There were plenty of reasons to think the Barbie movie might have a hard time finding an audience in China. It’s an American film, when Chinese moviegoers’ interest in, and government approval of, Hollywood movies is falling. It’s been widely described as feminist, when women’s rights and political representation in China are backsliding.
But not only did the film screen in China — it has 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 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, 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 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.
Though not nearly as hotly anticipated as in the US, where it left some movie theatres 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 of Wednesday, the movie has earned $28 million in China — less than the new Mission Impossible, but more than the latest Indiana Jones. 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.
Mia Tan, a Beijing college student, 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,” Tan said. “It used straightforward dialogue and an exaggerated plot to tell the audience about objective reality. Honestly, 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.
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 like complicated family relationships, have also drawn huge audiences.
The Chinese government has proved most intent on preventing feminists from organising and gathering, rather than stopping discussions of gender equality writ large, said Jia Tan, a professor of cultural studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
In a sign of how Chinese women’s expectations have shifted, some of the most popular — and critical — online reviews of Barbie came from women who said it hadn’t gone far enough. Some said they had hoped a western movie would be more insightful about women’s rights than a Chinese one could be, but found it still exalted conventional beauty standards or focused too much on Ken. Others said they felt compelled to give the movie a higher rating than it deserved because they expected men to pan it.
New York Times News Service
