Global Courant
LOS ANGELES — Warner Bros. studio said Thursday that a map in the upcoming Barbie movie of the South China Sea is a “childish” drawing with no intended meaning, days after Vietnam said it would ban the film over the map.
Vietnam opposed a scene on the map showing China’s unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea, state media reported Monday.
It decided to ban domestic distribution of the highly anticipated film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
Warner Bros believed the card was harmless.
“The map in Barbie Land is a whimsical, childlike chalk drawing,” the studio said in a statement. “The doodles depict Barbie’s fictional journey from Barbie Land to the real world. It was not intended to make a statement.”
According to the state-run newspaper Tuoi Tre, Barbie was originally scheduled to open in Vietnam on July 21, the same date as in the United States.
The Vietnamese authorities objected to a scene showing a map with the so-called nine-dash line, the newspaper said.
The U-shaped line is used on Chinese maps to illustrate China’s claims to vast areas of the South China Sea, including parts of what Vietnam considers its continental shelf, where it has granted oil concessions.
“We are not licensing the release of the American film Barbie in Vietnam because it contains the offensive image of the nine-dash line,” the newspaper reported, citing Mr. Vi Kien Thanh, head of the Department of Cinema, a government agency in Vietnam. . charged with licensing and censoring foreign films.
Barbie is the latest film banned in Vietnam for depicting the Chinese nine-dash line, which was overturned in a 2016 international arbitration ruling by a court in The Hague. China refuses to recognize the ruling.
This week, Vietnam also opened an investigation into the website of K-pop group Blackpink’s tour organizer ahead of the group’s concert in Hanoi over criticism from fans that it showed a map of the South China Sea with disputed boundaries. . REUTERS
