Barbie Does Dali


I heard two strikingly contradictory, and yet somehow related stories on NPR, the past two days. The first was about Barbie. It seems Mattell is closing its Barbie factory in China. This was not the usual factory American corporations like to operate out of China. This one was special. This one had been intended for the express purpose of selling Barbie Dolls in China itself: to the growing market of pre-teen Chinese girls in the growing Chinese middle class, already some 300 millino strong when I was there (must be closer to half a million by now, which is a lot of girls). Unfortunately for Mattel, it turns out the Chinese didn't take to Barbie after all (even though my stepdaughter, with whom, along with her mother, I successfully absonded from the PRC per several chapters in my book, was a huge Barbie fan). Could this national failure on the part of the Chinese possibly have anything at all to do with the fact that Barbie, at least during my three year tunure from '04 to '07, happened to be proporionately about seven feet tall with Russian blond hair, an impossibly pixiesh face, vacant cranium, a robot body, and empty blue eyes, none which do very much at all to further enhance the self image of the average short, bright, black haired, brown eyed Asian girl. As for Ken, don't ask.

The other story was about NPR itself, whose days have been numbered almost as long as the PRC. It seems that they are being accused of what Fox 'News' has been getting away with for decades: promulgating a specific point of view: in NPR'scase one that happened to be a bit too progressive for Tea Party thinking, which, apparently, is all that matters any more in Washington.

As for what Mattell was actually doing in Shanghai is little different from what Hollywood used to do there, which in large part has brought about China's new capitalist revolution. It's called 'p-r-o-p-o-g-a-n-d-a.' Except this time, it didn't work. I wonder why?

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