Conservative circles rallied around a new public enemy: Barbie. Ideology and religion have prompted calls to boycott the year’s most talkedabout film, Greta Gerwig’s film about the doll line.
The saga, starring Margot Robbie, has been accused of undermining Christian values, engaging in subliminal proChina propaganda and, of course, being one of the most successful ploys of cultural Marxism in recent years. This conspiracy theory holds that the left has infiltrated the arts, press and other institutions to destroy Western civilization from within.
The outcry of the ultraconservatives has also gripped Brazil. Former Education Minister of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), Abraham Weintraub, equated the work with Nazism in a tweet posted on Thursday (20), the day of the premiere.
He wrote of a photograph of Nazi Klaus Barbie, a war criminal known as the ‘Butcher of Lyon’: ‘It’s not the first time the Barbie name has been in the devil’s service! Protect your children from every ideological line of Barbie! Old or new!”
Evangelical websites were also in an uproar. Here’s an article published in Gospel Mais: “Christian film experts warn: Don’t take your kids to see ‘Barbie.'” According to the text, “many parents believe it’s a children’s film but will encounter a lot of adult content, including LGBT themes.”
In both the US and Brazil, the film was never aimed at children the guideline classification is 12 years here and 13 years there.
Gospel Mais also cites Movieguide, a website owned by critic Ted Baehr, President of the American Christian Film and TV Commission. “The film forgets its core audience of families and children while targeting nostalgic adults and promoting stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters.”
The cast of Hari Nef, a trans actress who plays Doctor Barbie, absorbs much of that anger. Charlie Kirk, a farright activist in the US, called the film’s trailer “the most disgusting thing he’s ever seen.”
The state deputy in Minas, the Bolsonarist Alê Portela (PL), urged parents not to take their children to “Barbie”. In their opinion, the title can be deceiving at first. “We might think that a film based on this character would be aimed at children and families and emphasize femininity,” he wrote on a social network. For the parliamentarian, however, this is not the case. Nef’s presence in the cast is one of the annoyances she expresses, along with the presence of issues such as alcohol and harassment.
A Christian influencer from Rio de Janeiro’s disappointment with the film she had been waiting for resonated online. Vitória Margarida even posted a video of her wearing all the pink clothes she chose for the premiere: “I’ve been ready for a month!”
However, the next release was a lawsuit. In her opinion, “Barbie” misrepresents the concept of the traditional family and promotes the misconception that “being a wife” and “pregnant married woman” do not suit women. The strategy of abusing the use of pink is clever, but the tone of the work is much more sombre for Margarida.
In the end, the influencer expresses another dissatisfaction with the work: is this image of an independent and confident woman, renouncing male company, harmful to evangelical people?
An evangelical temple in Goiânia, Igreja Casa, drew the ire of fellow believers by using a “Barbie” frame to advertise a sect. One follower complained, “Don’t the leaders of this church know that the film is feminist and deprecates the male character?”
Pastor Pedrão, leader of the Batista community in Rio and responsible for celebrating the wedding of MP Eduardo Bolsonaro (PL), says the production missed a beautiful opportunity to “just be entertainment” to “hoist ideological flags”.
Pedrão tells the report that his daughter and two granddaughters, aged 9 and 11, have already seen the film and left a bad impression. “Interesting that you are forced to deal with these flags of diversity with absolute normality. According to my daughter, ‘Barbie’ is overly feminist and features men without action.”
Despite the 12yearold classification, which should fundamentally exclude granddaughters from going to the cinema, the pastor criticizes the participation of the transgender actress, “passing it on to children who don’t even understand their own sexuality”.
“Respect applies to everyone and with everyone, but I believe that everything should happen at the right time and in a natural way and not happen as before.”
“The (famous) Customs Agenda is the spearhead of the authoritarian and fundamentalist project of the transnational extreme right,” says João Cezar de Castro Rocha, professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro and scholar of culture wars.
“It’s the booklet, the manual of procedures. Why? Because it focuses on what is most immediate and important in people’s daily lives: parenting, sexuality, ways of living together.”
The extreme right, according to Rocha, wins followers when it manages to create “fear”. “And for there to be fear, there has to be an agent ‘threatening’ those factors. Everything is allowed here: Hollywood, Netflix and the ‘left’ culture industry, doctrinaire professors, progressive identity, etc. What matters is the creation of imaginary enemies to create the hatred that structures the far right.”
Adding to the moral agenda is the thesis that Hollywood is producing encrypted propaganda to China. All because of a scene showing the map of a region that claims superpower not without sparking territorial conflicts with neighbors. Dubbed the “Line of Nine Rays,” the South China Sea border is the subject of disputes between countries including Vietnam, which has decided to veto the feature film’s commercial premiere.
US Senators such as Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn have pointed to a hidden agenda behind the Pink Fan Doll conspiracy. Blackburn, a party colleague of former President Donald Trump, accused “Hollywood left” of “leaning on Beijing to make a quick buck.” (Anna Virginia Balloussier / Folhapress)
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