The world has been swept up in the Barbenheimer craze in recent weeks with a ton of fan-made artwork, memes and other creative mashups out there of the two very disparate films and their wildly different subject matter.
But all of those pink mushroom clouds and visual creativity involving nuclear bombs and dolls have, understandably, not gone over well in Japan – especially when the corporations started getting involved.
First found by Twitter user Luiz Fernando and subsequently reported at Newsweek, it seems the official “Barbie” U.S. social media account reacting to #Barbenheimer content on Twitter has drawn ire.
Specifically, they responded to a fan poster of Margot Robbie’s Barbie sitting on the right shoulder of Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer against a backdrop of California burning in a nuclear fire.
The official Barbie account tweeted in response: “It’s going to be a summer to remember,” along with kiss and heart emojis. In the time since, the post drew an enormous amount of backlash from users, especially on Japanese social media, complaining about how insensitive this was.
Things got bad enough that the official Japanese “Barbie” account had to issue a statement explaining the #Barbenheimer event and calling the US account’s reaction “extremely regrettable”.
They apologised for what was dubbed a “series of inconsiderable reactions” and asked Warner Bros. U.S. to take appropriate action.
Universal’s “Oppenheimer” still hasn’t been granted a release date in Japan and is facing issues there due to its touchy subject matter. That “Barbie” could now become collateral damage is rather unexpected.
