Making a movie is hard work. Even the bad ones. You have to write a script, find money to make it, cast hopefully decent actors, build entire sets, make costumes, write a score, edit weeks of footage into a tight ninety minutes and then, if you are really really really lucky, actually distribute it. Then if you are even luckier, a few people other than you mom might watch it. And if you wish on a lucky star, sell your soul to the devil, and sacrifice twenty or so virgins, your movie becomes part of one of the biggest pop culture phenomenons of the century. You get to be the Barb in Barbenheimer.
That never happens.
It really never happens to women.
It happened to Greta Gerwig.
Now imagine all of that happening when your movie is really really bad. Not only that, but it’s an embarrassment to feminism. But you still make a trillion dollars and every woman who didn’t learn about Gloria Steinem as a child thinks you’re a hero. You’d think you’d be the happiest human being who ever lived, right? Like you’d be making daily sacrifices to Beelzebub from your Hollywood Hills manse with no cell service that you for some reason voluntarily share with Noah Baumbach.
THEN, imagine, after all of that luck/good fortune/soul selling, YOU GET NOMINATED FOR A BEST PICTURE OSCAR. Ten movies a year get that honor. TEN. This year, nine of them deserve it. Yours without a doubt does not. If the Oscars were based on number of ticket sales or viral videos then, yes, you would absolutely deserve to be on that list. But then so would every Marvel movie and the entire Fast Franchise and you don’t see many of those getting nominated either. So you lucked out, again.
My god, the gratitude must be overflowing.
Nope.
Instead, all we have heard in the 24 hours since the Oscar nominations have come out is whining. So much whining.
It’s not fair that Greta didn’t get nominated for best director, even though FIVE OTHER BEST PICTURE NOMINATED FILMS DIDN’T EITHER, INCLUDING THREE OTHER WOMEN.
It’s not fair that Gosling was nominated for best actor but Robbie wasn’t nominated for best actress, even though Ken was the actual star of the movie. He was the protagonist. He had the only real character arc. He had the only memorable lines. Every single viral moment from the movie other than the humiliatingly bad Ferrera speech were Ken’s. Heck, even all of the viral moments from the press tour were Gosling’s. Even his sweatshirt went viral and sold a trillion copies. This was Ken’s movie. This was feminism written by a man. No surprise the adapted screenplay nom that it also got is for Gerwig and her husband.
Barbie is like so many of Hollywood’s “feminist” moves lately. Give the ladies just enough to make us think we care and we never have to change anything for real. You want more movies about women? We’ll recreate great movies starring men (Ocean’s 8, Ghostbusters for Girls) scene for scene and just put some chicks in there. You’ll eat it up. You want more women directors? We’ll highlight juuuuust a few that are making the kind of milquetoast white feminist films that we approve of to make you feel like you’re being empowered while still constantly inhaling the message that your life should be solely and completely focused on men. You want a female President? Let’s give Nikki Haley a chance. Not a real chance, obviously, but we’re only going to elevate women who hate women.
And how do we know that’s true in this case? Because instead of making the empowered and incredibly important case that the Oscars has a problem with female directors, Barbieworld has made it all about them. The problem isn’t that Gerwig wasn’t nominated for her godawful movie, it’s that ONLY SEVEN WOMEN HAVE BEEN NOMINATED FOR BEST OSCAR EVER AND ONLY THREE HAVE WON. Where the fuck are the think pieces about that? Where’s the feminist solidarity? Where’s the collective whining? Or why not uplift the first Indigenous woman to be nominated for an Oscar? All of the Barbie blustering has completely overshadowed Lily Gladstone’s incredible accomplishment and the fucking travesty that it has taken this long for that glass ceiling to be broken. Nope. We need 52 think pieces on why we didn’t just cancel the Oscars and give every statue to a woman who wrote a third grade level speech about how hard it is to be a girl.
This is why Me Too didn’t work. This is why Time’s Up failed. This is why the patriarchy always wins. Then again, Barbie used the word “patriarchy” about 37 times in a two hour movie so it’s almost certain to win.