It is not, afterall, a completely Barbie world. Japan appears to not be a done deal after some tweets caused massive offense to the industrious fellows from the East. Warner Bros. Film Group in the United States has had to issue an apology, but the issue seems to be growing.
The Barbenheimer craze has seen Barbie and Oppenheimer seemingly tied together. This has led to the creation of an enormous amount of fan art and memes. Many of these tie Barbie into the events surrounding the creation of the atomic bomb. When the US social media account for Barbie started liking and sharing some of these, the response in Japan was savage.
The backlash from Japanese users complains of insensitivity toward the nation after it remains the only country to have been on the receiving end of an atomic bomb. The hashtag #NoBarbenheimer has been trending on Japanese Twitter for days now. The official Japanese Barbie account issued a statement which has got over 30 million views on Twitter referring to the actions of their US counterparts as “very regrettable”, “lacking consideration” and asking Warner Bros. U.S. to take action.
Warner Bros. Film Group in the U.S. has issued a groveling apology and the tweets are being removed. This doesn’t seem to be calming down the mob, and the Japanese release of Barbie is only days away on August 11th. This is just 5 days after the anniversary of the first bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, and two days after Nagasaki. Timing, it appears, is key to everything.
Oppenheimer has no release date for Japan.
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