Barbie loves the ocean and the plastic : consumo, educação e relações com o ambiente

Abstract

This work has the general objective of analyzing Barbie Loves The Ocean from an environmental perspective, problematizing the slogan “The future of pink is green”. We viewed said toy as a consumer device and created the following research problem: who does Barbie Loves The Ocean think you are or want you to be? Methodologically, we use Addressing Modes to understand how a message is sent and how it can affect its receiver. The plastic doll is sold as ecological and suggests that Barbie's plastic is “another plastic”, the one taken from the oceans or that would end up in the sea – and thanks to Barbie it wasn't. Our work has pointed out that childhood and nature have become a commodity in the hands of big manufacturers like Barbie's Mattel. We saw that there is what is said in the doll, which demonstrates beauty, contemporaneity, fun and ecological awareness and there is, above all, what is not said that indicates purchase, commercial focus on children and adults and specific modes of existence. New products appear every day, with slogans that promise to bring improvements to the environment, which call themselves totally green and supporters of nature, but what is not printed on their boxes and which can only be perceived between the lines is that one day will turn into garbage and even if it is recycled, it will be harmful to the earth. We understand that Barbie practices a fragile, incoherent, contradictory environmental education that can work as a device for adults and children and serve as a – mistaken – reference for sustainability for the most unsuspecting people, who do not access the reflective processes on the subject.