Warner Bros. Japan calls out Warner Bros. over Barbenheimer meme
Understandably, some people don't find the "Barbenheimer" meme to be a light-hearted joke
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Warner Bros. Japan doesn’t find “Barbenheimer” amusing and it’s letting Warner Bros. U.S. hear about it. In a statement released on Twitter today, Warner Bros. Japan criticized the Twitter account of its own film Barbie, calling on its parent company to “take appropriate action.” On July 20, one day before the release of the two films, @BarbieTheMovie responded to “Barbenheimer poster art” tweeted by @DiscussingFilm. “It’s going to be a summer to remember,” the Barbie account replied.
Unfortunately, not everyone finds the meme so light-hearted. In Japan, where Oppenheimer has yet to receive a theatrical release, Christopher Nolan’s biopic has re-opened decades-old wounds caused by the American military’s use of two atom bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs are estimated to have killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people.
“We consider it extremely regrettable that the official account of the American headquarters for the movie Barbie reacted to the social media postings of ‘Barbenheimer’ fans,” Warner Bros. Japan wrote in a statement posted to the Barbie Japan Twitter. “We take this situation very seriously. We are asking the U.S. headquarters to take appropriate action. We apologize to those who were offended by this series of inconsiderate reactions.”
The statement acknowledges the Barbenheimer movement but notes it is “not official.” Barbie was released by Warner Bros. and Oppenheimer by Universal, which is why we’re not seeing actual cross-marketing between the two. It’s also widely believed that Warner Bros. placed Barbie on that date as a petty swipe at Christopher Nolan, who exited Warner for Universal in 2021.
As long as there have been brands on social media, brands have been stumbling into controversy. In 2017, for example, Wendy’s posted a Pepe The Frog meme to score lulz and show the company’s followers how online the account was. These infractions often cause a stir because the original poster was probably ignorant of controversy, which is kind of why social media managers adopting the nihilistic sense of humor of Weird Twitter was a bad idea.
Warner Bros. and Universal made out like bandits on the grassroots marketing campaign that challenged moviegoers to see two films in one day. But these memes also flattened Oppenheimer’s severity, creating a space for people to make jokes about an actual tragedy. Barbie, we love you, but it’s time to log off.
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But these memes also flattened Oppenheimer’s severity, creating a space for people to make jokes about an actual tragedy.Yes, but other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
The Japanese should respond by making a movie about Pearl Harbor. That’ll show those Americans what for.
There’s definitely an optics component to it. Like if there was a saudi film studio and they came out with 9/11 and my little pony movies on the same day with “my little twin towers” promotion
Yeah! Just like this one! Tora! Tora! Tora! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066473/reference/
“But these memes also flattened Oppenheimer’s severity, creating a space for people to make jokes about an actual tragedy.”
It’s fine. The movie flattens itself as it doesn’t have the courage of its convictions and ends up dropping that whole ‘consequences of the atomic bomb’ thing in favour of an hour of RDJ being supremely petty in a houthouse of trivial Washington bullshit.
“Barbie, we love you, but it’s time to log off.”Uh. This site has been making hay off the Barbenheimer meme for weeks.
I mean you’re not wrong but this site also is not the official account for Barbie
I can’t believe that a pop culture website would be held to a different standard than a multi-national multi-billion dollar corporate entity
Sure you can. It’s easy.
I really thought the sarcasm was obvious enough.
This entire article has it’s sense of irony deeply out of whack.
Looks like the offending tweet has now been deleted.
It’s probably a reasonable PR move on the part of Japan’s
Warner Bros if there are people in Japan reacting to the memeing.Doesn’t make the memes themselves a problem, though. And, as many have pointed out, Japan isn’t really in a position to complain about people ‘flattening the severity’ of things that happened during WWII.
Why, you can’t accuse Japan of flattening the severity of things that happened during WWII! They did nothing they would have to actually flatten, according to this Japanese school history book.
Yeah I got the same book. Apparently a wizard cast a spell in 1936 that caused Japan to be suspended in a time bubble until 1946.
