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After Vietnam, the Philippines could be next to ban 'Barbie.' Here's why
- chabad360 3y agoIronically, it seems said line only has 8 dashes in the shot from the movie.
- ratg13 3y agoWhy would you expect to see a perfect number of dashes on a map that is obviously not a direct representation of anything? If your base requirement is that propaganda be obvious, you’re never going to be able to discern propaganda when you see it. If you were inserting the nine dash line into a map like this, you would want some plausible deniability. It’s not about the number of dashes, it’s about what the depiction is meant to represent.
- mcphage 3y agoPart of the problem for people here is, dashed lines on maps do mean something. They're very common, and their meaning in the US is widely understood. Especially when maps are used in movies, it's long since been a cliché (and leads to one of the best jokes in "The Emperor's New Groove").
- lordnacho 3y agoHow does it make any sense? The map in the trailer is obviously nonsense, complete gibberish that's meant to be gibberish. Why would a random dashed line be the one they don't like to talk about?
- tehnub 3y agoThere's also a dashed line coming off of, Greenland is it? I'm not aware of anything that might refer to... Maybe the person who drew that map intended to evoke possible routes with those dashed lines.
- philwelch 3y agoPerhaps this is a highly sensitive topic in Southeast Asia and even an oblique, plausibly deniable allusion to it comes across very offensively. There are similarly highly sensitive topics in the US.
- psiops 3y agoCould you give some examples of topics that would result in a US ban? I can't think of any topic given the allusion is equally laughably obscure as this (if it is even an allusion at all).
- philwelch 3y agoThe US doesn’t have the legal power to ban films due to the First Amendment, but there are definitely ideas that are so politically radioactive that any sort of veiled allusion to them (a common term is “dogwhistle”) can create massive backlash. So much so that even giving a concrete example would risk causing a massive tangential flame war, so I won’t risk it.
- chaostheory 3y agoBecause many borders in Asia are still in dispute, similar to how Europe was prior to WWI.
- throwaway2990 3y agoMostly just China encroaching on borders.
- lordnacho 3y agoYes but it's not a map of Asia, it's a blob that says Asia on it. It doesn't look like Asia, and it doesn't have any of the countries on it. How can you mistake it for someone's opinion about the real world borders?
- rob74 3y ago...and the "nine-dash line" actually has 8 dashes and doesn't delimit anything (like the "nine-dash-line" does with the part of sea claimed by China), it just kinda aimlessly snakes around there. Still, with digital distribution, is it so hard to simply edit the line out? Or would China be offended then?
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y agoI can assure that whatever shithole company produces this has a make-china-happy department, which has a checklist of best practices, and that checklist will have an item roughly like: "any time there's a map on the screen, do one of the following..." Red Carpet, by Eric Schwartz.
- chaostheory 3y agoBecause it’s an emotional issue in Asia. Logic takes a back seat like with Taiwan
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago[flagged]
- ainiriand 3y ago'Let it be known that maps shall not contain dotted or dashed lines in the count of nine. Nine dots or dashes shall not be allowed in order to protect the sovereignty of our waters. Seven or ten is fine but not nine or dangerousely close to nine, like eight for example.'
- 2-718-281-828 3y agois that a riff of that crazy guy monologue in life of brian?
- nazgulsenpai 3y agoI was thinking more the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch
- 2-718-281-828 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk&t=89s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk&t=89s
- King-Aaron 3y agoFive is right out!
- comprev 3y agoor 10, for example
- Yizahi 3y agoThat's even worse. 10 dash maps also claim whole independent Taiwan as a China property.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cornfutes 3y ago> However, the outlet said, Vietnam and the Philippines aren't negligible markets, where a Hollywood hit "can earn anywhere from $5 million to over $10 million in each country." I'm wondering if the firms already calculated that appeasing China brings in more than $10 million.
- sundvor 3y agoUnlike Maverick, where the scenes of the authentic jacket were ultimately worth sacrificing the entire Chinese market. That was a proper Taiwan patch though, rather than these vague dots. Respect.
- rottencupcakes 3y agoAre you kidding? They removed the Taiwan and Japan patches in the first trailer to try to see if China would bite. China was never going to allow a movie that made the American military look so damn cool. Then they put the patches back after the writing was on the wall. Money over everything.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago>China was never going to allow a movie that made the American military look so damn cool. Even in Europe I saw they're not that comfortable with it. In Austria they had recruitment posters ads outside the theater entrance and they played ads about joining the Austrian airforce before the movie, to try convince you to join the Austrian airforce so you can fly the only two functioning Eurofighter Typhoons in service lol. China did their own Top Gun movie featuring their own Chendu jets.
