Summary
Every year on the day the Oscar nominations are announced, I lock in my predictions. This year I did pretty well, getting 4/5 in most categories and 9/10 for Best Picture; curse the members of the Academy who snubbed The Color Purple. But my biggest whiff of the year was in Best Actress (a paltry 2/5), where Margot Robbie was shut out in a major shock. But we really need to calm down about this.
I lovedBarbie. It tooksecond place in my movie of the year list, and I thought Robbie was magnificent in it. This is a snub, maybethesnub of the nominations. But Robbie was ultimately unlikely to win even if she was on the ballot - this is a straight shoot-out between Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone, one I expect Gladstone to emerge victorious from.
It’s also a tradition topredict next year’s nominees, though I’m usually less accurate there.
Robbie and her fans may feel especially hard done to - she was also deserving last year for Babylon. Barbie being a comedy andBabylon being a flopwould have been factors against her, but in both years I consider her amongst the top five female performers in a leading role.
I also think she had one of the best supporting performances of 2023 in Asteroid City, but that would be pushing it given her small screen time, that movie being overlooked in general, and the obvious push for Barbie.
Barbie itself was not snubbed. It’s up for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as several technical categories, plus two performances in other acting categories: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. This is not a movie that has been dismissed as girly and stupid, laughed out of the building while mascara runs down its face. It just missed out on a headline category while landing the big fish of Best Picture.
There’s also been something very glib and disrespectful in the way Robbie’s competitors have been discussed. Gladstone is an outsider who was ready to drop out of Hollywood altogether prior to being cast in Killers of the Flower Moon, and shoulders the generational trauma of her people with powerful grace. It’s the performance of the year, and the way it (and the very true, very tragic story it explores) is being discredited to highlight some agenda against Barbie is embarrassing.
Award shows bring out the sports fan in all of us. I liked this movie ergo it should win everything. The referees are against us. The other team is full of cheats. That was never a foul. And so on. Barbie’s box office gross, its decades worth of popular branding, and its digestible feminism means it has a lot of die-hards wearing pink body paint in the stands. I think Robbie earned the right to lose on the night to Gladstone, but her being overlooked is symptomatic of little more than a crowded field and a general lack of appreciation for female comedic turns.
This digestible feminism is another key talking point. There’s this gall that a man has been nominated for Barbie, while a woman hasn’t. This argument is undone by the fact a woman has, since America Ferrera is in Best Supporting Actress, but that’s of little consequence when you want to be outraged online. The focus is on Gosling’s nomination, but he was a lock (even if Charles Melton was snubbed). Ferrara is the more surprising nod.
The buzz had her running close, but I don’t think she’s a standout in that movie, and her viral speech on feminism feels too on the nose. Julianne Moore for May December and Rachel McAdams for Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret might have been better choices, but that’s less fun to argue about on the internet. ‘Ken was nominated but Barbie wasn’t’ has a much stronger narrative.
But Robbie wasn’t up against Gosling. She was up against other women, with Gladstone being lauded as the turn of the year. It was a competitive category, as underlined by the similarly large (but again, less fun to fight about) snub for Greta Lee in Past Lives.
This narrative runs deeper - Ken’s song I’m Just Ken was also nominated, and was childishly booed upon its reveal. I’m Just Ken is a fun, campy song that perfectly fits the tone of the movie, much like Gosling’s own performance. It’s not even the only Barbie song nominated, as Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For also got on the ballot, and I suspect that will be the eventual winner. All I know is I can’t do another round of shallow arguments about the patriarchy if I’m Just Ken wins.
If you really feel I’m Just Ken is that stupid, blame the director for making it the focal point of the antagonist’s inner conflict. But of course, you can’t do that, because you also think it’s anti-feminist that Gerwig was overlooked for Best Director.
You don’t want to celebrate Justine Triet, the woman who is up for Best Director, just as you don’t really care that Lily Gladstone is the first female Native American (as in the US, rather than North America where the honour would go to Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio) up for Best Actress. You just want to complain your favourite movie of the year was shut out by a movie you never heard of because ultimately you don’t care all that much about film.
Best Director doesn’t need to just be a lone woman against four men, and Celine Song could be in the mix too. Much like with Robbie, I think Gerwig deserved to be on the ballot but not to win, but the fact she’s up for Adapted Screenplay and is the first woman to direct three Best Picture nominees in a row will soften the blow. As will Triet stopping it from being a boys club. Or would, if you cared about the awards beyond arguing that Barbie is the sole representative of feminism and that by not giving it all the awards you are siding with the patriarchy.
I love Barbie, I think it does a lot with the material and Robbie balances the slapstick comedy, Simpsons-style abstract jokes, and more serious emotional beats of the script well. But ultimately it’s a toy commercial.Its legacy will be Polly Pocket and Cindy and Winx movies that will be written, cast, and then scrapped.
You cannot build your ideals of feminism around the toy commercial being nominated for the most prestigious awards in film, then be outraged when it’s nominated in eight categories. Robbie is unlucky to miss out, but she’s the victim of stiff competition, not the patriarchy. And if you can’t lift her up without tearing other women down, you missed the most basic point of the Barbie movie.