Never happened!So glad you mentioned 1936 as the start – part of the reason the Imperial Japanese are viewed as less abhorrent than the Nazis was that a fairly huge chunk of their atrocities were before the West recognised WWII officially started for the West. Officially, the war in the Pacific started on the 7th of December. You know – when All the Countries That Mattered™ finally got involved.Also, good ol’ fashioned racism, where Asians killing Asians didn’t really matter, but Europeans killing Europeans did. (Imperial Japan in the Pacific, just as Hitler in Europe, saw themselves as a superior race and thus entitle to subjugate others.)You could argue it started in 1931, when the Japanese started their false-flag ops that blew up their own railway lines to justify the occupation of Manchuria – eight years before Hitler blew up a German radio station on the Polish border.
Yeah, in this case, I think some whataboutism is justified. When historians debate over whether you “only” massacred 3 million versus 30 million civilians over the course of a war (in addition to the mass-rape, torture, and human experimentation) maybe you don’t deserve to raise a stink over a stupid meme.
I mean to do whataboutism but the Japanese and Chinese had been at war with each other for centuries before WW2. The atrocities were just a continuation of all the shit China and Japan had done to each other in prior wars.
I think “whataboutism” is a stupid term anyway, as if it’s wrong to say “What about this other thing that contradicts your argument?”
Yeah but people don’t use whataboutism as a contradiction. They use it as a justification. One shitty thing does not mean the current thing isn’t shitty.
Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t distinguish between different levels of shittiness.
They remember that Japan was the bad guy in the war ? They way they depict themselves as victims when they were the nazis allies and were doing things only slightly less horrible than them is appalling. You deserved the two nukes on your head.
This argument would make more sense if the bombs were dropped on military targets instead of civilian ones.
Even the “slightly less horrible” is arguable, considering all the things that they did to the populations of the places they invaded (particularly China). Slightly less industrialized murder, sure, but that’s about all one can say to distinguish them from their allies.
They don’t call it “The super happy fun time of Nanking”
Eh, I’m not sure anyone deserves a nuclear bomb dropped on them, especially not the citizenry of two non-military targets.
But the civvies of occupied territories deserved to be murdered in the millions because um, the war came to them?
I have nothing against Japanese people today, hell I am normally identified as a weeb. But their official stance today still routinely minimize their atrocities during the war, and often(in Abe’s time, pre-shot gun) uses Yasukuni Shrine visit to provoke China and Korea. And have revisionist text books in school. They can afford to be meme’d on….
I didn’t say they couldn’t be meme’d, nor did I defend any Japanese actions during or post WWII. I’m just disagreeing that anyone “deserves” to be nuked.
‘Dropping the a-bombs was justified,’ is a reasonable statement, and arguably a correct one. ‘The citizens of Japan deserved to be a-bombed’ is much less tenable position. A small distinction, maybe, but an important one.
Reminder: absolutely no one in the US military leadership thought the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, the War Department’s own US Strategic Bombing Survey in 1946 thought it was not only pointless but that no invasion or blockade would have even been necessary, and July 12th of that year Truman wrote in his own diary that the Soviet Union entering the war would have ended it 4 days after Japan eventually surrendered.We dropped the bombs because we had them. Then we went back and made up an excuse. Now we can’t face the reality of what we did.
I didn’t know this. :(It’s just such a cause for despair. When you think about the things we human beings do to each other and always have, and show no signs of ever stopping. Sometimes it’s some version of “necessary.” Usually it’s not. I hate it.
I don’t know enough to say whether or not the bomb dropping was the correct decision, or the best decision that could have been made at the time. But I do know enough to be highly skeptical of your version of events – particularly the assertion that ‘absolutely no one in the US military
leadership thought the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified,’ which seems almost self-evidently untrue.
I also just searched for the diary entry you mentioned, and the closest I can find to what you mention is this (on July 17th; there doesn’t seem to be an entry for the 12th):Most of the big points are settled. [Stalin]’ll be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini Japs when that comes about…. which absolutely doesn’t imply that Truman thought the war would’ve ended 4 days later; only that the Japanese wouldn’t have been able to survive a Soviet attack.
Most of the sources I can find for Truman imply that he had misgivings about using the bomb, which imply a sincere belief that it was the lesser of two evils:“I don’t think we ought to use this thing [the A-Bomb] unless we
absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of
something that (here he looked down at his desk, rather reflectively)
that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond anything we have
ever had. You have got to understand that this isn’t a military
weapon. (I shall never forget this particular expression). It is used
to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military
uses.” (David Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. Two, pg. 391)Fully admit that I might be wrong here, but I’m gonna need a source check for what you’ve said.
So… no one is going to comment on the irony of a company effectively scolding itself? Have we really gone so far deep into call-out culture that this situation doesn’t strike anyone as even slightly strange?
