Barbie movie banned over map supporting China claims

One of the summer’s biggest blockbusters is set to be banned in Vietnam over a scene involving a map over the South China Sea.

According to local media, the Barbie film uses a map showing the U-shaped “nine-dash line,” a representation of China’s controversial territorial claims in the South China Sea, reports The Daily Express US.

The Warner Bros movie, directed by Greta Gerwig, will hit cinema screens on July 21.

An international tribunal held at The Hague in 2016 ruled against Chinese claims in the South China Sea, but Beijing has since refused to recognise the judgement.

Vietnam does not tolerate China’s claim to the area, calling maps including the nine-dash line “offending”.

The Vietnamese government has a track record of pulling imagery and art it disagrees with.

In 2019, for showing the nine-dash line, the government pulled DreamWorks’s animated film Abominable, and last year it banned Sony’s action movie Uncharted for the same reason.

Netflix also removed the Australian spy drama Pine Gap in 2021.

According to state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper, Vi Kien Thanh, the head of the Department of Cinema, a government body in charge of licensing and censoring foreign films, said: “We do not grant a license for the American movie Barbie to release in Vietnam because it contains the offending image of the nine-dash line.”

In the full length “Barbie” trailer, released in May, there are several maps that will appear in the film.

The first is one of fictional Barbie Land – but the map the Vietnam government has taken issue with depicts the real world.

The map appears as Barbie, played by Hollywood megastar Margot Robbie, is enduring a crisis and asks: “Do you guys ever think about dying?”

While the full plot of the film isn’t known, Barbie must travel to the ‘real world’ – shown in the trailer as a map that looks as if it’s been drawn in crayon by a child.

Accompanying the wacky shapes are names for each continent, and alongside the coast of drawn China, a trail of dashes branch out into the ocean.

However, it is worth pointing out there has been no confirmation whether or not this refers to the nine-dash line.

Later in the trailer, Barbie can be seen driving her baby pink convertible over the border of Barbie Land and into the real world.