Yesterday the Academy introduced the nominees for the 2024 Oscars, and Barbie did very well for itself. Finest Tailored Screenplay! Two authentic music nods! Ryan Gosling for Finest Supporting Actor and America Ferrera for Finest Supporting Actress! A Best Picture nomination! However alas, this has confirmed to not the truth is be sufficient in an unhinged approach.
Nearly instantly because the mud settled on the nominations reveal, commentators have seemed to the truth that each star Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig didn’t make their approach into the Finest Actress and Finest Director classes. Many parallels have been made between the film’s commentary on patriarchy and the actual fact its male star noticed recognition, in fact, in addition to the truth that Ferrera earned a Finest Supporting Actress nod for her position within the film—centered round her huge climactic speech within the movie in regards to the duality of girls’s place in society. All completely effective, thus far. However all of a sudden, it appears, that has within the house of a day spun out right into a commentary that the Academy has, one way or the other, destroyed movie and feminism in equal measure with its nomination selections.
Assume items have been cast within the fires of discourse hell, idle ribbing has changed into hysteria. Not less than the solid and crew concerned with the movie have been far more measured of their feedback over the perceived slight. “I’m extraordinarily honored to be nominated by my colleagues alongside such exceptional artists in a yr of so many nice movies. And I by no means thought I’d being saying this, however I’m additionally unbelievable honored and proud that it’s for portraying a plastic doll named Ken,” Ryan Gosling stated in an announcement launched after his nomination. “However there is no such thing as a Ken with out Barbie, and there’s no Barbie film with out Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the 2 folks most accountable for this history-making, globally-celebrated movie.”
“Greta has completed nearly all the pieces {that a} director might do to deserve it,” Ferrera advised Variety. “Creating this world, and taking one thing that didn’t have inherent worth to most individuals and making it a world phenomenon. It feels disappointing to not see her on that record.”
These are all completely amicable issues to say in statements about their very own respective nominations, however the rising concept that folks hooked up to Barbie have to come back out and deal with the purported snubbing is bizarre in context. Barbie took eight nominations at this yr’s Oscars, and several other of these nominations are the truth is for each Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie.
Gerwig is credited alongside fellow screenwriter and companion Noah Baumbach for the Finest Tailored Screenplay nomination, and Robbie is included within the Finest Image nomination, as that class is technically awarded to a film’s producers. So it’s not like they’ve been missed solely, simply in these two particular classes most onlookers anticipated to see potential recognition in. And whereas some folks have been fast to look to the Academy’s historical past of numerous nominees to take it to job, sexism doesn’t fully reply the explanation for the snubs both, contemplating that Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet is among the many nominees for Finest Director this yr. Barbie is a blockbuster comedy, the form of movie that doesn’t precisely make for typical Oscar fare, and its mainstream success overcame loads to see it take within the nominations it already received (it’s price noting, because the New York Times did so, that Finest Director as a class is particularly voted for by the director’s department of the Academy, moderately than the final membership, which isn’t solely a smaller pool of voters, however solely made up of roughly 25% feminine members).
All that then, makes it completely weird that the newest particular person to wade into the commentary is neither Gerwig nor Robbie themselves, however former Secretary of State and Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“Whereas it will possibly sting to win the field workplace however not take house the gold, your thousands and thousands of followers love you. You’re each a lot greater than Kenough,” Clinton posted on X, the platform previously generally known as Twitter, partially this morning, together with the hashtag “HillaryBarbie.” To not pull the “Kim there’s people that are dying” card too exhausting or something, however absolutely there’s sufficient occurring within the American and worldwide political sphere proper now that Clinton has higher issues to supply commentary about, if in any respect? Does a film with a number of Oscar nominations not getting two particular nominations actually warrant this stage of weighing in? It’s giving Pokémon Go to the Polls, however much more absurd given all the pieces we simply laid out about Barbie’s superb run of nominations.
Barbie is already an awesome success, publicly and for the most part critically acclaimed, and made over a billion dollars final yr. It’s not prefer it has gone unloved or underrated. Its nominations on the Oscars this yr are nonetheless part of historical past—Gerwig, despite lacking out on a Finest Director nod, is now the primary filmmaker ever within the historical past of the Oscars to have had their first three solo-directed films be nominated for Finest Image. Maybe this merely ought to be kenough.
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