There's Something for Everyone at the Library

!Barbie Spoiler Alert!

My husband returned from a two-week trip to the Amazon last week so I took a few days off of work for us to spend together. When he asked what I'd like to do on Wednesday I told him I wanted to see the Barbie movie. Sporting his pink oxford shirt he purchased the tickets online and we set off our local theater (which thankfully is never crowded). We both thoroughly enjoyed the film.

I am always happy to see someone use a library in a film and Ken wasted no time finding one in The Real World to do research about the patriarchy. He then used the information to brainwash the Barbies to turn  Barbieland into an unrecognizable dystopia. 

The same week that I saw the Barbie movie I revisited a favorite book from my childhood - Fuzzies: A Folk Fable for All Ages. First published in 1971 this hippie-dip book tells of a beautiful valley where everyone is happy all the time (because they have Fuzzies). Their beautiful utopia is disrupted by the evil Juanita the witch who, after doing some research at the library, comes up with a plan to convince the people of the valley that there is a shortage of Fuzzies. The sharing stops and the hoarding begins.

If a person based their opinions of libraries only on these two works, they might believe that libraries are bad things. But never forget, libraries are for everyone. Ken took advantage of what he learned at the library, but  there was nothing stopping Barbie from accessing the same information. I would argue that it would have been to her advantage to read the same things Ken did. Knowing what you are fighting against provides a strong advantage. As for the people of the valley, I expect that keeping strictly to themselves and never learning about what else was going on in the world worked to their disadvantage. Books can be mirrors or windows.