perceive both their own racial identity and those of others as early as ages 3 to 4; more importantly, Clark suggested that more black children than white children dissociate from their own race, proof that they have low self­esteem about their skin color. The Supreme Court cited the Clark and Clark studies in the 1950’s as a footnote in a decision regarding the desegregation of public schools. Since, most studies seem to have far too many statistical errors supporting a particular agenda (especially those conducted right before and during the civil rights movement) to have much standing today as accurate information about how children racially identified themselves in the past one hundred years. Because of the Clark studies and the close association between dolls and child psychology, Mattel hired “Dr. Darlene Powell­Hopson, a ‘licensed clinical psychologist and certified school psychologist,’…in conjunction with the Shani doll line, to ‘advise the company on issues related to positive play products for African American children’”(78), by conducting research in the L.A. county area. If the Shani dolls are so authentic, and if it is true that “the primary appeal toy makers offer with their ethnically correct playthings is the idea that such toys
Cooper 4 can help minority kids to feel more at home in the world through allowing them to play with toys – and especially dolls – that look like them”(Chin, 309), then why do children of Newhallville still play with white dolls? Some scholars have argued that the production of ethnic dolls may actually “draw upon …notions of difference and phenotype, paradoxically making use of oppressive distinctions” supporting Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemonic discourse where “dominant social groups achieve their dominance over subordinate groups…[through] dominant ideology, that both induces subordinated people to perceive their subordinate status as natural or commonsensical and is flexible enough to incorporate resistance to it”(8). Either Mattel teaches racism to children by only selling white dolls, or when they do sell dolls with ethnic features they only do so to contrast it against the white dolls. This “paradox” should lead critics and analysts to at least question mainstream criticism of Mattel but few scholars touch upon these subjects and those who do tend to run with the grain of the Clark studies and theories that Mattel’s hegemonic success comes at the expense of minority children’s sense of self­worth. Tying the loose ends of the economic, psychological, and anthropological forces acting on the dolls that shape racial identity through a literary perspective yields some very different conclusions: although ethnic minorities play with white dolls, leaping to the conclusion that such play indicates the subordination of minorities lacks standing next to Mattel’s published intent and how minorities play with the dolls; secondly, the fact that minority children choose the white doll may have more to do with healthy racial identity construction than was originally conceived, especially if we consider what it means to “queer” a doll by taking a look at twentieth century philosophy and the concept of “monstrosity” and hybridity. Mattel was founded by Ruth and Eliot Handler and Harold Mattson, which is where the name Mattel came from “– the beginnings of Mattson and Eliot”(Rand, 30) combined. When
Cooper 5 Mattel marketed the first Barbie in the 1950’s, adult­figure dolls had started to become popular in the U.S. Erica Rand successfully presents a clear picture of Barbie’s mythological origins, only two of which seem feasible and worth mentioning. The first, published and propagated by Mattel, explains that Ruth Handler, co­founder of Mattel and mother of one daughter, Barbara, had the idea for a three­dimensional fashion doll to replace Barbara’s paper fashion dolls. Myth number two, which seems to be less myth and more dark secret not guarded carefully enough by Mattel, explains that Barbie’s origins lie in Germany. Barbie’s German prototype was named Lilli (sometimes spelled Lili) who was a “doll modeled after a German playgirl in the cartoon form [Stern and Schoenhaus refer to her as a prostitute]…The Lili doll was not designed to appeal to children , but was sold to men in tobacconists and bars.” Mattel, after taking an interest in the European 3­D doll, sent “an emissary…to Germany and all the rights to Lili were bought by Mattel. Some doll construction patents were bought form Hauser, the German manufacturer, and the cartoon rights to Lili were bought and put aside”(qtd. in Rand, 32). Barbie’s racial origins also surface more clearly in this second explanation where the only changes Mattel made to the porn doll, were Lilli’s (now Barbie’s) hair and eye color: “the face and hair were changed early on from the Lilli­based first Barbie to the ‘blond, blue­eyed vision of the American Dream.’ As Mandeville recounts, ‘The Handlers felt the [original] doll looked ‘too foreign’”(40). That having “blond hair, blue eyes and white skin is, it appears, to have no ethnic specificity at all”(59), and the knowledge that Mattel’s intent in producing white dolls lies in their claim, which has lasted almost unaltered since the birth of the company, that Barbie facilitates fantasy and imaginary play without boundaries, explains exactly why the little girls of Newhallville would prefer white dolls; it may have nothing to do with insecurities of skin color but rather that because the blank slate of white, white as the lack of color, not a color itself, the children can
