Now that Oscars season is over, I can’t help feeling wistful about what might have been. For a while there, it seemed certain things would culminate in an awards night celebrating Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, the movie that captured hearts and, just to be clear—minds—like none other in recent memory. Still, by the time the red carpet was rolled out, we knew Barbie wouldn’t be the star of the show. As it turned out, she was cast in a supporting role, there with warm smiles and pretty sequins to provide relief from the awkward gravitas of what otherwise would have been an atomic warfare-themed gala.
Sure, Barbie wasn’t kept off the Oscars stage entirely. But the movie’s message certainly was. Those watching the awards ceremony would have thought Barbie is about a doll who comes to life and conquers the world. That doll’s name? Ken.
How did it come to this? Since the 2024 Oscars nominees were announced in January, many have struggled to comprehend how a jury of peers could deny the directorial prowess behind a movie about a plastic bombshell that, improbably, made feminism something everyone wanted to talk about. On Oscars night, it was hard enough to swallow disappointment that the women behind Barbie hadn’t been given a seat at the grownup table. Adding insult to injury, in the run-up to awards night, there seemed to be a growing consensus that this should be the year we congratulate ourselves for just how far we’ve come in addressing the “woman” problem in Hollywood—a problem now safely in the past.
And if you believe that…you just got gaslit by the Oscars.
When I say gaslit, I’m not talking about some playful tip of the hat to the Golden Age classic. I’m saying that when it comes to sexism in Hollywood, the message this Oscars season was that Barbie fans are seeing things that just aren’t there.
A motive for this charade is not hard to find. The damage done to Hollywood by revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s criminal sexual attacks is enduring and incalculable. But with Weinstein in jail (for now), and hundreds of others in the industry called to account, some are hoping #MeToo can be downgraded from a movement to a moment. And yes, there are signs of incremental progress. According to UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report, the proportion of women film writers and actors is on a slow but steady ascent. The percentage of girls and women in leading or co-leading roles is trending upwards too. “A” for effort, guys. Keep up the good work!
In other words, everything has been going swimmingly for Hollywood’s reputational reboot… that is, until Gerwig’s Barbie came along. All of a sudden, everyone was talking about patriarchy. And the movie didn’t just bust box-office records with its message of women’s empowerment; it was a critical darling too. It looked like this could only end one way: on a very, very pink Oscars evening with a lot of speeches about sexism.
As it turns out, the seeming inevitability of that scenario was based on a miscalculation: that the women behind Barbie would be counted among the Oscars contenders. When the nominations were announced, the absences were glaring. Leaving Gerwig off the list of Best Director hopefuls was a snub heard round the world. How was this even possible, people wondered? Could Academy voters be the only ones on the planet who didn’t get the genius at work behind the Barbie phenomenon?
Let’s be clear: they got it. They just didn’t like it.
And sure, we’re all entitled to our opinions. Different strokes for different folks, right? But from the start, it was obvious that what rankled some viewers about Barbie was its message. To be sure, few were as unhinged by Barbie’s provocations as conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, who threw a man-size temper tantrum that ended with a certain plastic figurine ablaze in a trash can. (Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz probably thought he should get credit for taking the high road by limiting himself to a transphobic tweet mocking the movie’s gender inclusive casting).
Even professional film critics struggled to maintain professionalism on the subject of Barbie. The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane complained about a movie that “wants to have its cake, eat it, mock it, smear it on the faces of the manufacturers, and still sell a shitload of dolls”—an uncharacteristically vulgar image that belies the banality of the observation that in modern moviemaking, art and commerce are entwined. Speaking of hypocrisy: on the one hand, Gerwig is taken to task for making an entire movie about patriarchy, when surely she could have at least tried to tackle a serious problem like corporate capitalism. Meanwhile, Oppenheimer’s Christopher Nolan is praised for making a movie about nuclear bomb builders that artfully spares audiences the shock of being presented with graphic images of the bombed. Gerwig is dismissed as a morally-equivocating corporate shill, while Nolan earns plaudits for “moral decorum” because he sidesteps human atrocity in the name of making a damn good movie. Sexism? What sexism?
