Middle East Release Of 'Barbie' Delayed After Censors Demand Cuts Over Supposed LGBTQ+ Themes
August 7, 2023Screenings of Warner Bros.’ "Barbie" are being pushed back across the Middle East, following requests by local censors to edit out purported references to LGBTQ+ themes, American entertainment publication Variety reported on Tuesday.
The film has become an international sensation, including in Israel, where it had the biggest opening weekend box office of the year and the highest-grossing opening weekend globally for a film directed by a woman, according to ‘Haaretz’. It's made more than $351 million (approximately £275 million) in the U.S. and Canada since opening on July 21, and nearly $775 million (approximately £610 million) globally.
Image Credit: Canva
The film, starring Margot Robbie in the titular role and Ryan Gosling as Barbie's beau, Ken, sends Mattel Inc.'s iconic doll on an adventure into the real world.
Queer website Them published a list of “Queer Barbie Easter Eggs” while Out Magazine called the film “an LGBTQ+ Party,” although Robbie did state that dolls Barbie and Ken “don’t have actually have sexual orientations because they don’t have any reproductive organs.”
According to Variety, distributor Vox Cinemas delayed a planned regional rollout from July 19 until August 31 while cuts to the film are being debated. The film may not end up being screened at all in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait or Egypt, the trade daily reported.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have also banned the animated superhero film ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ amid debate online and among regional movie fans about the animated film’s treatment of trans themes.
The film has sparked debate online about whether the character Gwen Stacy is trans, and a scene in a trailer shows a sign in the background that reads “protect trans kids”.
In 2017, Saudi Arabia announced that it would permit public cinemas in the conservative Islamic country for the first time in over 35 years. They had been banned in the early 1980s under pressure from Islamists.
Barbie was also banned from domestic distribution in Vietnam over a scene featuring a map that shows China's unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea, which Vietnam considers its continental shelf.
On Barbie’s heels this weekend was ‘Oppenheimer,’ director Christopher Nolan’s historical tale of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb, which made an estimated $46.2 million (approximately £36 million) Friday through Sunday in what Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian called a “phenomenal second weekend.”
The two films together have been dubbed ‘Barbenheimer,’ a nod to the relative rarity of two blockbusters opening the same weekend.
Tulip Entertainment, which distributes both films in Israel, said in a statement early last week that both films together had been watched by around 200,000 people, two-thirds of whom had seen Barbie, making it a bona fide local hit.
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