Senators are demanding a ban on the upcoming live-action film "Barbie" due to a scene that allegedly depicts China's nine-dash-line claim to the South China Sea, which was dismissed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2016.
In a 2 minutes and 41 seconds trailer posted by Warner Bros posted, there was a scene wherein a blonde Barbie lead actor Margot Robbie is chatting to "Weird Barbie", played by Kate McKinnon, about the real world outside Barbie Land.
In the backdrop of the scene, a child's painting of a globe map depicting the Asian continent as a single mass of territory, with no mention of China or the Philippines, was shown.
Although there was no explicit mention of China's broad claims, Senators were still outraged by the fantasy film's depiction of the nine-dash line.
As the vice chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Senator Francis Tolentino said that if the invalidated nine-dash line was really depicted in the movie, then it is necessary for the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) to ban the same as it denigrates Philippine sovereignty.
Vietnam, which has overlapping claims in the South China Sea, has already banned the film due to the nine-dash line representation.
Senator Jinggoy Estrada agreed, saying that if the film is pulled, it will not be the first time, citing the removal from Philippine theaters of the Sony Pictures film "Uncharted" in April last year at the request of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) for depicting the invalidated territorial claim.
Estrada mentioned another contentious film, the DreamWorks animated picture "Abominable," which, while not taken from theaters, sparked boycott demands from then-Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. in 2019 for depicting the unlawful boundary.
A map featuring China's nine-dash line near the Philippines was briefly shown in the film.
Meanwhile, Opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros called for calm, reminding her colleagues that the fantasy film, like China's broad historical claims, is just that: a dream.
Hontiveros said that the movie is fiction, as is the nine-dash line, suggesting that there should just be a disclaimer on the particular scene in the fictional film instead of banning it.
She added that cinemas in the Philippines should include an explicit disclaimer that the nine-dash line is a part of China’s imagination.
Greta Gerwig's film "Barbie" will be released in Philippine theaters on July 19.
The film has been banned in Vietnam due to the same scene.
