The most famous blonde doll of the last 60 years triumphed yesterday at its premiere in much of the world and will continue to be a hit between now and tomorrow when it hits the screens of almost the rest of the planet.
Most?
Indeed, Barbie will not be released in all countries. The almost one hundred million people of Vietnam will not see the long-awaited Greta Gerwig film in which Margot Robbie –along with Ryan Gosling in the role of Ken– gives life to what used to be the most flirtatious and saucy character in the girls' toy closet and now turns out to be 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 labeled on the naive map of dreams that the oxygenated rubber girl projects on it. It assures the Government of Vietnam that, far from all innocence, what such dashes "subtly" represent is the "nine dash line" that Beijing, contrary to what was established in 2016 by the Court of The Hague, continues to use to demarcate its alleged domains over the South China Sea, including the Paracel and Spratly islands; some domains of which five other countries – the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei, in addition to Vietnam – claim some territory as theirs.
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 also does not consent to even the mere suggestion that the issue can be discussed. And for this reason those responsible, neither short nor lazy, much less impressionable before the dazzling spotlights of Hollywood or the garish colors of Barbie, have decided to veto the screening of the film within their borders.
The Philippine Executive was about to do the same. 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 Barbie's fictional journey from Barbie Land to the real world", and in no way hide the purpose of "making any kind of statement". In reaching that conclusion, the Manila Film and Television Review and Classification Board reviewed the film's scenes not once, but twice. And it determined that, indeed, "there is no basis" to prohibit it because, taking into account the context in which the discord map is shown, it is clear that the "nine dash line" is not represented on it. The committee asked Warner, however, for a pixelation that blurs the line in the copies to be shown in the archipelago.
For the Vietnam National Film Evaluation Council, on the other hand, neither the removal of the strokes nor even the complete suppression of the scenes where he appears would be enough. "The fact of allowing the screening of the film 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, have vetoed a Hollywood film for presenting or assuming in any way the demarcation of the nine dashes. In 2019, Vietnam withdrew from its theaters the children's animated film Abominable, from Dreamworks studios, and last year it put the red light on Uncharted, the adventure starring Tom Holland under the direction of Ruben Fleischer. In addition, a few days ago the representatives of the female quartet of the Blackpink group 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 on Barbie coincided with recent protests by Republican Senator and ultra Ted Cruz, also over the dashed line. Cruz accused those responsible for the film of nothing less than pandering to Beijing and feeding Western girls “communist propaganda”. And this following, according to him, "a continuous pattern of Hollywood productions that bow down to the Chinese." That is to say: Barbie is no longer pink and stupendous. She has turned red and matted, according to Cruz. In pro Chinese and imperialist, according to Hanoi. A mess.
