The latest political scandal in France is just as absurd as it seems: residents of Muslim background had a free public screening of ‘Barbie’ shut down for being offensive to their cultural sensibilities, and anyone who thinks this is problematic is labeled an Islamophobic far-right extremist.
The incident happened in the ‘ethnically-diverse’ Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec, where the local council had the idea of providing free film screenings to poorer neighborhoods during the summer. The program would have been successful were it not for the apparently ‘poor’ movie choice for last weekend, featuring Greta Gerwig’s 2023 Oscar-winning feminist comedy Barbie.
After a group of around 15 Muslim youth threatened council workers and reportedly moved to destroy the equipment, local mayor Olivier Sarrabeyrouse ordered organizers to pull the plug and cancel the event.
“They [the youth] said the film promoted homosexuality and insulted the image of women,” Sarrabeyrouse said. The Communist mayor filed a criminal complaint, but also deplored the French Right for “hijacking” the story, declaring—somewhat ironically—that “there is no cultural no-go zone in Noisy-le-Sec.”
However, the first ones to condemn the locals’ intimidation campaign were among the representatives of the centrist government, who are on high alert for such incidents ever since the infamous intelligence report about the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence undermining France had been published a few months ago. As Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau summarized the findings of the report, “below-the-radar Islamism is trying to infiltrate institutions, whose ultimate aim is to tip the whole of French society under sharia law.”
For instance, Culture Minister Rachida Dati, herself a Muslim, called the canceling of Barbie “another serious attack depriving children and families of cultural activity.” Gender Equality Minister Aurore Bergé was even more direct, saying the incident was “not insignificant” but an example of hardline Muslim “attempts to infiltrate” and influence French social behavior. “They must be denounced systematically for what they are,” Begé added.
They were joined by Senator Valérie Boyer from the center-right Républicains (LR), who condemned the Communist mayor for submitting to “Islamist fundamentalists (who) exercise strong and effective social control in Noisy-le-Sec.”
Marine Le Pen’s national conservative opposition party, the Rassemblement National (RN), took an even tougher stance, with some comparing the commune to the fundamentalist-controlled Afghanistan.
“Preventing the screening of a film through physical pressure, and even threatening people’s safety, is obviously shocking,” said RN MEP Aleksandar Nikolic. “We are France, we must refuse this Talibanization of certain territories.”
For the left-wing opposition, however, the whole ‘Barbie saga’ is only about Islamophobia, starting with the Communist mayor of Noisy-le-Sec. Instead of owning up to his failure to say no to a loud minority, Sarrabeyrouse has been shifting the blame to the Right from the first moment, accusing even the government of pandering to the ‘far-right.’
“Let’s not be fooled,” the mayor said. “This is a dirty political maneuver… An incident at Noisy has been taken over by the far-right fringe to stigmatize a neighborhood.” The mayor added that he didn’t even disclose the religion of the attackers, as if it wasn’t clear for anyone taking one glance at the story.Barbie—a progressive story about female empowerment—has been banned in several Muslim-majority countries, including Kuwait, Algeria, and Lebanon, for being offensive to public morals. Sure, there might be a lot of Catholics who do not count it among their favorites either, but it’s pretty clear it wasn’t them who strongarmed the French commune into submission.