To say nothing of the idea that it’s a little ridiculous to expect the PR wing of a company to refrain from capitalizing on what’s probably the best free marketing for movies we’ve seen in years?
If there’s anything I’ve learned over the course of WB imploding, it’s that when a corporation is big enough, it might as well be separate companies bitching at each other.
Fair.
No? Isn’t it a good thing when a company (or person) is able to reflect inward? What’s ironic about that?
Having that discussion within the company is one thing. Having a Twitter feud between what is essentially departments of the same company is… odd. To me, anyway.
What’s strange about it? Seems pretty clear that WB Japan didn’t have a say or approval in the marketing for films produced by its parent company.
The fact that one arm of the company is publicly criticizing the other seemed a little strange, that’s all.
WB USA and WB Japan are totally different entities though. It’s not like they have the same group of people posting to the English-language and Japanese Twitter accounts. Plus it’s not at all new to see international arms of the same company at odds with each other. It’s happened many times in the video game industry; see Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, etc.
Understandable enough. I mean, we’ve obviously seen much bigger “mistakes” (if you want to call it that) from PR departments in big corporations. I just thought it was a strange situation that no one had really remarked on.
Barbie, we love you, but it’s time to log off.Given the hay this site’s been making off Barbenheimer over the last week or so alone, this sudden swerve into piousness almost gave me whiplash.
I got 2 words for Japan… Unit 731. Sit down and stfu.
Nuclear weapons are a tragic mistake that should be hurled into the sun Superman IV style, and we can debate endlessly over the “necessity” of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. I personally think dropping the A-bombs was far more about posturing to the Soviets than about hastening the end of the war and averting a land invasion. The firebombing of Tokyo (100k dead, 1 million displaced, 16 square miles of the city obliterated) most likely played a far larger part in forcing the Japanese to capitulate. All that being said, a country with an entire 24,000-word wikipedia page devoted to its war crimes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes) is really in no position to take the moral high ground on WWII atrocities.
But these memes also flattened Oppenheimer’s severity, creating a space for people to make jokes about an actual tragedy. Ah, yes, we should be deeply concerned about the tragedy Japan suffered during World War II.The country that invaded, without provocation, China, the Philippines, the Pacific islands, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Mongolia, Burma, and others. The country that was responsible for death marches, forced labour, sexual slavery, extermination campaigns, and chemical and biological attacks on civilians, resulting in the deaths of literal millions. A country that still kicks its feet at acknowledging even slight wrongdoing or responsibility for atrocity.The atomic bomb wasn’t the tragedy, the invasions, imperialism, racial supremacy, and war crimes committed by Japan was the tragedy, without which Japan would’ve been bombed by precisely no one.
“Ah, yes, we should be deeply concerned about the tragedy Japan suffered during World War II.”I feel like we should be deeply concerned about the tragedy of it all. The atomic bomb absolutely was a tragedy, as were the invasions, imperialism, racial supremacy, and war crimes (all of which sound very American also). It’s all tragedy. I don’t see what comes of comparing them. None of it should have happened.
The comparison is because if Japan hadn’t been committing war crimes and invading literally every neighboring country, the tragedy of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have happened. It’s crucial to underline that fact, because a vocal portion of the Japanese people still refuses to acknowledge the sexual slavery of “comfort women”, celebrates the architects of war crimes, and argues it did nothing wrong and that Japan actually brought prosperity to Korea, China, Taiwan. And it isn’t a fringe element, it’s enthusiastically promulgated by highly visible military and political leaders (especially the dominant Liberal Democratic Party), with textbooks edited to minimize the crimes, visits to shrines honouring the militarists, and revisionism that portrays Japan as the victim. I’m not in favour of bombing civilians, I think America had absolutely ulterior motives in dropping the bombs, and the loss of life of people who may not have supported the war is tragic. But it’s a question of who’s ultimately culpable for that, and it isn’t Oppenheimer and the Allies. Focusing on the result while minimizing the causes plays into the narrative that Japan did nothing wrong, it violated no international law, and Japan was simply a victim of World War II, rather than one of its principal architects.
