Right from the very first Barbie trailers, Ryan Gosling’s Ken was an absolute standout. He sings, he rollerblades, he talks about Kenergy on press tours! What more could you want?
Well, I’ll tell you. I want what was denied from me. What was denied from all of us, as audience members and as patients of Goslingitis. I want…the scream.
If you’re a fan of Gosling’s work, and especially his turn in 2016’s The Nice Guys, you know what I’m talking about. Through some great miracle of nature, Gosling is able to produce a wonderfully high-pitched shriek that can wring comedy out of any situation. Frustration, anger, pain — you name it, a Gosling shriek can make it funny.
Yet in a movie like Barbie, where Gosling’s comedic talents are on full display, we’re missing that special scream. (The closest we get is his unhinged delivery of “I’ll see you on the Malibu Beach!” in the Ken-on-Ken showdown.) And to make matters worse, I know for a fact we almost had it.
When Barbie was filming its rollerblading sequence in Venice Beach, set photos and videos from onlookers flooded the internet. Among them was a clip that winds up in the movie, where a man assaults Barbie (Margot Robbie) by spanking her without consent. In retaliation, she punches the man square in the face. However, the clip from set features one thing that the film does not. A beautiful, extremely loud Gosling scream.
The final Barbie sequence cuts Gosling’s scream painfully short, to the point that it is just a whisper — nay, maybe an idea — of a scream. For one brief moment, we held a Ken scream in our hands, only to have it ripped from us by a cruel, unforgiving edit.
Jokes aside, I can see why Gosling’s Ken scream didn’t make it into the film. It risks breaking up the rhythm of Barbie’s snappy introduction to the real world, where she’s bombarded by misogyny until she freaks out and throws a punch that lands her in jail. Do we really have time for another Ken punchline in the middle of a sequence that sets up the dichotomy between Barbieland and our world? Chances are the omission is for the best. For fellow fans of the Gosling scream, don’t despair: We’ll always have that grainy set footage.