Maybe we should have seen the snub coming. And maybe we also should have anticipated how patronizing the response would be when Barbie fans had the audacity to question the judgment, not to mention the objectivity, of Academy insiders. That was no snub, apologists insisted. Here, let me mansplain to you how the Real World really works. And yes, I do mean mansplain, even when done by a woman. Case in point: the New York Times’ Pamela Paul, who broke things down in an essay oozing with don’t-get-your-panties-in-a-knot condescension. Just because Gerwig isn’t a Best Director nominee, Paul instructed, “doesn’t mean that the Academy voters didn’t get it. They just chose differently.” Then Paul showed us crybabies how a feminist really thinks: “Surely women aren’t so pitiable as to need a participation certificate every time we try.” Whoopi Goldberg made the same point to Barbie fans during an episode of The View: “You don’t get everything that you want to get. Not everybody gets a prize.” True enough. Snubbing happens, right? And certainly, Gerwig can count herself in good company amongst the overlooked. Still, I don’t remember anyone suggesting Spike Lee fans are spoiled brats when they wondered by Do the Right Thing didn’t bag the Oscars. Did anyone chide Steven Spielberg and his lot to quit their whining when Saving Private Ryan lost out? Those snubs were taken as signs that the system is flawed, not that its critics are.
Even if we’re not giving out participation certificates, a trophy for Outstanding Effort in a Rationalization really should go to commentators who have worked so tirelessly this season to explain how denying Barbie’s greatness doesn’t boil down to it making some people, especially some men, very uncomfortable. One popular tack is to concede that the Academy has a problem, but to insist that its problem isn’t gender: it’s elitism. Barbie was discounted, the argument goes, not because it is so feminist, but because it is so popular. And if you are unconvinced Academy voters are too “highbrow” to recognize Barbie’s merits, maybe you’ll believe they were just “confused” by the unlikely combination of elements that made for “a big, fun, smart, populist megahit.” Yeah, right.
Going into the Oscars Sunday, giddy anticipation had given way weeks ago to the cold comfort of seeing life imitate Gerwig’s art. Still, on a night when the winners walk away with golden statuettes, vindication is the booby prize. Even so, I showed up to watch. And maybe I would have been able to let it go if the Academy hadn’t been so determined to make this year–this Oscars season–the one when Hollywood gives itself a pat on the collective back for its heroic strides in addressing its problem with women.
Look at us! This year, 3 of the 10 Best Picture nominees were directed by women! That’s way more than the none you had gotten used to! And sure, in 2023 exactly zero women were nominated for Best Director. But this year, there was 1! Amazing! And don’t forget that a woman won the award in 2022! And in 2021! That brings the total number of women ever nominated for Best Director to a whopping 8! What’s that? 8 out of 400 doesn’t seem like a lot? Well, let me tell you, 8 is a big number. It’s a very big number. You need 2 hands just to count that high!
Answering Barbie fans as if the problem is we don’t know how to count is insulting. It also misses the point. Numbers are important, but they’re not everything. Everyone knows Hollywood loves women. At least, it loves certain women. Just not ones who call out patriarchy.
So I’m going to say it: this year, the reason Gerwig was snubbed isn’t just because she is a woman. Gerwig was snubbed because she made a movie about sexism.
So here we are. A woman director makes a wildly popular, critically acclaimed movie about patriarchy. Denying her the recognition she is due, Academy voters snub her in the nominations. In doing so, millions of fans around the world get the message: Your opinion doesn’t matter. No one cares what you think. And by the way, it’s not just that you don’t understand filmmaking. You don’t understand gender equality. Because this is what it looks like. Do the math. Oh, and you’re welcome.
When it comes to gaslighting, I’ll take the 1944 silver screen version over the 2024 Oscars any day.
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