“It’s crucial to underline that fact”In that case it’s also “crucial” to underline the fact of abuses carried on in the US and in the name of the US around the world. I’m not saying Japan wasn’t wrong. I’m asking what is gained by pointing it out? Does that mean it wasn’t a tragedy that all those people died? Frankly I haven’t seen the movie and I won’t because I don’t like the idea of making a theatrical spectacle of an extremely dark act in human history. I’m just not sure I understand the sarcasm behind your “deeply concerned” line. I don’t know why you wouldn’t actually be deeply concerned with it. You say “But it’s a question of who’s ultimately culpable for that,” but is it? Is that really the question? Does deciding who was “culpable” make it less of a tragedy? Well, it was Japan’s fault (according to you), so it doesn’t matter? Is that the conclusion?
In that case it’s also “crucial” to underline the fact of abuses carried on in the US and in the name of the US around the world.Yes, it absolutely is crucial to underline that as well. I’m not saying Japan wasn’t wrong. I’m asking what is gained by pointing it out?What’s gained by pointing that out is countering the narrative that Japan was merely a victim to, rather than the enthusiastic promotor of, atrocity, a position with wide purchase in the Japanese political sphere, to this day. You say “But it’s a question of who’s ultimately culpable for that,” but is it? Is that really the question?If it isn’t, it really should be, because the country that initiated aggression and killed 3 to 30 million people is the one that bears responsibility for the reprisal against its own civilian population and the resulting ~200, 000 deaths. Does deciding who was “culpable” make it less of a tragedy? Well, it was Japan’s fault (according to you), so it doesn’t matter? Is that the conclusion?No, the conclusion is the loss of civilian life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a tragedy, a tragedy which Japan is responsible for, and that treating it in isolation is a move used by xenophobic, right-wing militarists within contemporary Japan to promote the same vision of society and values that led to them killing 3 to 30 million people. Assigning the weight of that responsibility is necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen again, both the invasions and the bombings.
“Yes, it absolutely is crucial to underline that as well.”But you didn’t.“countering the narrative that Japan was merely a victim to, rather than the enthusiastic promotor of, atrocity, a position with wide purchase in the Japanese political sphere, to this day”I suppose…but was that the narrative? I don’t know Japanese so I couldn’t translate the tweet. Or the…x? idk what it is.“because the country that initiated aggression and killed 3 to 30 million people is the one that bears responsibility for the reprisal against its own civilian population and the resulting ~200, 000 deaths”I disagree. What I teach my kids is that we’re all responsible for our own actions. There’s no “so-and-so made me do it” in this house. I’m not questioning our decision to use the bombs (though some comments above shed some light that make our motivations look less than entirely justified), but I’m saying we did it, so we own it. We decided those people were acceptable collateral damage and that’s on us. Maybe it was justified, maybe it wasn’t, but it was ours, and regardless of whose fault it was it was an incomprehensible tragedy that maybe shouldn’t be made into a joke tweet (x).“No, the conclusion is the loss of civilian life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a tragedy, a tragedy which Japan is responsible for”Again, debatable, but even granting it for argument, why the sarcasm around “deeply concerned” then? Because Japan was responsible for the tragedy it’s not cause for deep concern?“that treating it in isolation is a move used by xenophobic, right-wing militarists within contemporary Japan”No doubt true!! But. It was still a tragedy? I understand pointing out the hypocrisy by the Japanese government. I just think it can be done without failing to acknowledge that maybe we didn’t have to do it, and that our choice to do it says something about us. If Hitler hadn’t finally killed himself I suspect we wouldn’t have nuked Berlin.“Assigning the weight of that responsibility is necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen again, both the invasions and the bombings.”I’d like to think that’s true, but invasions are happening in this very day, in multiple locations. Assigning all of the weight to Japan for those bombings, I think anyway, absolves the US of its own responsibility for the bombings, which makes us more likely to do it again, not less.
