There has never been a year where the Academy managed to soothe all frayed nerves with its list of nominations. Someone is always displeased, and unhappy that their favorites didn’t make it to the list. But 2024 is the first time when the Oscars have managed to piss everyone off. Quite a feat, huh?
We get it — picking the worthy ones in 2023 who deserve all the accolades must have been one tough task. Snubbing a few that deserved to be on the list of Oscars 2024’s nomination list was a necessary evil. Broken hearts out there right now are trying to console others that Charles Melton not getting the Best Actor nomination for May December is a bitter pill we have to swallow. But Ryan Gosling getting nominated in the category for Barbie while both Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig are absent from the big list…?
So, Margot was Barbie, Greta Gerwig made it real, and yet the nom still goes to Ken? I don’t know about winter, but a bloody hurricane has already breached its peak on social media and it is solely headed towards Beverly Hills.
Over the years, the Academy voters have battled many accusations and have been called biased when it consistently failed to recognize deserving women directors. Last year saw no women in the category and the Academy’s attempt to fix that error this year — with Justine Triet for Anatomy of the Fall — is already looking like a botch job because of the glaring absence of Gerwig.
While Gosling’s selection is a subject of celebration, of course, and he undoubtedly deserves the nom., his name as an Oscar nominee is only serving to triple underline what irony means. Life imitating art, anyone?
Yep, America Ferrera, who played Gloria in Barbie, is up for the Best Actress in a Supporting Role, but whether it is the celebration around Gosling’s nomination or the dissatisfied discourse around it, it has effectively blurred out her well-deserved presence in the list.
For once, the internet, instead of being the platform where everyone tears each other apart, is following the “us vs them” battle model; i.e., we the filmgoers vs. the Academy and its unanimously-labeled “broken voting system.”
