Hot pink is having a moment as the world prepares for the release of the highly anticipated Barbie movie this month.
The world — except Vietnam. Officials in the Southeast Asian nation have banned commercial screenings of the nostalgia-evoking movie, starring Margot Robbie, which was slated to hit cinemas there on July 21.
Hanoi’s reason: geopolitics.
The head of Vietnam’s Department of Cinema told The Washington Post that the cancellation of “Barbie” screenings was due to the film featuring a map that appears to depict China’s disputed claims over a large swath of the South China Sea.
For decades, the resource-rich waterway — which spans some 1.4 million square miles, and is traversed by roughly one-third of international shipping — has been contested between various Southeast Asian nations, Taiwan and China, all of which have overlapping claims to a collection of uninhabited rocks, reefs and islands. Despite international arbitration on some of these assertions, the South China Sea has been marked by militarization and no clear resolution.
And now “Barbie” is enmeshed in the region’s long-standing political disputes.
