Greta Gerwig was snubbed at the Oscars because Barbie is this year’s Dark Knight
The Oscar nominations are in, and there’s something missing from the Best Director and Best Picture nominees – or is it? None of us at Polygon expected that at all Barbie to make it, nor Greta Gerwig to snag a Best Director nomination, but… should she have? And why not?
We got into a debate about it in our editorial office. Here’s how it went.
Matte plasters: Greta Gerwig is missing as director Barbie…this is a real stupidity.
Maddy Myers: Stupid question: Barbie is a comedy and I always feel like the Oscars aren’t really that Doing comedies, so the stupidity isn’t that weird to me. Is that completely wrong?
Austen Goslin: I think that makes quite a difference.
Maddy Myers: Nice. I’m very smart.
Matte plasters: I think this explains some of it, but not all, and may have more to do with the expanded vocal organ. Barbie transcended! America Ferrera has a nomination! American fiction is a comedy that has received numerous nominations. The Greta snub is about the global embrace of two Euro favorites: Anatomy of a fall And The zone of interest. They said at the top that they received ballots from 93 countries this year. The Oscars are now Cannes-y.
Maddy Myers: American fiction is a comedy…in a way…but NOT in the same way Barbie is.
Matte plasters: Of course not. But Barbie also has a prestige pedigree: the man who shot Killers of the Flower Moon Shot it!
Maddy Myers: I think if someone literally dies in the first act of your movie, you’re eligible for an Oscar nomination.
Matte plasters: Barbie wants to die, does that count?
Maddy Myers: My wife said after we were done American fiction that it was “the best yet” of all the Oscar contenders and I said “what about the Barbie movie?” and she just stared at me.
Matte plasters: Maybe the vision this year is: there wasn’t room for all the good direction in films. And the sober ‘serious’ leadership once again sidelined the inventive one. Poor things And Barbie are too similar in Big Ideas and the complex, deliberate work Barbie is not clear enough (and too pink?). That said, if Barbie came out in the 1940s, Greta would have been nominated. Dance sequences! Battle scenes! Dry comedy!
Maddy Myers: I mean, I love how weird Barbie thought it’s about the most popular children’s toy in the world. And the film is clearly trying to transcend its scope, but it’s the Barbie movie and there’s only so much you can do (something the Barbie film itself stares at the screen and says to you). My other problematic opinion is that Gosling deserved a nomination and no one else. But if that had happened, I think people would probably have been angry.
Austen Goslin: I don’t think the comedy stuff is negated by the American nomination. Supporting performances are the domain of “we’re throwing comedy a bone here.”
Maddy Myers: She’s not who I would have picked, but you’re right. And doesn’t the big brand of all this also weigh heavily on the average voter? It would be as embarrassing as voting for a Marvel Comics adaptation.
Austen Goslin: Oddly enough, the best analogue to Barbie could be… The Dark Knight?
Maddy Myers: YES. Austen, exactly.
Austen Goslin: The Best Picture nomination is the category with 10 nominations that does its job, but the rest feels right in line. Otherwise, it’s a pop blockbuster crafted with impressive craft and skill by its director, someone the Academy has already recognized but not quite anointed. Both films received supporting performance names, where the Academy is most comfortable rewarding blockbusters and comedies. Meanwhile, they all did well in the technical categories and were split into slightly larger categories, with a modified scenario Barbie and cinematography for The Dark Knight. It seems extra fitting that these comparisons fit so well in the same year that Christopher Nolan is the favorite for best director. Maybe it also means that Greta Gerwig will make her Commencement next one.
Matte plasters: Okay, fine, I forgive them.