Warner Bros. Knew Exactly What It Was Doing With That Racy French 'Barbie' Poster -- Here's Why

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Don't blame me. I'm not writing this stuff; I'm just copying it.

Warner Bros. Knew Exactly What It Was Doing With That Racy French ‘Barbie’ Poster — Here’s Why

Scott Roxborough
Thu, June 22, 2023 at 7:18 PM EDT · 3 min read



When a new international poster for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie movie hit the internet last week, it went viral, apparently for all the wrong reasons.

The French version of the poster looks innocuous enough. It features star Margot Robbie as the pink-clad doll-come-to-life and Ryan Gosling as her blond sidekick Ken. But the French tagline: “Elle peut tout faire. Lui, c’est juste Ken” — meaning “She can do everything. He’s just Ken” — has an NSFW double-entendre meaning in French slang, where ken is another word for “fuck.” So the tagline becomes: “She knows how to do everything. He just knows how to fuck.”

Read like this, Gerwig’s PG-13 comedy satire becomes an R-rated raunchy sex comedy. ... The internet, being the internet, lapped this up. Several French Twitter users tweeted photos of the posters with comments on the “accidental” or “unfortunate” translation. Naturally, it went viral, with some of the original tweets getting viewed millions of times.

Lui, c’est juste Ken



Just why this is so hilarious for French speakers takes some explaining. In the so-called “verlan” slang, which first became popular in the 1980s, French words are given a new meaning by switching the order in which the syllables are pronounced. Tomber (to fall) becomes be-ton (concrete). In this case, forniquer or its shortened version, niquer (to fuck) becomes queni or keni, which over time has been shortened to just ken. ... Then, in the Barbie tagline, “Lui, c’est juste Ken” changes its meaning because c’est (he is) and sait (he knows how) are homophones. “He is just Ken” becomes “He just knows how to fuck.”

In France, the Barbie poster drew little shock and indignation — it takes more than a raunchy pun to startle La Grande Nation — and, initially, most French speakers assumed the double entendre was the result of a bad, or a too-literal translation. But the pun was so obvious — ken as slang for “fuck” is common parlance for anyone under 30 in France — many began to suspect the poster’s NSFW message was a deliberate act of guerrilla marketing.

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[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Huh, Ken is way hornier in the French poster for Barbie

Huh, Ken is way hornier in the French poster for Barbie

Whether it's a deliberate double-entendre or bad translation, Ken is claiming a very specific skillset in the French posters for Barbie

By William Hughes | Published Yesterday

Warner Bros. has been pushing the “Ken-ergy” angle pretty hard ahead of the upcoming release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, emphasizing the affable, toned doofus nature of Ryan Gosling’s Ken. But the French marketing for the film has pushed the definition of that nebulous-but-hunky concept even further, it turns out—in what may, or may not, have been a very deliberate direction.

This is per THR—truly, your one-stop shop for all French fornication slang—which reports on an online hubbub surrounding the French posters for Gerwig’s movie, which declare “Elle peut tout faire. Lui, c’est juste Ken.” (Literally, “She can do everything. He’s just Ken.” All well and good, and pretty close to the film’s English tagline. Except, guess what, “ken” has a very specific double-meaning in French slang—which means that the poster also translates to “She can do everything. He just knows how to fuck.”

{snip}

[Ocelot II]

2. It's especially funny when you consider that the original Ken - the doll -

has no naughty bits with which to do that.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. French twitter losing its mind right now because they translated the Barbie poster literally and ...

French twitter losing its mind right now because they translated the Barbie poster literally and accidentally made a pun that reads ‘She knows how to do everything. He just knows how to f*ck.’

RIP AUX ANGLOPHONES PARCE QUE LE JEU DE MOTS AVEC KEN EST INCROYAAAAABLE

Link to tweet