In front of Algerian cinemas, since July 18, it was the pink parade. Sunday, in all discretion, the owners of dark rooms removed Barbie from their programs. The government censored Greta Gerwig’s film for “damaging morals”. The media 24h Algeria also confirmed that according to “well-informed sources”, the film was now banned. To date, the Algerian Minister of Culture, who usually announces film bans and specifies the reasons, has still not communicated on the subject.
Algeria is not the only country to deprive its people of Barbie. Lebanon on Wednesday announced the censorship of the film because it would “promote homosexuality”. On Thursday, the Minister of Culture of Kuwait in turn banned the feature film for “undermining public morals”. In Qatar, no official announcement, but Barbie is still not programmed. Too bad for the distributors, the film is a hit. Last week it exceeded $1 billion at the global box office. In the Pakistani region of Punjab, the release of the film had been postponed, for “shocking content”.
The film is accused of conveying political messages but above all of “promoting homosexuality”. In Algeria, the TSA media made some allusions to homosexuality, but above all wrote that “Algeria ended up being won by the controversy over Barbie because of scenes intended for an adult audience”. “We do not censor a film. We let society debate it and go to the theater to see it or not”, publishes the Algerian filmmaker Sofia Djama on her Facebook account.
When announcing the Barbie ban, Lebanon’s Minister of Culture, Mohammad Mourtada said, “The promotion of homosexuality and gender reassignment, supports the rejection of father’s guardianship, undermines and turns ridicules the role of the mother and questions the necessity of marriage and the formation of a family”. In the Levantine country, the news is marked by an anti-LGBTQ campaign led by Hezbollah. In July, the leader of the terrorist organization called on Lebanese to boycott all rainbow products, adding that any homosexual should “be killed”. In June 2022, Buzz Lightyear was censored. In question, a scene where we see a couple of lesbians.
In Kuwait, the government had called for the “removal of certain obscene scenes encouraging unacceptable behavior”. In the process, the chairman of the film censorship committee of the Gulf country, Lafi Subaïei announced that “the distribution of Barbie and Talk To Me films has been banned”. In terms of cinema, Kuwait intends to “prohibit anything that undermines public morals, public order and traditions, by introducing foreign ideas into society”.
In Vietnam also Barbie was banned. But this time geopolitical reasons that are invoked. The Hollywood comedy about the famous Mattel doll, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, was supposed to be released on July 21, but Vietnamese cinema chains have removed this release date from their website. “The National Film Rating and Classification Council has viewed the film and made the decision to ban its screening in Vietnam due to a violation related to the nine-dotted line,” said the director of the Department. of Vietnamese cinema, Vi Kien to the information site Dan Tri.
