Why Barbie became a sleeper hit in China

BEIJING – There were plenty of reasons to think the Barbie movie might have a hard time finding an audience in China.

It is an American film, when Chinese moviegoers’ interest in – and government approval of – Hollywood movies is falling.

It has been widely described as feminist, when women’s rights and political representation in China are backsliding.

Not only did the film screen in China, but it has also been something of a sleeper hit – precisely because of its unusual nature in the Chinese movie landscape.

“There aren’t many movies about women’s independence, or that have some flavours of feminism, in China,” said Ms Mina Li, 36, who went alone to a recent screening in Beijing after several female friends recommended it. “So they thought it was worth seeing.”

Despite limited availability – the film, directed by Greta Gerwig (Little Women, 2019), made up only 2.4 per cent of screenings in China on its opening day – Barbie has quickly become widely discussed on Chinese social media, at one point even topping searches on Weibo, China’s version of X which is formerly known as Twitter.

It has an 8.3 rating on the movie rating site Douban, higher than any other currently showing live-action feature. Theatres have raced to add showings, with the number nearly quadrupling in the first week.

Although not nearly as hotly anticipated as in the United States, where it left some cinemas running low on refreshments, Barbie has set off its own mini-mania in some Chinese circles, with moviegoers posting photos of themselves decked out in pink or showing off glossy souvenir tickets.

As at Wednesday, the movie has earned US$28 million (S$38.8 million) in China – less than the new Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, but more than the latest Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny.

American movies’ hauls have been declining in general in China, in part because of strict controls on the number of foreign films allowed each year.

Beijing college student Mia Tan saw Barbie with two friends, in an array of festive attire that included a peach-coloured skirt and pink-accented tops.

During a scene in which the Ken dolls realised that being male was its own qualification, she joked that the characters sounded like fellow students in their major.

“The movie was great,” Ms Tan said. “It used straightforward dialogue and an exaggerated plot to tell the audience about objective reality. I think this is the only way to make women realise what kind of environment they’re in, and to make men realise how much privilege they’ve had.”

The discussion about women’s empowerment that Barbie has set off is in some ways a rare bright spot for Chinese feminists.

In recent years, the authorities have arrested feminist activists, urged women to embrace traditional gender roles and rejected high-profile sexual harassment lawsuits.

State media has suggested that feminism is part of a Western plot to weaken China, and social media companies block insults of men but allow offensive comments about women.

Some social media comments have disparaged Barbie as inciting conflict between the genders, and moviegoers have shared stories of men walking out of theatres. (In the US, conservatives have similarly railed against the movie.)

At the same time, public awareness of women’s rights has been growing.

Online discussions about topics such as violence against women have blossomed, despite censorship.

While many of China’s top movies in recent years have been chest-thumping war or action movies, a few female-directed movies, about themes such as complicated family relationships, have also drawn huge audiences.

And the Chinese government has proved most intent on preventing feminists from organising and gathering, rather than stopping discussions of gender equality writ large, said professor of cultural studies Jia Tan at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Some lingering wariness of feminism and its implications was evident at the recent Beijing showing of Barbie, where several audience members – male and female – told a reporter that they saw the movie as promoting equal rights, not women’s rights.

Opponents of feminism in China have tarred the movement as pitching women above men.

The Chinese subtitles for Barbie translated “feminism” as “nu xing zhu yi”, or literally “women-ism”, rather than “nu quan zhu yi”, or “women’s rights-ism”.

While both are generally translated as “feminism”, the latter is seen as more politically charged.

Mr Wang Pengfei, a college student from Jiangsu province, also drew that distinction.

He had liked Barbie so much that he wanted to take his mother to see it, feeling she would appreciate the movie’s climactic speech about the double standards imposed on women.

But he was also alarmed by what he called extreme feminist rhetoric, with women declaring that they did not need men.

He liked the movie, he said, because it had not gone as far as some other films did.

“If Chinese women are really going to become independent,” he said, “it won’t be because of movie gimmicks.” NYTIMES