But you didn’t.Not here, but I can dig up numerous comments from my discussion history where I do that. I suppose…but was that the narrative? I don’t know Japanese so I couldn’t translate the tweet.It’s the narrative of Liberal Democratic Party members and hawks in the Japanese military.What I teach my kids is that we’re all responsible for our own actions. There’s no “so-and-so made me do it” in this house. That’s laudable (sincerely). My position isn’t “Japan made America do it”, it’s “the victims of right-wing xenophobia and militarism aren’t just (‘just’) the inferior racial Other, but frequently and pointedly rebounds on the aggressor’s own population”. That a vocal and powerful segment of the Japanese state refuses to do just that is why I wanted to stress the context and antecedent actions of Japan that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Maybe it was justified, maybe it wasn’t, but it was ours, and regardless of whose fault it was it was an incomprehensible tragedy that maybe shouldn’t be made into a joke tweet (x). […] why the sarcasm around “deeply concerned” then? Because Japan was responsible for the tragedy it’s not cause for deep concern?It was probably unnecessarily glib, my intent was to reinforce that Japan itself committed numerous, drastic atrocities and that it lacks the moral high ground to position itself as the victim while minimizing their own war crimes, war crimes and aggression without which they would not have been bombed. I also don’t think there’s anything making light or joking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki by simply retweeting “it’s a summer to remember” in reply to Barbenheimer poster art. Connecting the release of the film Barbie to the release of the biopic Oppenheimer is inconsiderate to no one. I just think it can be done without failing to acknowledge that maybe we didn’t have to do it, and that our choice to do it says something about us. You aren’t wrong, and it’s an admirable attitude to take towards your own country (I am neither American nor Japanese).
“It’s the narrative of Liberal Democratic Party members and hawks in the Japanese military.”
I see. I’m just not sure that narrative can be imposed on this particular statement. The way I see it, the meme was insensitive to the people who were killed in the bomb and those who lived with the ensuing damage. If I said that, you’d probably yes, ElectricSheep, it totally is! Because you’re a reasonable person with empathy. So I don’t think it becomes less true just because it’s coming from Japan, even if they (those in the government) are awful in a lot of ways. “the victims of right-wing xenophobia and militarism aren’t just (‘just’) the inferior racial Other, but frequently and pointedly rebounds on the aggressor’s own population”. That’s certainly true enough. It’s not false. I just think it can coexist as a fact with the also fact that we (the US) have to reckon with what we chose to do as well, and with how we joke about it and consider its place in history.“That a vocal and powerful segment of the Japanese state refuses to do just that is why I wanted to stress the context and antecedent actions of Japan that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”And this is fair enough. That goes for the rest of your post as well (except to say that I don’t think it was just saying “it’s a summer to remember” that was problematic, but the fact that it was caption to a photo of Barbie and a mushroom cloud.). But I get it it. Japan does a lot of shitty things and they not only don’t reckon with it but actively work to erase it and that’s frustrating. But meanwhile Oppenheimer evicted dozens of Hispanos and Native Americans from their farms to make his lab and then had them work in his lab with plutonium without protective equipment (which the white scientists and workers did get) so they all got cancer or chemical burns or some shit and got really sick and/or died, plus the testing ruined the land for farming for the Natives and Hispanos downwind. And I bet they didn’t put that in the movie, so it’s not just Japan rewriting history (but yes I know it’s to a greater extent, though…ahem…the Florida government wants us to believe that Black people benefitted from slavery, so…). I’m just mainly at a place of despair about it all because, as I said in another post, the things we humans have done to each other throughout history and we are showing no sign of learning not to do them or even desiring to find a way not to do them… It’s hard for me to say anybody’s worse than anybody else. I feel humankind is just tainted. There’s like always a large-scale massacre going on somewhere at any time. It’s fucked up! We’re fucked up.
I feel you, and we are fucked up and continue to be. The assessment or framing might differ but at the end of the day the motivation for either of us is a rejection of the worst of what we do to each other, so I respect your position fully.
And in return. 🙂
They didn’t invade china without provocation. Historically China and Japan had been warring for centuries before WW2. It was just a continuation of those old wars.
The history knower has logged on. Tell me, o history knower, across any of the preceding wars between China and Japan, in which did China initiate the conflict or attempt to invade Japan?I suppose China’s “provocation” was not submitting to conquest in the 16th, 19th and 20th centuries. Truly provocative of them
without Oppenheimer there would be no Godzilla. they should be grateful
As long as there have been brands on social media, brands have been stumbling into controversy. In 2017, for example, Wendy’s posted a Pepe The Frog meme to score lulz and show the company’s followers how online the account was. These infractions often cause a stir because the original poster was probably ignorant of controversy, which is kind of why social media managers adopting the nihilistic sense of humor of Weird Twitter was a bad idea.Have we finally come around to this position? I remember when brands first start doing that social media shit, sites (this one included) basically just gave them a signal boost. “Oh, look over here! The brand is doing an internet thing! They’re just like us! How hip and cool! LULZ”, the Gen Z strawman in my head exclaimed. At best, they were pandering; at worst, they were cringe.