Picture via Vulture

It was January 23, 2024, a normal Tuesday morning, but the day also held importance to those in the film industry. It was the day the Oscar nominations would be announced. One film expected to get many nominations was Barbie, the big hit of the year with great critical reviews and also finished the highest grossing movie of 2023. However, things didn’t fully play out according to plan: It got 8 nominations, the 4th most of the day. However, the big takeaway of the day were the snubs of both Margot Robbie in Best Actress and Greta Gerwig in Best Director.

This left many scratching their heads in the aftermath, wondering things like, how does the director of the highest grossing, and to many, the most influential movie of the year just not get nominated? And what about Robbie? She was Barbie in the Barbie movie! What the heck? And the internet being, well the internet, went absolutely insane after this. Probably the most that it ever has after something didn’t get into the Oscars. This isn’t the first time the internet has done this, but it has never been at such a level as this. In fact the snub isn’t even the first time this has happened to Gerwig.

Greta Gerwig has been a very successful director in recent years. All three of her films have been nominated for Best Picture, and she was even nominated for Best Director for Lady Bird in 2017. However, a situation very similar to this happened with Gerwig’s second of her three films, Little Women in 2019, where again, Gerwig was not present in the Best Director lineup. 

Gerwig’s exclusion led to a similar reaction to the one we experience now, just not as severe. Gerwig actually responded to this one, in an interview with the New York Times from 2020, she stated that female filmmakers were getting noticed more. “So you want to see the work acknowledged on the largest stage possible, and there is so much beautiful work done by female writers, producers, directors, creators. But in terms of it all moving in the right direction, that’s all we can do: continue to make the work, make the work, make the work.”

Now, back to that internet backlash, over the next three days after the announcement of the nominations. The internet kind of went crazy, going through the various stages of grief (except acceptance, they might not be there yet). Such examples of the outrage vary, believing the academy didn’t recognize it due to its feminist themes, or that it was too much of blockbuster type movie to be recognized over other movies, to X users doing “accidental eugenics” and a quote from a Los Angeles Times article negatively referencing fellow Best Picture nominees. “If only Barbie had done a little time as a sex worker (direct reference to fellow nominee Poor Things). Or barely survived becoming the next victim in a mass murder plot (direct reference to fellow nominee Killers of the Flower Moon). Or stood accused of shoving Ken out of the Dream House’s top window (direct reference to fellow nominee Anatomy of a Fall). Certainly millions of “Barbie” fans are currently wishing they could push someone — perhaps a member or two of the film academy — out of a very high window”.

This even got the attention of big figures, such as Ryan Gosling, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Ken in the movie. Gosling took to social media to make a statement of disappointment, and the biggest figure to get in on this, former First Lady Hilary Clinton also took to social media, saying “Greta & Margot, While it can sting to win the box office but not take home the gold, your millions of fans love you. You’re both so much more than Kenough”.

Many had varying theories of why Gerwig would be left out, so let’s start with the ones mentioned earlier. Some believe that the movie was too overtly feminist in its message, with Vulture believing that the Academy still holds its old sexist ways. “If a man had made Barbie, I contend that it would have gotten that Best Director nomination. But a man couldn’t have made Barbie. No one could have except for Greta Gerwig.”Another problem may have been what it’s based on–a toy brand. Due to this association, many people thought that this was why it was ignored, including Caryn James of BBC. James wrote about how “Oscar voters refused to take the toy-based film seriously, ignoring how inventive it is, dismissing it as a billion-dollar popcorn movie when it is also a funny, subversive cultural statement. It undermines stereotypes about women ­– with meta-wit, Robbie’s character is named Stereotypical Barbie –but wraps that in a buoyant, candy-coloured cloud”.”

The other belief was that Barbie was too much of a blockbuster movie that tends to be ignored by the Academy, which isn’t a new issue. Many impressive films tend to be ignored due to the idea of it being nothing more than a “popcorn” movie or genre film, which has happened before in the director’s branch. Examples include Christopher Nolan’s Inception in 2010, Ben Affleck’s Argo and Kathyrn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty in 2012 (Argo would go on to win Best Picture), and Denis Villenueve’s Dune in 2021. In fact, according to a Time article collecting many social media responses, the hope is that Barbie will “pull an Argo” and still win without Best Director.

The backlash has also caused another problem. Many have ignored the achievements of the other nominees, such as America Ferrera being nominated for Best Supporting Actress, delivering in the movie a monologue which many believe to be the defining moment of the movie. An article from The Hollywood Reporter took notice of this, stating that “Despite Barbie’s own onscreen diversity and inclusiveness, the obsession over its awards snubs is an example of white feminism at its worst, in which slights toward two white women are centered at the expense of acknowledging women of color both nominated.” 

Others thought that Gosling’s nomination overshadowed others, believing that in a movie about women, the men still get the credit. Slate criticizes this argument, talking in their own article about how “It is not a nomination for the character of Ken over the character of Barbie. It is not a nomination for men being better than women,” and “Just because a film is primarily ‘about feminism,’ as we seem to have decided is the party line about Barbie … that does not mean that the women involved in making it automatically deserve awards.” 

The biggest oversight seems to be from the category we began this article talking about, Best Director. The fact that Gerwig was snubbed making a movie about female struggles exemplifies the overlooking of women’s voices by the directors’ branch, except they didn’t. Justine Triet, the director of Anatomy of a Fall, who went through her own struggles with her movie (conflicts with the French Oscar committee and the French Government based on her political views preventing her film from being submitted as France’s entry for Best International Feature, you know, the usual), was nominated with Best Director, and is overlooked for this snub instead of people celebrating her nomination.

While things seem to have slowed down recently with the backlash, we will have to see if this helps or hurts the movie on Oscar night. Gerwig is still nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay alongside her husband Noah Baumbach, and the movie’s possible chances to win Best Picture.