The global politics of Barbenheimer

11 September 2023

This summer, movie theatres across the globe have been rocked by the success of one of the weirdest double-bills in movie history: Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. The simultaneous release of the two films — collectively known as Barbenheimer — has led to a surge in Hollywood profits and hilarious memes. At the same time, as Barbie has been banned in Vietnam, and as Oppenheimer is yet to be released in Japan, these films have reminded the world that popular culture matters in international relations and geopolitics.

Barbie has already made over USD 1 billion at the box office, breaking the record for ticket sales for a film made by a female director. Oppenheimer too has been successful, making over USD 770 million worldwide — it is now the most successful film ever made about the Second World War.

Barbie fights the patriarchy, the patriarchy bans Barbie

Despite these successes, both films have been a source of controversy. Vietnam has banned Barbie due to a scene that depicts a cartoon map showing China’s contested territorial claim over the South China Sea. Other states, such as Kuwait, Lebanon, and Algeria, have also banned the film. A Kuwaiti government spokesperson said that the film was banned for promoting “ideas and beliefs that are alien to the Kuwaiti society and public order” without elaborating on what exactly those ideas and beliefs are. Who knew that a film whose central plot is about plastic toys becoming sentient could cause such offence?

Barbenheimer offers a focus onto subjects that define our modern moment, such as the dominance of patriarchy that ruins the lives of women and men across the planet, the anxiety and existentialism of modern life, and the existence of nuclear weapons that threaten to destroy it.

Kuwait’s Barbie ban, as well as that of Lebanon and Algeria — where the film has been banned because it allegedly “promotes homosexuality” — highlight how even fun and fictional films are deeply entwined with global political contestations over what is right, legitimate, and fair. Ironically, these states banning Barbie because of misogynist and homophobic reasons make the film's core message — that the patriarchy is bad — even more prescient.

Oppenheimer and the invisible horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Oppenheimer has likewise come under scrutiny for what it depicts — especially in Japan, where the US government dropped the nuclear bombs that Oppenheimer designed and developed. Oppenheimer has not been banned in Japan, but to date, it has not been given a theatrical release in the country, and cinema bosses have not announced when it will finally be shown. Given the fact that the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 led to the deaths of over 200,000 people, it is somewhat understandable that there is little appetite for the film in the country that suffered so much at the hands of Oppenheimer’s creation.

Indeed, since Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic did not show the atomic bombing’s effects on either the ‘downwinders’ of American nuclear tests or the Japanese people has left viewers divided. To his credit, Nolan does attempt to show that the bombings had a devastating impact, and the core message of Oppenheimer is essentially that nuclear weapons can (and potentially will) destroy the planet. However, the film is still largely one about a ‘great man’ doing ‘great things’, where his scientific achievements and strength in the face of adversity are represented at the fore — even if he feels somewhat conflicted about their consequences.

In one scene in Oppenheimer, where our protagonist is sad about the death of a former lover, Oppenheimer’s wife (played by Emily Blunt) says to her husband, “you don't get to commit sin, and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you when there are consequences”. The statement is clearly an allegory for the film’s central message; we should not feel sorry for Oppenheimer, given the consequences of what he has done. Yet, the message remains somewhat subliminal, as we never really see what exactly those consequences are, or how horrific what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki truly was. The decision to not show the effects of those bombs was, of course, a choice made by Nolan, who said that “to depart from Oppenheimer’s experience would betray the terms of the storytelling”.

Becoming Barbenheimer

Beyond the content of, and stories told in, Oppenheimer and Barbie, the ways in which the two films have become a single cultural phenomenon in themselves demonstrate how these films have global political significance. Barbenheimer is a prime example of internet-driven intertextuality, where the meaning of one ‘text’ makes sense in relation to another, even if they have seemingly little to do with each other.

The simultaneous release of Barbie and Oppenheimer was driven by studio executives believing that the films were for two distinct audiences: women who played with Barbies, and men who were fascinated by bombs. This gendered dichotomy of femininity and masculinity was prominent in the movies’ promotional shots — bright pink and bubbly fun for Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s Ken, contrasting starkly with the bleak black-and-white scenes and super serious shots of Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer. Such a juxtaposition, and the internet’s refusal to accept that Barbie was for girls and Oppenheimer was for boys, led to the Barbenheimer mashup, where the films were not seen as rivals but as a double feature that would be one of, if not the, defining cultural moment of the year.

In becoming Barbenheimer, destroyer not of worlds but of the gender binary, the films and their promotion provoked even more controversy. After the official US ‘Barbie The Movie’ Twitter account replied to and retweeted Barbenheimer memes of our plastic heroine in front of a mushroom cloud, Warner Bros. Japan released a statement that it found “the reaction to this fan-driven movement… to be extremely regrettable”.

This Japanese arm of the studio that produced Barbie then asked the US head office to remove the post and apologise to “those offended by these inconsiderate actions”.

From frivolous fun to serious stuff: the global politics of Barbenheimer

It is clear that these kinds of popular geopolitics play out across a range of contexts in Barbenheimer; in the content of the movies, in the contexts of their writing and production, and in the context of how they are circulated, interpreted, remixed, memed, and mashed up together by and for the extremely online masses.

At the centre of Barbenheimer’s popularity lie several issues that are important in global politics — the power of the internet, the role of humour and memes in marketing and culture, and the awareness of gendered binaries and a refusal to accept them. Barbenheimer offers a focus onto subjects that define our modern moment, such as the dominance of patriarchy that ruins the lives of women and men across the planet, the anxiety and existentialism of modern life, and the existence of nuclear weapons that threaten to destroy it.

Barbenheimer is therefore more than a playful phenomenon to pass the time this summer. It is a window into the zeitgeist of today, and therefore a serious site of global politics.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Dr Rhys Crilley is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Glasgow. His first book Unparalleled Catastrophe: Life and Death in the Third Nuclear Age provides a critical analysis of nuclear weapons and international security, and is available to pre-order now. You can keep up to date with Rhys and his writing about nuclear weapons, pop culture, and global politics on Twitter and Substack. Image credit: Samuel Regan-Asante/Unsplash (cropped).