Flags, nudity and dotted lines: Why Hollywood films are so eager to appease China
Barbie is no dumb doll. She may stand just 29 centimetres tall, but over the course of six decades she’s been everything from a pastry chef, firefighter and zoologist to an architect, news anchor, showgirl and surgeon.
She’s even been a US president, so navigating delicate geopolitics should come pretty easy, right?
Barbie’s world map incensed Vietnam’s censors so much that they banned the $150 million blockbuster.Credit: Warner Bros
Well, not if we are to believe the executives from Warner Bros who have attempted – somewhat in vain – to explain how their little doll in the upcoming blockbuster film managed to cause an international diplomatic row between Vietnam and China.
Before the actors’ strike took over the news cycle, a seemingly harmless and rather unruly world map in the film had been at the centre of a media storm.
“The map in Barbie Land is a whimsical, childlike crayon drawing,” the studio said in a statement. “The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the real world. It was not intended to make any type of statement.”
Barbie was originally slated to open in Vietnam on July 21, the same date as in the United States, according to state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper. Barbie opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday.
Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken.
However, the film has now been banned in Vietnam after authorities objected to a scene showing a map that includes the so-called “nine-dash line”, a U-shaped line used on Chinese maps to illustrate China’s claims over vast areas of the South China Sea, including swathes of what Vietnam considers its continental shelf, where it has awarded oil concessions.
It is an interesting predicament for Barbie and its owner Mattel, which has bankrolled the new film starring, and produced, by Margot Robbie. But Warner Bros, like the rest of Hollywood, should be all too familiar with the minefield that awaits films with global aspirations, especially when it comes to anything to do with China.
While Barbie is a cultural icon throughout much of the Western world, in China the doll has not enjoyed the same status. A decade ago, Mattel was forced to close its first flagship Barbie store – the House of Barbie – in Shanghai just two years after it opened. The US$30 million ($44 million) House of Barbie turned out to be a dud in China.
Conspiracy theorists might wonder if Warner Bros was cynically trying to not-so-subtly win over the Chinese. With 1.412 billion potential cinemagoers, versus 97.4 million in Vietnam, China is truly the goliath in that equation.
And Hollywood has a history of appeasing the Chinese authorities to get movies released.
Rami Malek won an Oscar, among other awards, for his turn as rock icon Freddie Mercury. Credit:
Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was only allowed in China after it eliminated any suggestion or scenes that depicted the out and proud Freddie Mercury as gay.
When James Cameron’s Titanic was released in China, the famous scene showing Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jack, drawing Kate Winslet’s character, Rose, as she lay naked in full view of the audience, was edited so her body could not be seen.
Modern classic: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet get ready for their moment in Titanic.
In the James Bond movie Casino Royale, instead of Judi Dench’s character, M, saying, “Christ, I miss the Cold War,” in the Chinese version she says: “God, I miss the old times”. The actor later admitted it was to get the film released in China.
And it was the trailer to Top Gun: Maverick in 2019 – three years before the film’s eventual release – which caused an international diplomatic row when audiences noticed Tom Cruise’s character, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s jacket was missing Japanese and Taiwanese flags, which had appeared in the first movie decades before. Following an outcry, both flags were back on the jacket when the movie was eventually released in 2022.
Even Nicole Kidman, one of the most inoffensive actors in the world, who has publicly admitted she deliberately avoids commenting on politics, has ended up in the firing line over China.
Nicole Kidman during the filming of a scene for the Amazon Prime series Expats in Hong Kong.Credit: Reuters
In 2021 exiled Hong Kong MPs urged Kidman to talk to them about the consequences of filming the limited Amazon Prime TV series Expats in the city, warning she appeared to be collaborating with Beijing at the same time as thousands of Hongkongers feared returning to their homes.
She had already come under fire from artists and residents after being granted a COVID quarantine exemption by the Hong Kong government to begin filming the series about the daily lives of three privileged foreign women living in the former British colony.
Kidman and Amazon went into shutdown mode, declining to respond to multiple requests for comment about how the series would navigate the new political challenges of Hong Kong, where activists, journalists and politicians had been imprisoned for dissent.
Filming on the series was completed eight months ago, but as yet there has been no indication from Amazon on when it will be screened, and any promotion ahead of that time threatens to reignite a potentially bruising public relations problem for Kidman.
Indeed, it’s a headache Barbie now understands all too well.
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