Unlike the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, Barbie failed to grab the attention of the Academy when it came to the Oscar nominations this year. Despite its record-breaking box office run, the Academy seemed less than infatuated by the tale of men in suits losing control of a world full of women. Ironic? I think so.
The truth is, despite the inclinations of seemingly half the internet, Barbie’s Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig did not deserve Oscar nominations. The job of the Oscar, but also many Film and Television Awards in general, is not to congratulate those for pushing boundaries and breaking records – it’s to celebrate cinema. Great direction, great acting. Barbie was neither Gerwig or Robbie’s magnum opus. Greta already has Lady Bird solidified as her piece de resistance despite only a 4 film-strong portfolio. Margot Robbie I strongly believe will have her chef d’œuvre reveal itself in the near future. But Barbie was no one’s artistic masterpiece apart from, according to the Academy, Ken himself.
It’s easy to be annoyed at Barbie’s snub at Best Directing and Best Actress, but you shouldn’t be surprised, or outraged. Perhaps it’s evidence that Barbie’s central moral wasn’t strong enough to hold. If it’s not clear already, I wasn’t a fan of Barbie. And having watched it a few more times over the past month (I’ve been bored on a lot of flights), I can still say that it annoyed me just as much as the first time. But I think people are getting confused. It’s not a great movie, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a good movie. It’s not a movie that is going to sweep the award’s season, because it’s not catering to those with the deciding power. It’s appealing to us, as general viewers, as women, as sisters, nieces, and children. Unless a movie is directly catering to the Academy (a group of people dedicated to cinema), it’s not going to get the recognition many of us as the casual viewers feel it deserves. To win an Oscar, especially for Best Directing, it has to take direct inspiration from the cinematic legacy the Academy has previously awarded. Barbie essentially needed to kiss the Academy’s signet ring.
But Barbie’s supposed snub is not a step back from the progress we’ve seen in the feminist movement. In fact, with a movie such as Barbie, I certainly feel as if the other nominations and awards it has already received come from a place of performativity. It wasn’t Oscar-bait, and thus was never going to win an Oscar. Despite its colossal success, it didn’t deserve to either. Barbie, to me, was just a long explanation of what it feels like to be a woman. If you needed a movie about a plastic doll to explain to you the feminine condition, then I get why you’d want to give it an Oscar. I, however, feel looking in the mirror is cheaper.
Barbie was not snubbed, the Oscars just didn’t engage in the performative allyship we’ve seen in the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards. Its nomination for Best Picture was the understandable and correct choice, especially considering it became the highest-grossing film by a female Director. It was some of Ryan Gosling’s best work (I will die on the hill that Crazy, Stupid Love is his magnum opus), and America Ferrera’s handling of her role as Gloria was a true testament to her professional legacy, and I’m personally overjoyed to see her impact on cinema finally being recognised and celebrated. It also received nominations in five other categories, amassing a total of eight for 2024: Best Picture; Best Supporting Actress; Best Supporting Actor; Best Adapted Screenplay; Costume Design; Production Design; and two nominations for Best Original Song. In short, Barbie got what it deserved. If you’re angry that Barbie was “snubbed”, I ask you, who’s places should Gerwig and Robbie take? Are you ignoring the long-awaited first nomination for a Native American woman (a triumph for feminist cinematography) because your favourite film about your childhood dolls lost out on a couple awards? Take the time you would have spent celebrating Barbie and celebrate women like Lily Gladstone instead. If you want proof Barbie’s “snub” was purely based on the film, rather than the feminist message, look no further than the onslaught of nominations Emma Stone’s Poor Things has received, a film arguably just as feminist as Gerwig’s.
It is important to remember that, had Barbie been nominated for Best Directing and Best Actress, it would have stripped other more deserving women of their chance for recognition. Anette Bening was arguably given what was considered Margot Robbie’s “spot” for Best Actress, and having trained eight hours a day for Nyad I’d say the nomination was rightly deserved, despite it certainly being a surprise. Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet was Best Directing’s surprise, but after having won the Palm D’Or at Cannes and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes, I’m excited to see another international (and female) director get recognition on a stage not built to recognise them.
All of this argument and discourse of course won’t matter in the long-run. It is once again expected that Oppenheimer, a movie about men and for boys, will sweep the Oscars just like the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, and the deserving nominations for great women like Greta Lee for Past Lives and Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon will go forgotten. This is despite, in my opinion, Oppenheimer owing a large chunk of its popularity to the “Barbenheimer” trend that urged people to the cinema in droves for the first time since the pandemic. It’s a year of big players, and any win for movies such as The Holdovers, Poor Things, May December and The Boy and the Heron over Barbie would be justly deserved. The biggest snub of the night of course goes to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’s nomination for Best Original Score over Across the Spider-verse. Absolutely criminal.
This year’s nominations were not a snub to women, and arguing so is ignoring the nominations of female directors and actresses that I believe were stronger contenders than Gerwig and Robbie. Yes, Barbie was a feminist film, but it was also a silly little movie (as demonstrated by the Chevrolet advertisement intermission). It’s a movie that I think lost its purpose along the way, and so to take it more seriously than self-assured, objectively better movies is not being a feminist – it’s being stuck in your ways.