ENTERTAINMENT
The Warner vs Japan ‘Barbenheimer’ tweets controversy explained
The official Twitter account for the ‘Barbie’ film caused outrage in Japan after using imagery from an atomic bomb blast to reference its box office rival.
Warner Bros. have issued an apology after the ‘Barbie’ film Twitter account engaged with tweets using imagery of an atomic blast, to reference the box office rivalry with ‘Oppenheimer’.
The tweets sparked controversy in Japan and caused the Japanese branch of Warner Bros. studios to issued a public condemnation of the tweets. The Tokyo-based organisation slammed the tweets as “inconsiderate” and called for an apology from Warner Bros. headquarters.
On Monday Warner Bros. Japan tweeted: “We take this situation very seriously and demand an appropriate response from the US headquarters... We apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable by this inconsiderate response.”
The following day Warner Bros. FIlm Group issued a formal apology: “Warner Brothers regrets its recent insensitive social media engagement. The studio offers a sincere apology.”
What is ‘Barbenheimer’?
On 21 July, two huge blockbuster movies were released in the United States. Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’, by Christopher Nolan, look set to be the two most commercially successful films of 2023. Despite the obvious differences, their shared release date has drawn countless comparisons.
The term ‘Barbenheimer’ is a portmanteau of the names of the two films, and plays on the thematic differences between the two titles.
Barbie is known as a kitsch child’s doll and a symbol of fun and frivolity. In stark contrast ‘Oppenheimer’ tells the story of American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the atomic bomb.
Why was the ‘Barbenheimer’ tweet controversial in Japan?
Warner Bros., who produced ‘Barbie’, sought to lean into the comparisons to bolster awareness of and interest in the film.
However the US branch of the movie studio overstepped the mark by engaging with memes and other social media posts that draw lines between the two films.
The official ‘Barbie’ film account appeared to approve a meme with a mushroom cloud alongside an image of the film’s star, Margot Robbie. Another showed Cillian Murphy, who plays the eponymous Oppenheimer, carrying Barbie against a post-apocalyptic backdrop.
Given that the story of Oppenheimer is centred around the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 many in Japan have criticised thecomparisons as tasteless. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese people died in the bombings and the event remains a subject of mourning in Japan.
Japan remains the only country to have been struck with an atomic bomb.