Be vigilant, everyone. According to conservative lawmakers, Hollywood is attempting to manipulate the American public into consuming Chinese propaganda via subliminal messages about international maritime disputes. The culprit? A movie about dolls.
An image from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (disclosure: I already have a ticket) has sent rightwing pundits and politicians into an uproar. Senators like Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz claim a cartoon map depicts the “nine-dash line” which China uses to assert control over the South China Sea. They argue that the movie’s supposed inclusion of the line legitimizes China’s position, which gives it more power over strategically important waters.
(For reference, the map in question is a highly stylized and deliberately inaccurate sketch. It also depicts England as bordering Asia. With a crown on top.)
The film’s studio, Warner Bros, responded with a much less convoluted explanation: “The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the ‘real world’.” Republicans should know a make-believe journey when they see one – because that’s exactly the leap they make, time and time again, to invent controversies like this.
The Barbie scandal is as manufactured as the dolls themselves. It’s the latest and most absurd example of a trend as old as time: conservatives drumming up unnecessary culture wars because they are incapable of winning over voters with their deeply unpopular policies.
But just because their claims are absurd doesn’t mean they can be ignored. Because even though many so-called scandals perpetuated by the right aren’t based in reality, they can still result in real harm. Just look at how the GOP has ruthlessly targeted trans people: their baseless lies about the dangers of using the “wrong” bathroom or playing the “wrong” sport have led to the stripping away of gender-affirming care, prohibitions against trans people using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, and bans on trans kids kicking around a soccer ball at school. What starts as laughable paranoia can become lethal policy.
Back in Barbie Land, Republicans’ insistence on fabricating culture war issues isn’t limited to disputes over territorial seas. Ginger Luckey Gaetz, the 26-year-old wife of Representative Matt Gaetz, knocked the movie because it “neglects to address any notion of faith or family”. She also lamented the “disappointingly low T from Ken,” Barbie’s famously genital-free companion.
This isn’t even the first Barbie-based trans controversy that the right has attempted to gin up recently. When Mattel released a doll inspired by Laverne Cox last year, the Daily Signal called it a “dangerous message” for kids – and the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group the American Family Association accused Mattel of grooming.
As it turns out, conservatives have a long record of being offended by women like Barbie and the aspirations she represents.
With more than 250 careers under her belt, Barbie is often perceived as “a symbol of female empowerment” – so is it any wonder that she’s an easy target for reactionary backlash? While Barbie is (sometimes imperfectly) agitating for gender justice, Republicans are trying to confine her to the Dream House kitchen.
They have blocked the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, voted against the Violence Against Women Act, slashed access to reproductive care, and more – all within the last three years.
In other words: if Astronaut Barbie wants to study aerospace engineering, she can’t afford to – because Republicans successfully challenged relief for student debt, which disproportionately burdens women. Teacher Barbie may start her career with a vision to educate the next generation, only to be driven out of the profession when her red-state governor busts her union. And how can Paramedic Barbie save lives when she can’t afford childcare because conservative state lawmakers razed subsidies? On issue after issue, Republicans have fought to undermine Barbie’s motto: “We girls can do anything.”
A fantastical theory connecting Margot Robbie to the South China Sea is far less sinister than the grim, narrow reality of the future conservatives want for women. It’s only natural that they’re targeting Barbie because, as Mattel’s most recent slogan goes, Barbie wants girls to imagine the possibilities – and for conservatives, those possibilities are unimaginable.
So ignore their sleight of hand and stay focused on what really matters: whether to see Barbie before or after Oppenheimer (after) – and more importantly, how to make serious, sustained progress for all the would-be Barbies across America.
In short, to paraphrase the movie’s tagline: She’s everything. He’s just Ted.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of the Nation
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
