The most famous blonde doll of the last 60 years triumphed in its premiere in much of the world yesterday and will continue to sweep between today and tomorrow when it hits the screens of almost the rest of the planet.
Almost all?
Indeed, Barbie will not be released in all countries. The almost one hundred million inhabitants of Vietnam will not see the long-awaited Greta Gerwig film in which Margot Robbie – with Ryan Gosling in the role of Ken – gives life to what used to be the most buffoonish and arrogant character in the girls’ toy closet and who is now a funny and empowered young woman, aware of her nature.
The problem has to do with one of the most delicate geopolitical disputes of our time, although here it manifests itself in the most absurd and surprising way possible. It is one of the dotted lines marked on the naïve map where the oxygenated rubber girl projects her dreams. The Government of Vietnam assures that, far from being innocent, what the lines “subtly” represent is the “nine-dash line” that Beijing, contrary to that established in 2016 by the Hague Tribunal, continues to use to demarcate its alleged domains over the South China Sea, including the Paracel and Spratly Islands; domains of which five other countries – the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei, in addition to Vietnam – claim some territory as their headquarters.
The Vietnamese Government, despite the socialist brotherhood that unites it with its giant neighbor to the north, not only flatly rejects the Chinese demarcation, but does not consent to even the simplest suggestion that the issue can be discussed. And that’s why its managers, without thinking much about it, and without being impressed by the dazzling spotlights of Hollywood or the striking colors of the Barbie, have decided to ban the screening of the film within their borders.
But in Manila, finally, they were sensitive to the argument of the distributor and co-producer of the film, Warner, in the sense that the doodles in question “only represent the fictitious journey of Barbie from Barbie Land to the real world”, and do not at all hide the purpose of “making any kind of statement”. To reach this conclusion, the Manila Film and Television Rating and Review Board reviewed the film’s scenes not once, but twice. And he determined that, indeed, “there is no basis” to ban it because, given the context in which the discord map is shown, it is clear that the “nine-dash line” is not represented. However, the committee asked Warner for pixelation to blur the line in the copies that will be shown in the archipelago.
For the National Film Evaluation Council of Vietnam, on the other hand, neither the elimination of the strokes nor even the total deletion of the scenes in which it appears would be sufficient. “The fact that the screening of the film is allowed already means that it is accepted”, said the president of the Council, Tran Thanh Hiep. And he added: “Vietnam’s position is clear. It does not accept ambiguous films on issues related to territorial sovereignty”.
It is not the first time that Hanoi, among other capitals involved in the China Sea dispute, vetoes a Hollywood film to present or assume in some way the demarcation of the nine scripts. In 2019, Vietnam withdrew the animated children’s film Abominable, from the Dreamworks studios, and last year gave the red light to Uncharted, the adventure starring Tom Holland under the direction of Ruben Fleischer. In addition, a few days ago the representatives of the female quartet group Blackpink had to apologize for the use of the map with the famous lines in the promotion of their next two concerts in Hanoi.
Vietnam’s veto of Barbie coincided with recent protests by ultra-republican senator Ted Cruz, also over the hyphen line. Cruz accused those responsible for the film nothing less than pandering to Beijing and feeding Western girls with “communist propaganda”. And this following, according to him, “a continuous pattern of Hollywood productions bowing to the Chinese”. In other words: Barbie is no longer pink and formidable. It has become red and creeping, according to Cruz. Pro-Chinese and imperialist, according to Hanoi. A mess.
