Warner Bros.
Earlier this week, the nominations for the 96th Academy Awards were announced and some of the biggest perceived snubs were those that involved the creative team behind Barbie, specifically director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie.
Despite the fact that Barbie was the highest-grossing film of 2024 and the work of both Gerwig and Robbie was virtually universally praised, the former was not nominated for Best Director while the latter was not nominated for Best Actress.
It’s not like the film was entirely shut out of the major categories, however, as America Ferrera was nominated for Best Supporting Actress while Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Gosling’s deserved nomination, however, is where this story gets annoying.
Clearly not understanding the point Barbie was trying to make, how the Academy Awards work, or both, some people have begun to argue that Robbie not being nominated for Best Actress is a result of misogyny and the patriarchy, which are two of the major themes of the film.
The discourse got so loud so quickly, in fact, that Gosling even put out a statement about him being nominated but Robbie and Gerwig missing out.
The idea that Robbie’s snub makes the point of Barbie is flawed for many reasons, the primary of which is that Robbie is competing against other women in the Best Actress category. It’s not as if each movie is only allowed a certain number of nominations and Gosling was chosen ahead of Robbie.
Furthermore, similar to Robbie competing with other actresses, Gosling’s nomination has nothing to do with his fellow Barbie co-stars but instead with the actors he’s competing against in the Best Supporting Actor category: the Academy isn’t saying he was better than Robbie in the film, they’re saying he was one of the five best supporting actors of the year. Which is true.
What is also true, however, is that Barbie, the highest-grossing movie of 2023, simply does not work without Robbie, which ignites an interesting conversation about what “Best Actor/Actress” actually means. Similar to the “MVP” in professional sports, should the award go to the overall best player in the league or the one that’s the most irreplaceable? If that’s the latter, then Robbie undoubtedly deserved to be nominated.
There’s also just the general stupidity of the Academy choosing to nominate Annette Bening for her performance in Nyad (a movie literally nobody is talking about) over Robbie, the biggest actress in the world, for Barbie, the biggest movie in the world last year compounded by Ferrera getting nominated for a performance that is far less deserving of recognition than Robbie’s.
So, yes, while Robbie probably should have been nominated for Best Actress, the reasons why she wasn’t and the reaction to it are entirely misguided.