In a plot twist nobody noticed coming, Margot Robbie & Ryan Gosling’s blockbuster film Barbie received banned in Vietnam simply earlier than its 2023 launch. The wrongdoer? The controversial nine-dash line. As per Collider, this U-shaped line, utilized by China to say nearly 90% of the South China Sea, is a sizzling subject, primarily since nations like Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia all dispute it.
When Barbie featured the road, Vietnam didn’t have it. The Ministry of Tradition, Sports activities and Tourism slammed Greta Gerwig’s movie, calling it out for displaying the “illicit” line. It wasn’t the primary time both—movies like Abominable (2019) and Uncharted (2022) had confronted an identical destiny over the identical problem.
However right here’s the place it will get fascinating: Barbie wasn’t simply banned in Vietnam. The Philippines was on the fence concerning the movie, too. Senator Francis Tolentino even hinted at a possible ban, arguing that the depiction of the nine-dash line may “denigrate Philippine sovereignty.” Nevertheless, after some severe back-and-forth, the Philippines gave the film a go.
Why? After a second spherical of opinions, they concluded that the scene that includes the contentious map wasn’t a political assertion in any respect—it was a part of Bizarre Barbie’s quirky, fictional journey. Because the Philippines’ Film and Tv Overview and Classification Board put it, the map was “cartoonish” and didn’t “depict the ‘nine-dash line.’” As an alternative, it was simply Barbie’s route from Barbie Land to the “actual world.”
Vietnam wasn’t satisfied. Regardless of this, the Philippines moved ahead with the film’s launch, emphasizing that they wouldn’t tolerate any future depictions of the nine-dash line. In the meantime, in Vietnam, Barbie remained banned. The nation wasn’t able to forgive the map’s look, which they noticed as an affront to their sovereignty.
In the end, Barbie’s launch turned an enchanting intersection of leisure and geopolitics. The movie’s map didn’t simply present a playful journey; it inadvertently symbolized extra important territorial conflicts within the South China Sea. A film meant to have fun pink desires, and self-discovery discovered itself on the coronary heart of a diplomatic storm, all due to a fictional map.
This ban was simply one other chapter within the ongoing wrestle for management over the South China Sea, a reminder that even a enjoyable, light-hearted movie like Barbie can fire up political waves. So, whereas Barbie might have lastly made it to the Philippines, for Vietnam, the pink dream remained out of attain.
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