Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been banned in multiple countries following its release.
Starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the fantasy comedy has become the second highest-grossing film of 2023 worldwide behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie, passing the $1billion mark earlier this month at the box office.
The film’s success also crossed another milestone, becoming the highest-grossing live-action movie solely directed by a woman.
Where has Barbie been banned?
Ahead of its release in July, Barbie was banned in Vietnam due to a scene featuring a map depicting China’s contested territorial claims in the South China Sea.
As reported by Reuters, the scene shows “an offending image” of the “nine-dash line”, which is used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims over large areas of the South China Sea, which is contested by Vietnam.
Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in ‘Barbie’. CREDIT: Warner Bros.
A number of films have recently been banned in the country for the same reason, including Sony’s Uncharted and Dreamworks’ animated film Abominable.
Kuwait subsequently banned Barbie after the film promoted “ideas and beliefs that are alien to the Kuwaiti society and public order”, according to Lafy Al-Subei’e, an under secretary of the Ministry for Press and Publication in the country (via the New York Times).
Around the same time (August 9), Lebanon’s culture minister, Mohammad Mortada, made moves to ban Barbie, saying that the film was found to “promote homosexuality and sexual transformation”. In Mortada’s statement, he also said the film “contradicts values of faith and morality” by reducing the importance of the family unit (via Reuters).
Algeria banned Barbie three weeks after it was released in the country, on grounds that it “promotes homosexuality and other Western deviances,” according to an official source and the local 24H Algerie news site (via Reuters).
Warner Bros. has not yet responded to the bans.
In a four-star review, NME wrote: “What follows is a nuanced, rose-tinted comedy adventure, set to a stonking pop soundtrack featuring Lizzo and Billie Eilish, that somehow lives up to the immense hype. To borrow a pun from Ken’s coolest jacket (out of a long lineup), Barbie is more than ‘kenough’.”
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