With the Barbie trailer , especially the second one, drawing a lot of positive attention it turns out the poster for the film is proving so be drawing attention for different reasons. Well we say the poster, we mean specifically the French Barbie poster.
It looks innocuous on first look with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken but it’s the tagline that has proved controversial “Elle peut tout faire. Lui, c’est juste Ken”. Now an O level in French means we can translate it as “She can do everything. He’s just Ken” but in French the phrase has a different meaning altogether as ‘ken’ is French slang for ‘F**k’ so with that in mind the tagline now becomes “She knows how to do everything. He just knows how to f**k.” So does that mean that the seemingly obvious parody now becomes a saucy comedy?
Unsurprisingly it’s gone viral in France with many thinking it was a too literal translation but for those under 30 who are only too famikliar with such slang it seems a bit too obvious and deliberate for that. The English tagline on the posters is “Barbie is everything. He’s just Ken.” Whereas the translation of the French line is Barbie can do everything which feeds naturally into the Ken line suggesting that it is indeed deliberate. Either way its certainly causing a bud and heightens expectation for the film and let’s be fair Margot and Ryan are dream casting for a film that looks to be one of the highlights of summer.
Related feature: Ryan Gosling’s brutal ‘Drive’
related feature; European premiere of, ‘Amsterdam’ – Margot Robbie, Christian Bale. Rami Malek & Andrea Riseborough !
