Barbenheimer Memes Provoke Angry Backlash in Japan
Barbenheimer Memes Provoke Angry Backlash in Japan
Warner Bros. Japan apologizes after the U.S. Twitter account for the movie promotes posts that appear to make light of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Warner Bros. Japan apologizes after the U.S. Twitter account for the movie promotes posts that appear to make light of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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This is one of the reasons it’s so weird and toxic to have brands posting on social media as if they were just “fellow users”.
If a random user posts some Barbenheimer content, I can grant that person the dignity of being a full human who probably has complex, conflicting feelings about the Manhattan Project, and some kind of ironic detachment yet fascination with the existence of the Barbie movie.
If WB posts (or comments on) it, there’s really no room for nuance. They want engagement, they want money. If there is (or was) irony or self-criticism embedded in the content, that fact is only incidental.
So then WB gets rightfully scorned for casually dismissing war crimes to get more attention to their properties.
But where does that leave the rest of us?
Cuz the implication is that individuals shouldn’t be posting Barbenheimer stuff, either… but that doesn’t feel right.
There’s something culturally meaningful to this meme, that we probably shouldn’t quash — but it also shouldn’t be crudely leveraged for profit.
Some of the backlash cited in the article seems out of touch, this in particular:
User @akishmz tweeted: “Summer to remember that to the Barbie film team and to Hollywood more than 200,000 death by the end of 1945 (and half a million so far) by two atrocious bombs are something they feel comfortable joking about to promote their precious summer blockbuster.”
I must have missed the part where these memes are making jokes about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Very well said.