2 Aug - Warner Bros. Japan has expressed frustration over the tone-deaf memes about "Barbenheimer", the portmanteau of the two movies, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" that have been shared on Twitter for the past week. In a statement released by its official Twitter account, the studio expressed, "We consider it extremely regrettable that the official account of the American headquarters for the movie 'Barbie' reacted to the social media postings of 'Barbenheimer' fans. We take this situation very seriously."
"We are asking the US headquarters to take appropriate action. We apologise to those who were offended by this series of inconsiderate reactions. Warner Bros Japan."
Japanese netizens recently slammed the official Twitter account of "Barbie" for responding positively to a series of "Barbenheimer" memes, where Barbie's character is mashed up with the atomic bomb effect from the Christopher Nolan's biopic, "Oppenheimer". The hashtag "NoBarbenheimer" had since been trending in the country, with Japanese netizens reminding people that thousands perished in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and thus such an event should not be trivialised and turned into a joke. Twitter also added a community note to highlight the issue, saying, "At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945 (Showa 20), an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima for the first time in human history. The particular nature of the damage caused by the atomic bombs is that mass destruction and mass murder occurred instantaneously and indiscriminately."