When the 96th Academy Awards air on March 10, 2024, the live telecast can save precious time because even if someone else takes home the golden statue, the Best Picture category win has already happened — it’s Barbie.
The Academy just elevated its art of “snubbing” when it refused to nominate Greta Gerwig as Best Director and Margot Robbie as Best Actress for Barbie. Why? They didn’t like the film, somehow “just Ken” beat the “everything” Barbie, or recognizing and honoring deserving titles is just that hard? And after these massive snubs, the film might just end up losing to Oppenheimer in the Best Picture category.
Oh, drop those furrowed eyebrows scrunched in justified displeasure — and now, confusion — because Barbie just accomplished its core mission and is, hands down, the Best Picture winner already. Okay, okay, remember we are only angry with the Oscars (not me), and yes, one hot explanation coming right up!
What was the message of Barbie? What were Gerwig, Margot, and the other Barbie actors trying to convey through the film? It employs a metamodern path to dissect, comment, and question the conflicting expectations a society has for a woman and how they want to box her in their perception of what she should be. In the film, Barbie learns that in the real world, women are “just Barbie” — expected to conform to the gazillion demands and objectifications.
It shows that in the so-called matriarchal world, the Kens are happy and free to do what they want, while women pursue their ambitions. But when Ken brings in the patriarchal version from the real world, women are sidelined, expected to be heard but not seen as men get the spotlight.
Now, the ongoing social media debate highlights that Barbie won’t be Barbie without Gerwig’s skilled direction or Robbie’s heartfelt performance as Stereotyped Barbie. The Academy blatantly ignored them but saw Gosling fit for a nomination as Best Supporting Actor — he is exceptional in the film, no doubt about that, but the fact remains that Ken is nominated for Barbie but Barbie is not.
And what’s more, amid this whole hoopla around his nomination, the fact that America Ferrera has been nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category is buried under it all — a tad awkward given the literal message of the film. Did someone order a double dose of irony because the universe [re: the Academy] seems rather committed to the whole bit.
But you know what, Barbie still wins. The message it set out to impart, the itching questions it dared to scratch, and the ideologies it openly challenged are getting questioned and called out after the Oscars 2024 nominations — the film is accomplishing what it set out to do in the first place. Isn’t that what a Best Picture winner should do — not just be entertaining or different, but unsettle the norms? By snubbing 2023’s biggest accomplishment’s creators, the Oscars went all meta in sealing their victory.
