Middle-aged movie-goers will recall Hello Dolly, the 1969 musical about a manipulative matchmaker played by Barbra Streisand. Mattel Inc., the California based toymaker, is poised to give us its version — Hello Barbie.
The product in question is a manipulative doll that carries on conversations with young girls whose parents can afford the $75 US price tag. For that kind of money, you could give the kid a set of steak knives and the resulting mayhem might be no worse.
It’s not every day you meet something this daft, destructive and profoundly spooky. Where to begin?
The doll can both ask and answer questions. Everything a child tells it is recorded by a microphone under the doll's clothes and sent via Wi-Fi to a cloud-based computer server.
In the early going, interchanges are limited to a stock vocabulary of anodyne remarks. An example: A girl presses Hello Barbie’s on-switch (the doll doesn’t do “boy-speak”), and it starts off with “Yay, you’re here. This is so exciting. What’s your name?”
Told the answer, it replies: “Fantastic, I just know we’re going to be great friends.” (I’m indebted to James Vlahos, a writer with the New York Times, for his description of this interchange.)
But as time goes on, the company’s mainframe records everything the toy’s owner has told it, and adds sophistication. So, for instance, if the child says: “I’m hoping to be a ballet dancer,” Barbie might respond: “But didn’t you tell me earlier you wanted to be a painter. Perhaps you might think about writing children’s books.”
Some of the doll’s repartee involves giving advice. Told the child is being bullied at school, Barbie might reply: “You should talk with an adult about that.” Asked by the child if Barbie thinks she’s pretty, the doll will say: “Yes, of course, but you’re also clever and kind.”
By this time, you would think most parents would respond with a “Goodbye, Barbie.” Would that cause it to yell: “Help, save me, I’m being thrown out”? Of course not. Or at least I doubt it.
But you see the problem. The potential for manipulation, or flat-out brainwashing, is enormous. Little kids endow all manner of inanimate objects with superhuman qualities. Wherever Barbie leads, the child is sure to go.
Surveillance is also an issue. What happens to those confidences, innocently blurted out by the child? Mattel promises they’ll be safeguarded. Yup, right up to the moment the mainframe gets hacked, or an advertising agency buys the files.
Or how about this: Suppose the kid says: “My mommy was mean to me.” Does Barbie answer: “Talk to your school teacher”? If she says: “Daddy beat me,” does Mattel call the police?
However, by far the largest concern has to be the destructive effect on a child’s imagination. Why bother with make-believe, when an entire fantasy world is available, thanks to creepy engineers? Indeed, why bother making real friends when virtual varieties beckon?
Kids believe in magic. It’s how they test reality. And of course in the real world, magic eventually breaks down. It cannot be sustained (though anyone reading the manifestos of certain political parties might wonder about that). But magic this “real” has a worryingly long shelf life.
What, though, should be done? It’s possible this experiment will go the way of Chatty Cathy, the pull-string doll with 11 stock phrases.
But I wouldn’t count on it. Barbie is a far more robust imitation of the real thing. And physical animation is likely the next frontier — dolls that walk, play games, pet the dog.
How we keep such Trojan follies out of our homes, I have no idea. A drawbridge won’t do it. They’ll ooze in by stealth.
