The upcoming movie “Barbie,” based on the popular children’s doll franchise, has been prohibited in Vietnam due to its portrayal of an international maritime dispute involving China. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has laid claim to a significant portion of the South China Sea, using a map featuring nine dashes. Vietnam, along with other neighboring nations, has overlapping claims to the region. Consequently, Vietnam’s cinema department has instructed theater chains to cancel screenings of “Barbie” as it contains a scene featuring the disputed “nine-dash line” map. The film, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, was scheduled for release in Vietnam on July 21, the same day as its release in the United States.
Vietnam’s Department of Cinema, led by Vi Kien Thanh, confirmed that the Central Council of Feature Film Evaluation and Classification denied a license for “Barbie” to be shown in Vietnamese theaters. As a result, cinema chains such as Galaxy and CGV have canceled screenings of the film nationwide. It remains unclear how the “nine-dash line” depiction is portrayed in the movie. The article reached out to Warner Bros. Pictures, the film’s distributor, for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
This is not the first time a Hollywood production has faced censorship in Vietnam for featuring the “nine-dash line” on maps of the South China Sea. In the past, the Vietnamese government banned the DreamWorks animated film “Abominable” in 2019 and the Sony video game adaptation “Uncharted” in 2020 for the same reason. Additionally, Vietnamese authorities requested Netflix to remove episodes of the spy drama series “Pine Gap” in 2021, which highlighted the disputed territory.
It is worth noting that the PRC’s “nine-dash line” map has been rejected by numerous countries and international organizations. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to which the PRC is a signatory, recognizes that coastal states can claim territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles from their base. In 2016, an arbitration tribunal established under UNCLOS ruled against the PRC’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. However, the Chinese Communist Party disregarded the ruling, declaring it “null and void” and refusing to accept or recognize it.
Source: NTD News