A super PAC dedicated to defeating Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is poking fun at his recent criticism of the upcoming “Barbie” film, releasing a mock commercial purporting to sell the new “Ted Cruz doll collection.”
“Introducing the Ted Cruz doll collection. That’s right. The senator more focused on Barbie than his own job now has his own line of toys inspired by his work,” begins the fake commercial, which was posted to Twitter on Thursday by the Lose Cruz super PAC.
The video then provides examples of some of the mock Barbie dolls in the collection, and each focuses on politically sensitive issues for the Texas senator, who is up for reelection next year.
“You can get ‘Insurrection Barbie’: Play at the podium as you try to destroy democracy. Try ‘Podcaster Barbie’: With your recording studio, you can promote the MAGA agenda. And everyone’s favorite, ‘Cancun Barbie’: Grab your luggage and hop on a plane to avoid your responsibilities. Get your Ted Cruz Barbie doll today,” the video continued.
The attack ad comes as one of the summer’s hottest Hollywood films has faced some backlash after a trailer for the film briefly depicted a map containing what some see as the “nine-dash line” of the South China Sea — a marker China has used to assert its territorial claims to that area. A 2016 United Nations tribunal declared those claims invalid under international law.
Cruz and others have sounded the alarm about the film, which he has described as advancing Chinese propaganda.
“China wants to control what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think, and they leverage their massive film markets to coerce American companies into pushing Chinese Communist Party propaganda — just like the way the Barbie film seems to have done with the map,” a spokesperson for Cruz said.
Vietnam banned the film because of the map, while the Philippines ultimately decided against banning it.
“Considering the context by which the cartoonish map of the character ‘Weird Barbie’ was portrayed in the film, the Review Committee is convinced that the contentious scene does not depict the ‘nine-dash line,’” the Philippine government’s Movie and Television Review and Classification Board said in a statement.
“Instead, the map portrayed the route of the make-believe journey of Barbie from Barbie Land to the ‘real world,’ as an integral part of the story,” the statement continued.
A spokesperson for Warner Bros. Film Group also dismissed claims that the map contained the nine-dash line, telling Variety, “The map in Barbie Land is a child-like crayon drawing,” and adding, “The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the ‘real world.’ It was not intended to make any type of statement.”