- perihelions 3y agoThat's fair: there's not exactly a US market enthusiastic for "cool" Chinese military propaganda films either. Budget: $200,000,000 (estimated) Gross US & Canada: $342,411 Opening weekend US & Canada: $105,768 Gross worldwide: $902,548,476 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13462900/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13462900/ ("The Battle at Lake Changjin" (2021))
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoThat's a really bad map but the 8 dashed line looks more like Japan and the Philippines to me. The "handle" on the bottom right of "Asia" is then Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua in one blob to the north west of Australia
- irrational 3y agoDo we know who made the map for the movie and have they had anything to say about what the dashed line is?
- midoridensha 3y agoWhat exactly is this controversy about? There's a claim that a map in the trailer shows the 9-dash line, but I read the article, and looked at the screenshot shown in the article, and all I see behind the girl is a bunch of colorful blobs that don't resemble any world map I've ever seen.
- WinstonSmith84 3y agoExactly my thoughts. These censors have much more imaginations than we have. The best I could see is actually a 8 (not 9) dash line right of "Asia" and below a hashtag (whatever that is)
- otherme123 3y agoAsia + dash line is obviously a deliberate message on a very controversial subject. Saying that "you are imagining it all, it's all in your minds" is gaslightning them. No way this is an accident or a mistake. For them, the dash line is as iconic as sporting the Hitler moustache, or having 1488 personalized plates on a car. You can't claim you didn't know.
- WinstonSmith84 3y agoI'm not saying "you are imagining it all", just that one needs a lot of imagination. If I were Africa, I'd be offended to look like a melting ice cream. As for Europe, can't even see it on the map. Gone? As for Russia, the largest country on earth, it looks more like it's already belonging to "Asia" (good work Xi!), or if it's that small red country on the left of Asia, then I'd be very offended to look that small. Where is Japan anyway, is that the hashtag (#)?
- mcphage 3y agoI think that Asia is actually rotated 90º, and that the panhandle pointing down is actually the Kamchatka peninsula. So Japan sunk into the sea and is represented by the waves.
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- akiselev 3y agoThe map is obviously ridiculous to begin with so I’m curious why it couldn’t just be a bunch of Foreign Ministry staff having a laugh while flexing their diplomatic muscle a little bit. It’s not like they have many other avenues to counteract growing Chinese geopolitical influence. Think about the easter eggs found in all manner of serious software put in by engineers for a joke. I think anyone in Vietnam can easily pirate it if they actually want to see the movie so there’s little actual damage, as long as they don’t care about the economic impact at the box office.
- slashtab 3y agoIt's not about what people in Vietnam see and how much money it loses. It's about message it sends, you can't simply push an agenda and get away with it.
- Sakos 3y agoPeople here don't generally understand politics, much less geopolitics.
- Yizahi 3y agoOh, we quite understand gEoPoLiTiCs, we are hearing it our whole lives from the incompetent wannabe empires propaganda across the border. It's when small countries doesn't matter, and individual humans doesn't even register on the radar. The only thing that matters to gEoPoLiTiCiAnS is "duo-polar world", "power projection", and aggressive annextaion of neighbors property in hopes either securing lebensraum for themselves or just sowing chaos and unrest to spite everyone. "To spite the bourgeois, we will fan the world fire"(c) Lenin classic rule, used till today by gEoPoLiTiCiAnS.
- Sakos 3y agoGeopolitics affect all of us, particularly the "small" countries (and they matter too, because everybody deserves to live in security and free of oppression from neighboring states). Whether you want to recognize it or not. The fact that you want to paint it as propaganda just shows how ignorant you are about the world. Read a book or two instead of wasting our time.
- defrost 3y agoI wrote some code once, implemented it, took it on trial to marine survey the Spratly Islands in the early 1990s. Fun times, got stopped by gun boats from multiple nations, swamped by monsoon, had to listen to a nerous BP observer bang on about pirates. For background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line
- xNeil 3y agoSounds absolutely awesome haha. Mind if I ask what your job was at the time? What were your interactions with the gun boats like? What exactly were you surveying in the Spratly Islands? Did you ever run into pirates?
