On the "Barbie" Snubs

Let’s get this part out of the way up front.  The only times Curmie has ever cared about awards like the Oscars were when a friend or a friend’s project was nominated.  Also, Curmie has never seen “Barbie,” and has no intention of doing so: he is outside the target audience for reasons of age, gender, temperament, and probably a host of other things, too.  That doesn’t means it’s a bad, or even undeserving, movie.  If, Gentle Reader, you saw it and loved it, Curmie is pleased that you were entertained or enlightened or whatever; if you saw it and were disappointed, Curmie sympathizes.  He’s been there.

Gentle Reader, you are no doubt at least as au courant with popular culture news as Curmie is, so you’ll already know that the anthropomorphized doll movie was a huge box office success.  It collected a passel of Oscar nominations, as well, including for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Supporting Actor/Actress—Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera.  Ah, but the two driving forces of the project, director Greta Gerwig and title actress Margot Robbie were not nominated in those categories (see below for the ”yeah, but…”).

On the one hand, there are certainly ironies at play.  The meme you see here is one of many variations on the theme.  Yes, it would be logical that if a film is nominated, then its director and star would be, too.  It’s certainly worthy of raising an eyebrow that in a film with such feminist undercurrents it would be Ken, not Barbie, who got recognized.

But “Past Lives” also got Best Picture and Screenplay nods without either a directing or leading actor/actress nomination, so it’s not a complete anomaly.  Plus, there’s the simple fact that there are twice as many nominations for Best Picture as there are for the other categories, so some major contributors to nominated films are inevitably left out.

This has not prevented howls of protest from the movie’s fans.  There are the usual, frankly rather tired, allegations of sexism, for example.  How could Ryan Gosling be nominated and Margot Robbie not be?  Well, perhaps the voters (all actors themselves—you can only vote in one category) liked his work better.  Perhaps there were more outstanding performances from female leads in other films than there were from supporting men in other films.  Gosling and Robbie wouldn’t be competing with each other, after all.  Perhaps Gosling just did better work than Robbie.

Perhaps, too, the directors who voted in that category just thought the work of Jonathan Glazer, Yorgos Lanthimos, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, and Justine Triet was better.  All of their films were Best Picture nominees, too, after all.  And those folks aren’t exactly rookies.  Between them, they had one Oscar win and ten other nominations in directing, and that doesn’t count their work as writers or producers, or awards like Golden Globes or BAFTAs, or wins at festivals like Cannes and Banff.

There is not, indeed cannot be, any great conspiracy to “erase women’s work” or some such nonsense.  Robbie didn’t get nominated because some other woman did.  Gerwig didn’t get nominated, but another woman did.  Yes, there will be those who claim that somehow all those voters secretly got together and decided that precisely one woman should get the nod.  Curmie sees <checks notes> zero evidence of that.  If, Gentle Reader, you think the “Barbie” women were better than one or more actresses or directors who did get nominated, that’s fine.  Curmie thinks something similar in virtually every category virtually every year.  But that’s a matter of taste, not backroom machinations.

It's also worth noting that the meme isn’t quite accurate.  No, Gerwig didn’t get nominated by name, but that’s because the award is for Best Adapted Screenplay, not Best Adapter, although exactly what she is alleged to have “adapted” is beyond Curmie’s ken.  (Get it?  Ken?  OK, moving on.)  Robbie, as one of the film’s producers, also has a nomination to call her own. 

Importantly, virtually any recognition for a film like “Barbie” is significant.  It may be that the movie wears its feminism a little ostentatiously, but the adjective Curmie’s friends who liked the movie have employed the most is “fun.”  The film may not be Curmie’s mug of lapsang souchong, but Curmie will take “fun” over “self-consciously earnest” ten times out of ten.  No, Curmie hasn’t stopped being an intellectual elitist, but he does believe that Hollywood is generally a lot better at entertainment than at intellectual stimulation.

In Curmie’s experience, most Oscar nominees are rather boring exercises in pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness.  Of the last several Oscar winners that Curmie has seen—he hasn’t bothered with some of them—there are more truly terrible films than excellent ones.  That’s just Curmie’s opinion, of course, and you should consider yourself under no obligation to agree.  But hopefully, Gentle Reader, you’ll grant that “fun” is not an adjective applied to most Oscar winners.  If “Barbie” changes that, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. 

Curmie would also bet that individual accolades are less important to Gerwig and Robbie than the success—in all the different definitions of that term—of the overall project… or at least they’ll say it is.  And so we move on to one of the most oft-referenced statements by a nominee ever, by Ryan Gosling :

I am extremely honored to be nominated by my colleagues alongside such remarkable artists in a year of so many great films. And I never thought I’d being saying this, but I’m also incredibly honored and proud that it’s for portraying a plastic doll named Ken.

But there is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the two people most responsible for this history-making, globally-celebrated film.

No recognition would be possible for anyone on the film without their talent, grit and genius.

To say that I’m disappointed that they are not nominated in their respective categories would be an understatement.

Against all odds with nothing but a couple of soulless, scantily clad, and thankfully crotchless dolls, they made us laugh, they broke our hearts, they pushed the culture and they made history. Their work should be recognized along with the other very deserving nominees.

Having said that, I am so happy for America Ferrera and the other incredible artists who contributed their talents to making this such a groundbreaking film.

It is a gracious statement, expressing both appreciation for his own recognition and disappointment that his colleagues on the production were not similarly honored (well, they were, sort of, but we know what he means).  True, it has a little of the aroma of a press release, but there’s a legitimate possibility, even a probability, that it’s largely heartfelt, whether he actually wrote the thing himself or not.  People do tend to be loyal to friends and colleagues.

You can be forgiven your skepticism, Gentle Reader.  But please do not countenance descriptions of Gosling’s comments as “the baby goose’s insufferable blubbering,” “virtue signaling,” or “whining,” which apparently is what a fair number of people whose demographic profiles (but not politics) match Curmie’s seem to be suggesting to anyone who will listen.  Doing so would serve as evidence of precisely the attitude the film apparently seeks to lampoon.  Paranoid, mendacious, and bitchy is not an attractive combination.  There are more than a few walking exemplars of fragile masculinity to whom the truth of the foregoing sentence would seemingly be a revelation.

To sum up: 1). Curmie neither knows not cares whether Gerwig and Robbie “deserved” to be nominated as director and leading actress.  2). An ironic coincidence is not the same as evidence of a conspiracy.  3). A lot of old white guys need more bran in their diet.  

In other words, no, nothing new here.