Netflix Unveils Trailer First Look Of Shonda Rhimes' New Documentary Black Barbie

The origin of Black Barbie is unpacked in a new documentary trailer from Netflix. The program, in association with Shonda Rhimes‘ Shondaland Media, aims to celebrate the momentous impact three Black women at Mattel had on the evolution of the Barbie brand by sharing the story of how the first Black Barbie came to be in 1980, examining the importance of representation and how dolls can be crucial to the formation of identity and imagination. “If you’ve gone your whole life and you’ve never seen anything made in your own image, there is damage done,” explained Rhimes trailer. Black Barbie debuts on the streaming platform on Juneteenth. Lagueria Davis, writer and director of the documentary, is also the grand-niece of Beulah Mae Mitchell, a former Mattel employee who bravely questioned “Why don’t we make a Barbie that looks like me?” “Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, I met my aunt Beulah Mitchell twice. She lived in California. Later, as a young filmmaker, I moved to Los Angeles in 2011 and stayed with my aunt. It was then, hearing her tell the story of how she went from working on the Mattel assembly line making dolls, to encouraging Ruth Handler to create a doll that looked like her, that I came to realize there was a story behind the first Black Barbie,” detailed Davis in a statement.“ Listening to my aunt and looking at her Mattel memorabilia, it was not lost on me why my aunt and her Black women co-workers would want to see a Barbie that looked like them. With that in mind, I sat down to do a bit of research, and discovered that it took 21 years for Mattel to release the first Black Barbie,” she continued.

An official synopsis for Black Barbie reads as follows:

“The film juxtaposes the legacy of three Black women who blazed new trails at Mattel with the stories of a select group of Black women memorialized by Barbie dolls made in their image, all while highlighting celebrity and fan reflections on the impact of this iconic doll. This is a celebration of Black culture over the past 70 years, and of the specific influence of the Black Barbie doll on the diverse array of dolls we’ve come to love today.“

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