- defrost 3y agoSoftware developer for a land based mine planning company branching out into ocean based exploration software. Interactions with gun boats were stop, talk, stand aside while people wander about, passport inspections, and (allegedly!) envelopes of cash and stacks of soft core magazines disapeared (after being left out). If you check the Spratly Dispute link we're talking Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Borneo, etc. anybody with an interest. Often with Russian, US, UK observers | advisors from major petro companies. Survey wise; Sea floor, subsea floor layers (for petro exploration), tidal movements. Logging:- GPS, Differential GPS, LORAN, multichannel returns from streamer arrays (seismic) - building real time corrected 3D imaging on the fly. Never saw a pirate, did often observe a sea of bobbing lights after dusk as "sea gypsy" ([1] et al) fisherfolk went out to catch squid in the dark. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sama-Bajau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sama-Bajau Maps showing borders are best avoided in disputed areas - just map the physical earth forms and leave poltical boundaries off if you want to avoid trouble. I had the same issue in the disputed areas between Pakistan and India - not the place to travel with a map showing boundaries, someone will always disagree with any line drawn.
- yieldcrv 3y agoOkay that’s hilarious! Something nobody over here cares about (or nobody that matters cares about) scribbled down like a 4 year old just got the executives infinite social credit points and a $100 million dollars. And Beijing doesn't even notice this is the most insulting way to cater to them, that’s so funny. Reminds me of that time an American got the nearest nomads to watch some oil for a moment and then split the proceeds with them for the next 60 years while the nomads got to run a sovereign monarchy with all the money. Americans dgaf! Goated.
- nathias 3y agoI think people forgot what legitimization means a few generations ago...
- NhanH 3y agoI am Vietnamese, some context followed. The map looks indeed ridiculous. And I don't know if the movie was trying to appeal to China, or whether it was actually some misguided sarcasm, but the whole dashed-line isn't just some small controversy. It is a big deal, if not the deal for the whole area. Just last year, Uncharted (another AAA movie I believed) was also banned by both Vietnam and Philippines. At this point, if your movie is banned due to this issue, I don't think it was accidental anymore. This is the third hundred-million dollars movie that was banned for this reason just in the past few years. I have no opinion on whether movie should try to avoid the issue itself, but I do think it's justifiable and non-surprising (ie. it's good) that the government bans the movie. Geopolitics is both hard and weird, and being consistent is good.
- fxtentacle 3y ago"The White House said on Monday that recent encounters between U.S. and Chinese forces in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea reflect a growing aggressiveness by Beijing's military that raises the risk of an error in which somebody gets hurt." https://www.reuters.com/world/china-russia-launch-joint-air-patrol-amid-asia-pacific-tensions-2023-06-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china-russia-launch-joint-air-... That dotted line is not just a claim, it's where Chinese gunships will patrol and where Chinese bombers do exercise flights. I am actually surprised that the US government is so happy to tolerate large US companies completely undermining their own geopolitical position just to increase profits, like with Blizzard. "The public's response, which included a boycott and a letter from United States Congress representatives to Activision Blizzard, prompted Blizzard to reduce the punishment, but not to eliminate it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy I believe what all those movies and the Blizzard incident show is that the dream of large profits from China appears to be extremely successful at influencing US companies to help with China's agenda. And the US government appears to be not too successful at preventing that. Also, there is some history w.r.t. that line in movies and on merchandise: "In pursuit of this goal, China uses any means it can to promote the visibility of the nine-dash line, displaying it on passports, maps, exported globes, movies, books, online games, clothing, tourist leaflets, booklets, television shows, and more. A case in point—in October 2019, a nine-dash map was visible in “Abominable,” an animated family movie jointly produced by China-based Pearl Studio and America’s DreamWorks Animation. In 2018, a group of Chinese tourists wearing T-shirts with a nine-dash line drawing arrived in Vietnam." https://amti.csis.org/science-journals-a-new-frontline-in-the-south-china-sea-disputes/ https://amti.csis.org/science-journals-a-new-frontline-in-th... That means in my opinion, this is mostly the CCP showing off their political clout. "Look we can make them include our line!"
- willvarfar 3y agoAlso in the news today, the kpop band Blackpink just got into trouble for showing a map with the dotted line at a concert in Vietnam https://www.bbc.com/news/66129777 https://www.bbc.com/news/66129777
- NicoJuicy 3y agoLet the West ban that movie too, it won't happen again.