Nearly 14 years after Universal Pictures announced that it would bring a live-action Barbie to the big screen, the eponymous film starring the world's bestselling doll is going head-to-head with Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, which debuts the same weekend.
Both films had a budget of $100 million, and both are battling to make close to as much in their opening weekend. Yet, only one has rattled geopolitical tensions across the Pacific Rim: not Nolan's thriller about the theoretical physicist who invented the atomic bomb, but Greta Gerwig's fantasy about a fictional doll.
The film apparently features a cartoon map of the globe, with a single shapeless blob labeled "Asia." But said blob also shows the U-shaped "nine-dash line," indicating China's baseless claims to vast swaths of the South China Sea.
Barbie's decision to bow down to Beijing has not come without consequences. The nine-dash line runs afoul of widely accepted international law as well as specific maritime claims of Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. As a result of the shot, Vietnam has banned early Barbie screenings, and after outcry in the Philippines, the nation's Movie and Television Review and Classification Board is deliberating whether to follow suit.
It's not surprising that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't care.
"China’s position on the South China Sea issue is clear and consistent," said a CCP official in response to Vietnam's ban. "We believe that the countries concerned should not link the South China Sea issue with normal cultural and people-to-people exchanges."
What is surprising is that Hollywood continues to kowtow to Chinese disinformation over "the South China Sea issue" even at the expense of our relationships with crucial allies, including the Philippines, which is our oldest ally in the Indo-Pacific. But in the minds of our most famous filmmakers, some audiences — even those in a genocidal state that constantly pushes new bounds of territorial aggression — are more valuable than those of our democratic allies.
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But for once, the U.S. government isn't having it. While we cannot and will not censor even the stupidest of Chinese propaganda, the Defense Department has announced that it will no longer enable such cravenness. The Pentagon, which has historically offered production assistance including shooting location and advisory, "will not provide production assistance when there is demonstrable evidence that the production has complied or is likely to comply with a demand from the Government of the People’s Republic of China … to censor the content of the project in a material manner to advance the national interest of the People’s Republic of China."
Actual Barbie dolls are manufactured by Mattel, which has maintained operations in China since the start of the century, perhaps an explanation for the film's decision to include the nine-dash line. But in the future, other films may not be so sanguine in appeasing the CCP.