Barbie (2023)

“Is Barbie Communist?” How One Scene Dragged the Barbie Movie Into Controversy


“I guess Barbie is made in China …” Ted Cruz tweeted Monday.

The next day, a spokesperson for the Texas senator told the Daily Mail, “China wants to control what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think, and they leverage their massive film markets to coerce American companies into pushing [Chinese Communist Party] propaganda—just like the way the Barbie film seems to have done with the map.”
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China has used the nine-dash line to mark its controversial territorial claims in the South China Sea. Over the years, Beijing has tried to claim sovereignty over 90 percent of the region. Even though The Hague ruled in 2016 that China has no legal basis for its claims, the country has pressed on, building military installations on otherwise uninhabited islands in the sea.

Vietnam has already banned the Barbie movie for its inclusion of the nine-dash line. Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all say the marker violates their sovereignty.

newrepublic.com/post/174110/republicans-say-barbie-movie-communist

Warner Bros Japan LLC said in a statement that the messages posted by the U.S. headquarters' Barbie Movie account "lack consideration" and are "very regrettable," apparently referring to its positive replies to mashups of the bubbly satire and the film about Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist who led the project of making atomic bombs.