The entire globe has gladly admitted to being a Barbie girl in anticipation of the new Barbie film, however fans in Vietnam may be disappointed.
While the ensemble continues their pink-tinted tour around the world, lately landing in Korea, Vietnam has decided that the Greta Gerwig film will not be shown in theatres.
Due to a dispute about a map sequence, authorities will not allow the highly anticipated film to be broadcast commercially on July 21 as planned.
Barbie, starring Margot Robbie, is a fish-out-of-water drama about the beloved Mattel doll entering the real world for the first time, with Ken accompanying her.
Pink has become the colour of summer, and fans are anxiously anticipating the premiere of the film, which has been compared to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
Fans in Vietnam, on the other hand, would miss out on this cinematic occasion since Barbie is claimed to have a sequence with a map that officials claim breaches the country’s sovereignty.
The National Film Evaluation Council decided to prohibit Barbie because it displays a map with a nine-dash line, which represents China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.
China’s neighbours, especially Vietnam, have overlapping areas and dispute the border, as do China’s territorial claims.
A United Nations dispute settlement panel in The Hague unanimously ruled in 2016 that China has no legal claim to any historic rights within the nine-dash line.
The border remains problematic because it is difficult to control, and while the UN verdict was binding, China does not accept it.
‘We do not grant license for the American movie Barbie to release in Vietnam because it contains the offending image of the nine-dash line,’ said the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper, citing Vi Kien Thanh.
Vi Kien Thanh is the general director of the Vietnam Cinema Department, which is part of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.
Barbie is not the first film to be banned in Vietnam for utilising the problematic phrase; Uncharted, starring Tom Holland, ran into the same problem last year.
Animated films aren’t immune, as Dreamworks discovered with 2019’s Abominable, which was banned in Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Pine Gap, a spy drama, was pulled off Netflix in Vietnam for the same reason, as were parts from Put Your Head On My Shoulder and Madam Secretary.
Barbie is released in cinemas July 21.