Japan’s opening of the hit film Barbie was dealt additional setbacks as an online petition gained steam calling on Hollywood studios to disavow a grassroots marketing movement that made light of nuclear holocaust.
As of yesterday, the Change.org petition had collected more than 16,000 signatures over two days, demanding that Warner Bros and Universal Pictures, the studio behind the Oppenheimer biopic, call a halt to the “Barbenheimer” hashtag that has helped make the films global blockbusters.
Barbie, which stars Margot Robbie in the title role, has grossed more than US$800 million worldwide, while the film about nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer that opened around the same time last month has taken in more than US$400 million.
Photo: Reuters
Warner Bros initially latched on to fan-produced memes that depicted Robbie’s Barbie with actor Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer alongside images of nuclear blasts.
However, fans were not amused in Japan, which in coming days is to mark the memorials of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 78 years ago.
“If one were to create an illustration or derivative art of Barbenheimer, it should not be of Barbie delighting in a mushroom cloud,” Koji Maruyama on the Change.org Web site said. “Barbie should never be a character who rejoices in misfortune or tragedy.”
A #NoBarbenheimer hashtag trended online, reposted more than 100,000 times by one measure, prompting Warner’s Japan division to issue a rare public criticism of its parent company, which then followed with an apology this week.
Mitsuki Takahata, who voices Barbie in the dubbed Japanese version, posted on Instagram on Wednesday that she was dismayed upon learning of the memes and considered dropping out of a promotional event in Tokyo hyping its opening on Friday next week.
“This incident is really, really disappointing,” she posted.
The same day, media-savvy US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel posted a picture of his meeting in Tokyo with director Greta Gerwig, but the response online was chilly.
“Your post at this time will get on the nerves of many Japanese, and will further solidify their resolve to never go to see that movie,” a poster known as tsuredzure replied on the social messaging platform X.
A spokesperson for the embassy said Emanuel took his wife, daughter and her friends to see Barbie and that he embraces the film’s message about women’s empowerment.
No Japan release date has been announced for Oppenheimer, which chronicles the creation of the atomic bomb.
The film has been criticized for largely ignoring the weapon’s destruction in Japan toward the end of World War II, obliterating two major cities and accounting for more than 200,000 deaths.
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