Cooper 6 place their own identity in the doll. This analysis seems to conflict with Mattel’s rhetoric when advertising the Shani line, until taking a closer look at the motives. Mattel only advertises that playing with dolls that look like the child who plays with it makes playing with the doll better. This has no weight with the child but it does with the child’s minority parents. Due to the growth of a minority middle class, Mattel’s dark skinned doll sales rates spiked 20 percent, and Shani was created. Instead of trying to assess Barbie in terms of Mattel’s “artistic intent” in creating dolls, studying the reception of the dolls would yield equally provocative conclusions. Rand points out, “children in general are critics and …we condescend to children when we analyze Barbie’s content and then presume that it passes untransformed into their minds, where, dwelling beneath the control of consciousness or counterargument it generates self image, feelings, and other ideological constructs”(Rand, 143­4). Assuming that children are helpless in the face of Mattel’s advertising schemes is, perhaps, the mistake made in many analyses which fail to question analytical standards from the thirties, instead falling toward a “rigid understanding of race…not [attempting] to re­imagine race itself”(Chin, 317) as the children of Newhallville have. The hybrid dolls, with their African hair but white visages do indeed re­image race outside of the physical characteristic that define it. The Newhallville children have transformed their dolls into anthropomorphic artifacts which “entail[s] imaginative leaps: plastic denotes skin, yarn denotes hair, etc…correspondence is also partial and depends on [the child’s] own sense of identity”(Rooks, 100) which makes possible the “decod[ing of] social values because valuing the doll means valuing the human characteristics to which the doll refers. Similarly, interpretive or physical acts performed on the doll” can be used to “decode” the meaning of racial queering or hybridity. Where Erica Rand uses the word “autobiography” in an allegorical sense, it could be
Cooper 7 more useful to think of a Barbie doll functioning as an actual autobiography; kids manipulate the dolls, projecting themselves onto a three dimensional object the way an author projects their ideas onto a page of a book. Where adults use rhetoric in either written or spoken form to communicate with others, children often lack words to express themselves. Inside a racially queered, racially hybrid doll, lies a “narrative hidden in the silences” where “the major consequences of racial divide and difference come to light”(Rooks, 271). Just as Equiano’s Autobiography or Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude juxtaposes two cultures or two races against each other to synthesize problems resulting from racial hybridity, it could be argued that this is what the Newhallville children have done. Treating dolls as three dimensional, totally interactive texts, which can be the place holder, so to speak, of hybrid identity, Barbie transforms into a spatial or sculptural autobiography. This fits within the context of globalization, which is itself a spatial problem; moving from one location to another and dissociating culture from the region it originated. Foucault’s description of monstrosity and utopia provides a paradigm to place these two spatial conflicts, that of the dolls and that of globalism. Foucault explains that monstrosity occurs when two concepts are juxtaposed onto each other but lack any physical relationship. For example, what physical place would a white African exist? The word “African” (denoting “black”) and the word “white” are opposites; placing them together forms a monstrosity, a hybrid form; “the monstrous quality that runs through” a queered object is that “the common ground on which such meetings are possible has been destroyed”(xvi). Once the possibility of existing together physically in the same locality has been destroyed the object must now exist in a “non­place” or semantic reality i.e. a utopia. Foucault argues that “utopias afford one consolation: although they have no real locality there is, nevertheless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to
Cooper 8 unfold” and that by providing an “untroubled region,” “utopias permit fables and discourse: they run with the very grain of language and are part of the very dimension of the fabula”(xviii). The dolls do exactly this – “permit fables and discourse.” When kids play with dolls, usually they make up stories and give the doll a persona, they make up a “fable” with the doll. If it is true that children are silenced by their lack of ability to communicate verbally, then the dolls also “permit…discourse” by being the mechanism with which they can communicate. When a child uses a doll clearly associated with one race and superimposes their own, the doll now acts as a tangible, visual representation of their conflict; but it still exists in a fantasy land, the “untroubled region” of play. This domestic phenomenon is actually part of a global phenomenon only recently recognized by Mattel who now sells white, blond, blue­eyed dolls in Japan instead of dolls with Asian features. Either this indicates that the Japanese are submitting to American capitalistic hegemonic discourse or they have, for one reason or another, a fascination with white dolls. Both the Japanese and Newhallville children challenge outdated analytical standards and should at least raise questions in the minds of modern anthropologists, psychologists, and economists.
Cooper 9 Work Cited Berry, Helen E., “Teaching In Science and Career Fairs: An Application Using Dolls.” Teaching Sociology July: 2001. Vol. 29. 360­368. Chin, Elizabeth. “Ethnically Correct Dolls: Toying With The Race Industry.” American Anthropologist June. 1999: 305­321. Cross, Gary and Gregory Smits. “Japan the U.S. and the Globalization of Children’s Consumer Culture.” Journal of Social History: 2005. 873­890. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House Inc., 1970. Gunthorpe, Wayne West. Skin Color Recognition, Preference and Identification in Interracial Children. Oxford: University Press of America Inc., 1998. Mattel. “Company Overview.” Datamonitor: 2004. 4. Rooks, Nowlie. “Writing Race Selling Culture.” Novel: A Forum On Fiction Spring: 1998. Vol. 31. No. 2. 271­272. Rand, Erica. Barbie’s Queer Accessories. London: Duke University Press, 1995. Wilkinson, Doris Yvonne. “Racial Socialization Through Children’s Toys: A Sociohistorical Examination.” Journal of Black Studies September: 1974. Vol 5. No 1. 96­109.