Vietnam has banned the upcoming ‘Barbie’ film from theaters because to sequences depicting China’s claims to territory in the South China Sea, according to state media on Monday.
Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy film about the famed doll, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, was scheduled for a widespread release in Vietnam on July 21.
However, its performance schedule has been withdrawn off the websites of the country’s major theater chains as a result of a government decision to ban the picture due to scenes including the so-called nine-dash line, according to state media.
China has long utilized the so-called nine-dash line to demonstrate its sweeping claims over the majority of the resource-rich sea, much to the chagrin of Hanoi, which also claims parts of the waterway.
“The film review board watched the film and made the decision to ban the screening of this movie in Vietnam due to a violation regarding the ‘nine-dash line’,” Vietnam’s Department of Cinema director, Vi Kien Thanh, told the Dan Tri news site.
Tien Phong, another state media site, said that the nine-dash line scenario appeared many times in the film.
Actors Michael Cera, America Ferrera, Ryan Gosling, Margot Robbie, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon and director Greta Gerwig pose for pictures during a photocall for the upcoming Warner Bros. movie “Barbie” in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 25, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
Censors in communist Vietnam must approve all films for gratuitous violence, explicit sex scenes, or politically sensitive themes.
The action-adventure film ‘Uncharted,’ starring Tom Holland, was banned from theaters last year owing to sequences depicting the nine-dash line.
In 2018, Vietnam deleted a scene from the love movie ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ that showed a designer purse with a map of the world displaying the disputed South China Sea islands controlled by Beijing.
A year later, Hanoi yanked the animated DreamWorks picture ‘Abominable’ from theaters due to the same issue, and Netflix was ordered last year to remove episodes of its ‘Pine Gap’ series due to similar sequences.
