Depending on whom you ask, the cancellation of a free screening of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie earlier this month in a suburb east of Paris is either a nothingburger whipped up by the hard Right, or a symptom of the increasing strength of political lslamism in France. It’s also a welcome mid-August media distraction at a time when 90% of the news comes from faraway countries of which most of the French know little.

The incident took place in the historically Left-wing commune of Noisy-le-Sec, whose lacklustre Communist Mayor, Olivier Sarrabeyrouse, had set up free outdoors screenings of popular movies for residents. Following an online vote, Barbie triumphed, pipping Kung Fu Panda into second place. As municipal workers were setting up a large screen for the 8 August show, a group of roughly 10 to 15 young men surrounded them, threatening to break the projectors and claiming the 2023 film promoted “homosexuality” and “undermined the integrity of women”.

Sarrabeyrouse responded by denouncing “an act of obscurantism and fundamentalism instrumentalised for political purposes” — though he was careful not to be too specific about these political purposes. While he filed a police complaint for “threats, violence, or acts of intimidation against a public service official”, the Mayor still caved in by pulling the movie altogether. And as soon as public anger grew, Sarrabeyrouse accused the “racist, Islamophobic” French far Right of “hijack[ing]” the row.

It’s hard not to mention, at this stage, that Noisy’s population now includes a large number of French Muslim voters (French law, while allowing statistics on foreigners and children of foreign parents, forbids ethnic and religious statistics), and that municipal elections will be held nationwide next April. France’s once-powerful Communist Party, now a shadow of its former self, still professes its traditional secularism (Laïcité républicaine); but its strongholds are under constant threat from Jean-Luc Mélenchon. His La France Insoumise has focused on courting the Muslim community as part of its anti-Western, anti-capitalist platform.

On the Right, the sight of France’s supposedly feminist and universalist Left meekly kowtowing to prejudice against “bikinis”, “feminised men” and pink-clad actors has been welcomed enthusiastically. A viral meme showing “Noisy-le-Sec Barbie”, a burka-clad doll under a pink Mattel blister, has been shared enthusiastically. Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Bruno Retailleau, eager to build a case for a splashy resignation from the Bayrou cabinet later this year, interrupted his holidays to give interviews in which he thundered that “it [was] unacceptable to yield to communitarian pressure from violent minorities seeking to ‘halalise’ the public space.” National Rally MP Valérie Boyer chimed in, claiming — with some justice — that the generational divide within the Muslim community showed radical Islamist inroads among the young.

There are still two weeks to go until the rentrée; statements given, everyone has returned to their beach or mountain of choice. But the Battle of Barbie will have added its pink mite to the extreme polarisation that spells the predictable fall of the unpopular Bayrou government, probably before Christmas. Then, we can expect a new period of uncertainty in French politics.

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Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is a Paris-based journalist and political commentator.

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