You would think a movie about the children’s toy Barbie would be an innocuous affair, but, in 2023 there is crazy in the air. While the good-will and memes the Greta Gerwig film has been generating haven’t made it to the news, a background map in one scene has and, because of controversy surrounding this unexpectedly politically charged kids’ drawing, it may be blurred to beat a Philippines ban.
For those who are unfamiliar, in the lead-up to the movie’s release next month, a cartoonish map of the world featured in scenes set before Barbie goes to be among humans appears to show the “nine-dash line” China puts out on maps to assert its claim over a huge swathe of territory in the South China Sea that’s also claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines. The land grab is not recognized by most countries, so this has led to an outright ban in Vietnam while Warner Bros. has stated that this was not intended to make any kind of statement and was just a basic child’s drawing to chart Barbie’s character journey.
Now, Variety is reporting the Philippines’ Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) has officially looked into the matter and is cool with its citizens becoming Barbie boys and girls in a Barbie world. The MTRCB has released a statement saying “the context by which the cartoonish map of the character ‘Weird Barbie’ is portrayed in the film means the map portrays the route of the make-believe journey of Barbie” and is an integral part of the story. Variety’s article also adds that the board believes there is no basis to ban the film outright and censors are asking Warner Bros. to blur it out itself.
Whether this will actually happen or not remains to be seen. Often, studios refuse to make changes to completed content to appease those who want to block their citizens from seeing depictions of the LGBTQ+ community, so, whether a line on a child’s drawing will get similar studio backbone is a question. Barbie will release in the Philippines July 19 and will finally be seen by U.S. audiences days later on July 21.