2023-08-02 02:23:58
Memes about the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, the name given to the Simultaneous premiere of the films “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”are making the Japanese population indignant.
The movement took over social media at the end of July, a few weeks before the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombings against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which caused more than 210,000 deaths on August 6 and 9, 1945.
Some images, for example, show characters from the doll movie in front of a mushroom cloud, caused by the explosion of this type of bomb.
With disgust, Japanese netizens were quick to respond to the jokes on social media. “You should visit the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima and find out about what happened. It is one of the most serious crimes against humanity,” wrote one user in English.
“We Japanese will never forget that summer,” wrote another, adding images of children’s clothing burned among the rubble caused by the atomic bomb.
Official account tweet and Japanese retaliation
In addition to the negative reaction from Japanese netizens, the controversy took on even greater proportions when the official American account of “Barbie” responded on Twitter – now known as X – to one of the memes, saying: “It will be an unforgettable summer”.
The message seems to have been deleted since its publication, but it did not go unnoticed by the Japanese division of Warner Bros., the studio responsible for producing the feature film about the doll. On Monday, the branch classified the tweet from the American account as “inconsiderate”, and demanded an adequate response from the studios’ headquarters in the USA.
Apart from all the previously mentioned negative repercussions, the “Barbenheimer” memes provoked a kind of “revenge” on the part of the Japanese, who started making jokes about the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
American netizens, however, mocked the attempt. “Japanese Twitter decided to ‘make fun’ of 9/11 – totally ignoring the fact that Americans love 9/11 jokes,” said one Twitter user, who also posted two of the Japanese-created memes. “We don’t take things seriously around here buddy,” wrote another.
The movie “Barbie” will open in Japan on August 11. Already “Oppenheimer” has no release date in the archipelago, where Western films often arrive several months after their release.
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