Warner Bros is rubbing its hands in the $1 billion-plus haul that Barbie has brought in at the international box office, but it's clear that the movie about Mattel's iconic doll, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie, also has its detractors, especially in the Middle East, where its release has been censored in countries such as Lebanon and Kuwait. The controversy over the marketing of the film previously jumped in Japan causing sensitivities due to the memes that arose on social networks due to the Barbenheimer phenomenon - the simultaneous release in cinemas of Barbie and Oppenheimer, by Christopher Nolan - that showed Robbie's Barbie with actor Cillian Murphy's Oppenheimer next to images of nuclear explosions. "If it was necessary to create an illustration or art derived from Barbenheimer, it should not be of Barbie enjoying a nuclear fungus", assured the actor Koji Maruyama on the web page Change.org, which collected more of 16,000 signatures demanding the removal of the hashtag.
From the Japanese nation, Warner Bros has been accused of making fun of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose 78th anniversary has just been commemorated, to promote a film that has nothing to do with those tragic events. The company immediately removed the post and apologized. At the moment, neither film has reached Japanese cinemas.
On the other hand, Barbie has managed to overcome censorship in countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia - the region's main market - and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where it was released yesterday with the recommendation "for people over 15”, and after receiving the go-ahead after weeks of local censors suggesting edits for the film. But it will not be seen in Lebanon or Kuwait, and Egypt is doubtful whether it will release it on August 30 as planned.
The feminist comedy was due to hit theaters in the Middle East on July 19, two days before it hits theaters in the rest of the world. But it was not so and the dates began to move in each country of the area, fueling rumors of a possible veto on Barbie to deal with issues related to the LGTBI movement and to question the traditional family model, values that are discordant with what the Muslim-majority countries of the region promote. Lebanese Culture Minister Mohamed Murtada alleged that he ordered the film banned because he believed it "promotes homosexuality" and encourages "the ugly idea of rejecting the custody of the father, denigrating the role of the mother and ridiculing - him, questioning the need for marriage and forming a family".
And in Kuwait, the country's authorities announced that they have banned the screening of Barbie as a measure of "protection of social traditions and public ethics", because they believe that the ideas spread by this film are "alien" to the society of the small country of golf The controversy continues and will continue, but it seems that this does not affect the successful trajectory of the film in the rest of the planet. Warner Bros can continue to rub their hands.
