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LMGI COMPASS
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Winter 2024
All images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, except as noted
From her inception in a Los Angeles garage workshop,
Barbie's iconic persona has been anchored to the
sunny shores of Southern California. Created by
Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler and introduced to
store shelves in 1959, Barbie reflected a prosperous,
optimistic postwar America and her carefree
lifestyle rode a popular wave of West Coast beach
and fashion culture to become the bestselling doll
of all time.
But the parallel universe of Barbie Land was more
than a SoCal playscape for Barbie and her friends:
It became a stage to explore feminist ideals and an
incubator of shifting social values, where little girls
could imagine themselves as grownups
who pursue careers and advocate for
their own interests.
Greta Gerwig's history-making
Barbie movie, filmed partly on a
Barbie: Between Two Worlds
tt
by Rachel Llewellyn
SLM Robin Citrin and team paint the town pink
for director Greta Gerwig's take on the quintessential California girl
London sound stage and also throughout Los Angeles
County, offers a sweetly subversive exploration of
the doll's 65-year legacy that moves us—literally and
figuratively—between worlds. Under the creative
leadership of supervising location manager Robin
Citrin/LMGI, the practical landscape work is a vital
thematic piece of the film.
"I was excited to work with a female director and
feminist-driven material," says Citrin. "Greta is a
director, writer and an actress, and she relied on
her production designer Sarah Greenwood to create
this crazy pink Barbie world that was fantastic and
imaginative. Taking Barbie into the real world with
Greta and Sarah was a lot of fun. We used locations
to play upon the incongruity of Barbie and Ken in
real-world situations: Those neon figures that would
normally blend into the Venice Beach environment,
instead stuck out like sore thumbs."
