Is Barbie a Chinese pawn? That’s what GOP lawmakers are asking in response to a trailer for the new Mattel and Warner Bros. film that has already prompted an outright ban in Vietnam. In a one-second long clip from the trailer, Barbie stands in front of a cartoonish world map poster, where an S-shaped dotted line can be spotted off the coast of Asia.
Vietnam banned commercial screenings of the film on July 3, according to state-run outlet Tuoi Tre, saying that the representation of the nine-dash line reinforces China’s encroachment on Vietnamese sovereignty. Vietnam has banned other American films for the same reason, including Tom Holland’s Uncharted in 2022 and the DreamWorks animated film Abominable in 2019.
Now Republicans are up in arms over what they consider a geopolitical Easter egg, as the nine-dash line represents China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, an area with several competing claims from states including Vietnam, Taiwan, and Malaysia.
“While it may just be a Barbie map in a Barbie world, the fact that a cartoonish, crayon-scribbled map seems to go out of its way to depict the PRC’s unlawful territorial claims illustrates the pressure that Hollywood is under to please CCP [Chinese Communist Party] censors,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) told Politico. “I hope Warner Bros. clarifies that the map was not intended to endorse any territorial claims and was, in fact, the work of a formerly plastic anthropomorphic doll.”
The controversy comes just as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is visiting China for the first time, where she hopes to ease tensions with Beijing. At a Friday event at the American Chamber of Commerce in China, Yellen expressed concern over business issues such as barriers to Chinese market access for foreign firms. Yellen has criticized China’s punitive measures against American businesses, but amid rising tensions has also emphasized that the U.S. cannot afford to decouple from the world’s second biggest economy.
The Warner Bros. Film Group stated on Thursday that the map was not intended to send a political message.
From Barbie land to the real world of disputed borders
Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig, is a live-action take on the iconic Mattel doll. The movie traces Barbie’s journey from Barbie Land—where everything is always perfect and everyone is happy—to the real world full of peril and conflict. Played by Margot Robbie, Barbie embarks on an epic odyssey from her heart-shaped beach side paradise to the scary new world of California.
“The map in Barbie Land is a childlike crayon drawing,” Warner Bros. told Variety. “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.”
The trailer shows Barbie and Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, driving in a convertible through the desert, flying in a rocket through space, snowmobiling through the mountains, and yachting through (supposedly) the South China Sea.
The nine-dash line has no legal basis as it was rejected by an international tribunal in 2016. In the crayon map, Barbie’s line has eight dashes, not nine, and is not in the same shape as the actual nine-dash line. However, the similarity to the nine-dash line has drawn the ire of several GOP representatives, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
“Senator Cruz has been fighting for years to prevent American companies, especially Hollywood studios, from altering and censoring their content to appease the Chinese Communist Party,” his spokesperson told the Daily Mail on Tuesday.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) also tweeted about the line, accusing “leftist Hollywood” of pandering to the CCP.
To be sure, Republican politicians have a long history of bashing “Hollyweird,” as Los Angeles is one of the traditional strongholds of Democratic fundraising, home to mega-donors including David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been a rising Democratic star for many years, although life can prove stranger than fiction—his ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle later got engaged to Donald Trump Jr. in 2021. Then again, Los Angeles used to be the home base of none other than actor-turned-Republican icon, Ronald Reagan.
At any rate, this is the “real world” that Barbie wanted to experience. She left her land of synchronized group choreography and bespoke songs and sailed straight into rising U.S.-China tensions. She’s a Barbie girl in a bipartisan world.
Barbie will land in theaters July 21.
