by Hannaan Fuad
VIETNAM, 10 July 2023: The much-anticipated movie Barbie has been banned by the Vietnamese government due to scenes featuring a map showing the “nine-dash line”.
The “nine-dash line” is an area in the South China Sea claimed by China as its territory. However, the rights over the area are in dispute as it falls within areas claimed by other countries, including Vietnam.
In 2016, an international tribunal at the Hague declared that the nine-dash line was invalid. Philippines’s former president Benigno Aquino III also commented that China’s nine-dash line violates the United Nations Convention of the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS) laws.
China, however, has refused to acknowledge this, leading to ongoing tensions with neighboring countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
As the South China Sea is one of the busiest hubs for trading and fishing, China’s defiance threatens Vietnam’s commercial fishing industry, other than acts as a direct threat to Vietnam’s sovereignty.
Vi Kien Thanh, the director general of the Vietnam Cinema Department, has been reported to say that the National Film Evaluation Council decided to ban the screening of Barbie in Vietnam.
As a result, posters and other promotional materials advertising the film were removed from movie distributors’ websites. The movie, starring Margot Robbie as the titular character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, was initially scheduled to be released on July 21.
Such film banning due to the nine-dash line map is not the first in Vietnam. Last year, the movie Uncharted also faced the same circumstance for the same reason, as did the animated film Abominable in 2019.
Following Vietnam’s decision, the Philippines is also considering joining Vietnam in banning Barbie’s release in their country.***
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