Barbie: the sexual allusion of the French poster does not go unnoticed

Even in the United States, the public is amused by the double meaning of “Ken”.

In addition to making a funny nod to a cult photo of Barbra Streisand hiding the face of her partner Elliott Gould, sitting on her shoulders in a bathing suit, the new poster of Barbie has a double hook that takes on an unexpected meaning when read aloud: “She can do anything”we see next to the doll played by Margot Robbie. “He’s just Ken.”specifies this visual about the character of Ryan Gosling.

Ryan Gosling too old to play Ken? “It’s hypocrisy”

It was well worth the star reminding the public that without genitals, Barbie and Ken logically don’t have never made loveif it is to then promote a film whose male hero “just knows ken”, amuse the Internet users. Was this promotional item deliberately designed? Or the subtlety of the double meaning of the word “Ken” has it escaped the marketing department of Warner Bros?

The poster in question was relayed so much by French-speakers this week on social networks that the studio was challenged by The Hollywood Reporter about this question. If no one has officially reacted, the American site publishes a long text explanation, detailing how the French are followers of the “verlan” since the 1980s. “In our case, ‘fornicate’ in its short version became ‘fuck’and of ‘queni’ Or ‘keni’, got shortened again to ‘ken’. (…) For everyone under 30 in France, ‘ken’ means fuck in common parlance.”
After such a French lesson, the subtleties of our language no longer hold any secrets for Americans!

THR goes even further by questioning the transformation of the tagline between the VO (“Barbie is everything. He’s just Ken.”) and its VF, which goes from “Barbie is Everything” To “She can do anything.” and which allows to drift towards “He’s just Ken” with some fluidity. “It’s deliberate, that’s for surereacts an anonymous interlocutor working for the marketing department of a competing studio based in France. It is impossible for a Frenchman not to notice the salacious double meaning. It’s genius, by the way, to have slipped that.”

The Hollywood site concludes with the words of a spokesperson for Warner Bros Discovery, who, if he does not want to react directly to the double meaning of the poster, recognizes that his enormous sharing on social networks is beneficial for creating the buzz around Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster: “All the discussions around the marketing campaign of Barbie show that there is a high level of expectation for this film from the public in France, where everyone knows it exists. We can’t wait for viewers around the world to experience it when it releases next month.”

Barbie will actually be released on July 19 at the cinema. Here is its trailer:

Barbie – the movie: a Matrix with glitter?