Barbie, Margot & Greta… Thank You, but No Thank You

It was the highest-grossing film of 2023. Barbie grossed $1.44 billion and is the 14th highest-grossing film of all time. And yet, I passed. That absence of interest is not incidental. I belong to the generation that played with Barbie dolls and, at some point, mistook their proportions, their companions, and their homes as aspirational. I no longer indulge that fiction. Barbie is a doll. Its dream house, not hers.

Pond at the Norton Simon Museum

I read the praise, the careful framing of meaning within its fantasy-comedy structure. Yet even amid allegations of snubs and even sexism by the Academy for not nominating Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, I remain uninterested. Curiosity would ordinarily compel me. Here, it does not. Perhaps that is not so different from the members of the Academy who vote within their respective branches to determine nominations—each guided by individual preference rather than any objective standard.

A film and its artistic value are subjective. Nominations are determined by voting members within their respective branches of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, reflecting individual judgment rather than any objective measure of merit. It is not difficult to imagine that some simply dismissed a fantasy comedy centered on a plastic figure, one long criticized for distorting expectations of a woman’s body.

1997’s Titanic remains the fourth highest-grossing film of all time, yet Leonardo DiCaprio received no nomination for Best Actor, while Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were recognized. If Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig were overlooked because they are women, was Leonardo DiCaprio overlooked for being good-looking?

I am not dismissing Margot Robbie’s talent as an actress, nor Greta Gerwig’s as a director. But talent alone does not compel recognition. Is it possible their work did not carry the same weight within a film of this register? For the Academy’s voters, is it possible that Emma Stone, Lily Gladstone, Annette Bening, Carey Mulligan, and Sandra Hüller delivered performances of greater depth and discipline?

Is it possible that Justine Triet, Martin Scorsese, Yorgos Lanthimos, Christopher Nolan, and Jonathan Glazer offered direction more exacting in its vision? With Justine Triet among the nominees, the omission of Greta Gerwig cannot be reduced to gender alone. It may simply reflect the Academy’s enduring reluctance to treat fantasy comedy as serious work.

All of this remains subjective. That subjectivity has, at times, been discriminatory. But recognition is not owed. It is conferred. And not all work, however celebrated, compels it.

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