The summer blockbuster “Barbie” has met its match.
On Tuesday, the entertainment magazine Variety reported that officials likely will exclude the hit movie from major Middle Eastern markets.
Countries expected to opt out of the “Barbie” experience include Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest market. The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Qatar and Bahrain also indicated they plan to defer.
Middle Eastern officials have demanded changes to the Warner Bros. film. Censors seek edits to “alleged LGBTQ-related narration and dialogue in ‘Barbie,'” according to Variety.
Since its domestic release on July 21, “Barbie” has been a box-office juggernaut.
In fact, “Barbie” cleared the $400 million domestic box-office threshold on Thursday, its 14th day of release and was closing in on the $1 billion mark globally at that time. This makes it the fastest Warner Bros. movie ever to surpass that mark, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
#Barbie will likely cross $1 BILLION today, on Greta Gerwig’s birthday. pic.twitter.com/xKuCiPHlGR
— Cinema Solace (@SolaceCinema) August 4, 2023
In non-woke circles, the film has received unflattering reviews at best. Some say it amounts to a hate-filled screed against the patriarchy.
I have not seen the movie and therefore have nothing to add on the subject of its content or message. If “Barbie” strikes non-woke viewers as insufferably woke, that impression will be more than enough to keep me away from a movie I had no intention of seeing in the first place.
Woke or otherwise, the producers of “Barbie” no doubt spent little time thinking about how to attract the middle-aged conservative male demographic.
On the other hand, they clearly do want to attract viewers in the Middle East. And therein we find the real story.
In fact, this story involves one of the most ironic aspects of the current woke assault on Western culture.
At the core of woke ideology lies the oppressor-victim narrative, an updated version of Marxism’s bourgeoisie-proletariat dichotomy. This simplistic woke worldview divides all human beings into one group or the other, based on factors unrelated to an individual’s character.
As a general rule, non-Westerners and non-Christians fall safely into the woke ideologue’s “victim” group.
Muslims, however, seem not to have received the message. They have not behaved like good non-Western victims of oppression should. They certainly have not shown the deference due to their woke liberators.
Furthermore, in some instances, Muslims and Christians have united against the woke LGBT agenda.
No true American endorses censorship. Better that individuals should reject a movie than that officials should ban it.
Still, if Middle Easterners wish to shield themselves from Western cultural rot, who can blame them?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
