I wanted to write about this rather pointless exhibition in Hollywood titled Barbi to Anna Karenina, arguing that Barbie and Anna Karenina could only ever have met in Hollywood

I wanted to write about this rather pointless exhibition in Hollywood titled Barbi to Anna Karenina, arguing that Barbie and Anna Karenina could only ever have met in Hollywood. But then I thought: it is only at first glance that Barbie and Anna Karenina have nothing in common.

Anna Karenina appears in Russian literature at the moment when the Russian Empire was entering a different historical epoch: the abolition of serfdom, industrial reconstruction, the emergence of new social roles, the old morality losing its hold while everyone still pretends to take it seriously. And here is Anna, who finds herself a pariah in a thoroughly hypocritical society. No, she is not a sinner at all; she simply follows the dictates of her heart openly, defying double standards. A sort of system error: a woman who does not merely break her marriage vows but tears up the unwritten social contract.

The heroine chooses a life of love over a life by the rules, and therefore she must die. The train is not existential retribution but the logic of the age. An age of change first promises freedom, and then breaks those who believed its promises.

And Barbie? She too is guided by her desires, but her desires carry no risks whatever. She is an Anna who has been permitted to want a career, an identity and love. On one condition: that she desire not with her whole heart, and only what demands no sacrifices and does not bring the foundations crashing down. Barbie loses nothing, because in the world of late capitalism losses flatter no one. Passion is no longer forbidden; it is stylishly packaged. Protest is made part of the image, the striving for freedom an item of fashion, and happiness a wholesome habit. Barbie does not throw herself under a train; she surrenders to an endless stream of disposable narratives, and it remains to be seen which of the two is the greater tragedy.

And so, if one is sufficiently ingenious, Barbie and Anna may look like two versions of one and the same female dream, but in two different societies.