Barbie movie banned in Kuwait & possibly Lebanon for “promoting” homosexuality

The Barbie movie has officially been banned in Kuwait as the film continues to cause a stir across the Middle East.

Kuwait’s Ministry for Press and Publication, Lafy Al-Subei, explained that the film – along with the horror film Talk To Me starring trans actor Zoe Terakes, which was simultaneously banned – “promulgate[s] ideas and beliefs that are alien to the Kuwaiti society and public order.”

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Conservatives lose their minds over “Barbie” movie calling it “psychological grooming”

One male rightwing pundit said that the movie should have stuck to what made Barbie successful: “childbearing” and “homemaking.”

He went on to explain that the country often censors scenes from foreign films that “run counter to public ethics,” but that sometimes films carry “alien concepts’ or “unacceptable behavior” that leads them to be completely banned.

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Al-Subei did not mention that LGBTQ+ themes specifically led to Barbie being banned, but other Middle Eastern countries have made their concerns about homosexuality in the film more clear. The cultural minister of Lebanon, Mohammad Mortada, reportedly said the film promotes “homosexuality and sexual transformation.” He has requested the film be banned, though the Interior Ministry has not yet made a decision.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, will begin showing the film on August 31, after the release date was pushed back a month while officials contemplated what needed to be censored from the film. An unnamed source told Variety that the censorship requests were related to LGBTQ+-related content in the film.

The PG-13 film features transgender actor Hari Nef and lesbian comedian Kate McKinnon. It also demonstrates a campy sensibility, including a bright pink dream world filled with fashion-obsessed men and women. However, despite a low-brow joke about two men threatening to “beach each other off” and a few queer-encoded minor characters, the film has very little overtly queer content.

This is not the first time Middle Eastern censors have banned LGBTQ+ content from playing in regional cinemas.

Pixar’s 2022 animated Toy Story spinoff film Lightyear was banned from playing in Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait, and other West Asian nations because of a scene showing a lesbian kiss. Saudi Arabian audiences weren’t allowed to watch Marvel’s 2022 action-adventure film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness due to its inclusion of a same-sex female couple.

Other banned titles include the 2021 Marvel film Eternals which included a brief same-sex kiss, the 2021 musical drama West Side Story because of a transgender character, the 2019 space action film Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker because of a lesbian kiss in the background, and Disney’s 2017 live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast which featured a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it “gay moment” of two men dancing at the film’s very end.

In the United States, the film has caused conservatives to lose their minds. One anti-LGBTQ+ broadcaster, Ben Shapiro, was so triggered by the film that he made a 43-minute “review” of the film in which he set fire to his Barbie dolls in protest.