Barbie is a cultural phenomenon that’s breaking box office records and is set to release in Japan on August 11. Ahead of this release, the Twitter account for Barbie in Japan has released an apology to the Japanese people for its Western counterparts’ participation in the popular Barbenheimer meme.
A letter in Japanese signed by Warner Bros. Pictures of Japan posted by the official account for Barbie in Japan explained the situation. Both Barbie and Oppenheimer, the latter being a film about the creation of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan, have been an enormous success. They were released on the same day in the U.S., which led fans to create a meme combining the two. Some people even saw the films back-to-back, hence Barbenheimer.
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There was a wave of fan-created pictures where Oppenheimer lifts Barbie into the air, Barbie appears with a mushroom cloud for hair, and countless other combinations of images from the films. Barbie’s Western social media accounts played up the connection. “It’s going to be a summer to remember,” the official Barbie account replied to a photo of Oppenheimer and Barrbie together. The August 11 release date of Barbie in Japan comes two days after the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
The Warner Bros. apology letter explained the Barbenheimer phenomenon and stressed that it was not an official or sanctioned creation of the studio.
“Currently, there is a movement by overseas fans to recommend watching both works (#Barbenheimer), but this movement and activity is not official,” the letter, translated from Japanese, states. “We believe that the inconsiderate reaction of the Barbie movie’s official U.S. account to social media posts by fans of this movement is extremely regrettable. We take this situation seriously, and we are asking the US headquarters to take appropriate action.”
After the apology was posted, the offending tweet from the U.S. Barbie movie account was deleted.
Japanese fans on Twitter noticed the memes and the Barbie accounts’ reaction to them. “What do you Americans who use this tag to make jokes about the atomic bomb feel when they see this image? What you guys are doing is exactly the same as this. Shame on you,” one Twitter user said above an image of 9/11 superimposed onto a Barbie marketing still.
Warner Bros. Pictures in the U.S. did not immediately respond to Motherboard’s request for comment.
Update: This article was updated to reflect that the offending tweet by the U.S. Barbie account was deleted.
