Legally Barbie

The live-action version of favorite leftist whipping-girl Barbie hasn’t even been released, and already, it’s thigh-high in controversy. Reportedly, the movie shows some version of the nine-dash territorial line that China has been insisting on forever, and our lawmakers aren’t happy.

Well, not just our lawmakers. Vietnam has already banned the movie, citing just this very reason about territorial inaccuracies. Not to be outdone, our senators are making the same noises and threatening to follow suit. Meanwhile, our official government censors aka the MTRCB is taking a deep, long, hard look at it, and determining whether the movie in its entirety can be shown in the country. What a tempest in a dollhouse teapot.

The producers have denied there is any political intent behind their depiction. The politicians are having none of it. So what are we to make of it? Will we ever get to see Ryan Gosling in his pink Malibu suit?

Let’s all try to remember this is just a movie. An account of fiction. A work that sprang from a writer’s imagination. And not just any fictional movie. It’s a movie starring Barbie and Ken, the ultimate fictional characters. Everyone knows Barbie and Ken came from plastic universe. So how on earth could a movie watcher end up thinking, much more believing, that anything they see in that movie could ever be real?

The nine dashes, if they’re really seen in the movie and recognizable as such, would all the more be imbued with the characteristics of fiction. Having been embedded in a make-believe land of superficially beautiful dolls, any map that may crop up in the course of the movie would be taken as just that --a figment.

The producers of the movie have already explained what passes for a map in the film is a crayon drawing, a child-like representation. Much as a scene where Barbie can claim her breasts aren’t the product of science or Ken in all his swishy beauty can pretend to be boyfriend material, a pictograph passing for a map that might favor the China claim would merely be dismissed as another amusing nugget mined from a comedic movie.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly on the side of fighting disinformation and insidious messaging designed to mislead and brainwash. But that isn’t what we have here. This isn’t a historical dramatization of the EDSA Revolution or a depiction of the last days in Malacañang Palace by a certain political family. Instead, this is the story of a disproportionately-figured, saccharine-sweet bimbo blonde set somewhere in candy-land.

The China nine-dash map has been ruled to be legally indefensible by a United Nations tribunal. Of course China doesn’t admit defeat, and has been doing everything it can to nullify the impact of its loss. Do we suspect that China financed this movie? Or that it infiltrated the producers and insidiously inserted the map in the scenes as a form of product placement? Well?

Perhaps the senators should focus on the TikTok influencers (who aren’t doctors) dispensing all sorts of health and medical advice. Or the YouTubers pretending to give history lessons and white-washing the dark days of our past. Or even troll farms that have pervaded social media, prepping for the next electoral cycle and giving politicians their rosy smells. That might be a better use of their time, instead of persecuting Barbie.

If the Senate wants to tackle China, then please, go ahead. Pour more funds into the Navy, so that those poor boys who populate the rocks to establish our sovereignty via the means acknowledged by international law are fed well, clothed, and kept happy. Bring over the volunteers brimming with nationalistic fervor, so that they can scratch their itch to fight for the country. Maybe they can start settling there.

The Senate could also finance more social media channels to broadcast our own truth, and to fight for dominance in narratives. Deploy our own trolls but, you know, pretty. Churn out books and comics and podcasts and vids, all repeating the same truth.

If the Senate had more courage, it could start dismantling the illegal structures that China has built on our islands. Let’s continue to be a pesky thorn in the behemoth’s side, so that it doesn’t get bright ideas like Russia did. It’s actually cute that strung along its east are the continuing irritants of Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

Oh, Barbie. You give such inspiring ideas.