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When the 2024 Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday morning, the snubs of the two most prominent women involved in “Barbie” — director Greta Gerwig and lead actress Margot Robbie — became the breakout story.
The top-grossing film of 2023, passing the $1 billion mark worldwide, is based on the imagined life and times of the iconic Mattel doll. A cultural phenomenon on its own terms, “Barbie,” along with “Oppenheimer,” became half of an unusually thoughtful summer blockbuster duo released on the same day in July (“Barbenheimer”): nothing to sneeze at.
As it turns out, the internet had strong opinions about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ announcement.
“Let me see if I understand this: the Academy nominated ‘Barbie’ for Best Picture (eight nominations total) — a film about women being sidelined and rendered invisible in patriarchal structures — but not the woman who directed the film. Okay then,” read a viral post by writer Charlotte Clymer on X, formerly Twitter.
The film wasn’t completely shut out — it was nominated for best picture, while Gerwig picked up a nomination with Noah Baumbach for adapted screenplay. Ryan Gosling was nominated for supporting actor and America Ferrera for supporting actress. But the fact that Gosling was tabbed for his towheaded Ken, who discovers the idea of patriarchy and then attempts to dominate Barbieland, before Robbie’s character destroys gender-based oppression, was too much for some to take. “We’re actually doing patriarchy very well,” writer Jodi Lipper wrote in an Instagram story, quoting a Ken line from the film.
(In a statement released yesterday, Gosling wrote, “To say that I’m disappointed that they are not nominated in their respective categories would be an understatement.” And in a statement to Variety, Ferrera said she was “incredibly disappointed that they weren’t nominated.”)
