On the afternoon of the 31st of last month, women in their 10s and 20s dressed in pink flocked to the “Baeri Palace Movie Theater” in Chaoyang-gu, Beijing, China, through a strong typhoon. These are the “Bobby Support Unit” to watch the movie “Bobby” with the message of the passport extension. A 33-year-old visitor, Gwan, said, “We are watching the Nth (several times) because we are impressed by the lines in the movie that ‘we (women) are always required to be perfect,’ adding, “Watching Barbie is a way for oppressed Chinese women to unite.” In Shanghai, Nanjing, and Sichuan, 50 to 60 women rented theaters to watch Barbie as a group.While Barbie is making a splash in China, the movie is struggling with the cold eyes of the public in Japan. The crew’s expression of intimacy with the movie “Oppenheimer,” which was released on the same day in the U.S., became a source of trouble. Oppenheimer is the first film in human history and the last (so far) atomic bomb dropped on Japan. In the U.S., movie fans who welcome the simultaneous release of the two masterpieces have coined the new term “Babenheimer (Bobby + Oppenheimer), and a witty meme (composite image) is gaining huge popularity on social media.A photo taken by a Chinese woman in front of a composite poster wearing pink clothes symbolizing the movie “Bobby.” Among Chinese women, “Bobby” is considered a symbol of gender equality and women’s liberation, and is gaining huge popularity.Although the Chinese and U.S. governments are at odds, the Hollywood movie Barbie is gaining huge popularity in China. It has been on the box office track in earnest with enthusiastic support for “Women’s Movies.” On the first day of its release in China on the 21st of last month, the theater’s market share was only 2.4%, but it exceeded 10% in a week. Sales also exceeded the expected 100 million yuan, recording 194 million yuan (about $30 million) per day. It is already far ahead of the record of the Marvel movie “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (106 million yuan) that landed in China in January.
As Barbie is gaining popularity, “professional Barbie” dolls such as doctor Barbie and firefighter Barbie are selling like hot cakes on the Chinese used trading site “Shenyu.” More than 2,000 requests for the purchase of Barbie, an astronaut, gathered in a single day. In Shanghai, women in their 20s and 30s lined up at toy stores to buy Barbie dolls released to commemorate the release of the film, saying, “I never had a genuine product when I was young.” Haori Rai, a large Chinese franchise bakery, sells Barbie cakes, while bars around China sell Barbie Pink cocktails on the menu.As for the reason why the popularity of the movie Barbie has soared, U.S. author Hong Fincher told the Financial Times, “Chinese women have finally realized that society is unequal and misogynistic.” Chinese society is known as a society where men and women are relatively equal, but Chinese women say, “They are disadvantaged because they are women at work, and they should take on more housework and childcare at home.” None of the 24 members of the Politburo, the leadership of the Communist Party of China, are women. A Chinese weekly reporter said, “In recent years, Japanese feminism researcher Jizuko Ueno and Korean novel ‘Kim Ji-young Born in 1982’ have opened the eyes of Chinese women.”A composite photo of Bobby sitting on the shoulder of the main character of the movie Oppenheimer, which deals with the developer of the atomic bomb, and flames spreading in the background. Japan’s public relations company tried to promote “Bobby” by leaning on the trend of simultaneous release of “Babenheimer (Babenheimer + Oppenheimer), but it faced a backlash saying, “It reminds me of the atomic bombing against Japan.”
In Japan, another East Asian country, Barbie is facing a strong backlash.
“Oppenheimer,” a masterpiece directed by Christopher Nolan that was released on the same day in the U.S., became a source of trouble. On the 21st of last month, the day of its release in the U.S., controversy grew as a photo posted on Twitter by Barbie’s official promotional account spread on Japanese social media. The photo that delivered one of the popular “Babenheimer” memes in the U.S. showed Bobby and Oppenheimer’s two main characters (Margot Robbie and Killian Murphy) smiling broadly in front of the “mushroom cloud” and fireworks reminiscent of the explosion scene. Bobby’s side posted a comment saying, “It will be an unforgettable summer,” as if excited by spreading the photo on Twitter.The movie Oppenheimer is a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, a U.S. physicist who participated in the development of the atomic bomb at the time, and it is difficult to welcome the release of the movie for Japanese, who suffered huge victims in the 1945 atomic bombing. The film industry is cautious, and criticism intensified when Bobby used the scene in Oppenheimer, reminiscent of the atomic bomb explosion, to promote it. Japanese netizens are pouring out high-level anger, such as, “What is this ugliness that contradicts the ‘PC (political correctness) principle’ that you show off?” and “Go to Hiroshima right away to learn what happened.” As criticism against Bobby grew on social media, the Japanese branch of Barbie distributor Warner Brothers said on its official website on the 31st of last month, “I’m sorry for the lack of consideration.” “I’m taking the situation seriously,” he posted an apology.The movie Barbie will be released in Japan on the 11th. However, the prevailing view is that this incident has made the box office in Japan much more difficult. In the case of Oppenheimer, the release date has not been set yet, and some predict that it may not be released at all. The Sankei Shimbun reported on the 22nd of last month that the movie Oppenheimer did not contain scenes when or after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Korea, it will be released on August 15, National Liberation Day.
EJ SONG
US ASIA JOURNAL
