Fans rage at Barbie Oscars ‘snub’: ‘ya’ll disrespect these incredible women’s work like that?’
People on the internet are RAGING about the perceived Barbie Oscars ‘snub’ (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Ryan Gosling issued a statement yesterday (23 January) about his Oscar nomination for Barbie, a decision that has divided the internet, to say the very least.
“I am extremely honored to be nominated by my colleagues alongside such remarkable artists in a year of so many great films,” Ryan Gosling said in a statement following Tuesday morning’s Oscar nominations announcement. “But there is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no ‘Barbie’ movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the two people most responsible for this history-making, globally-celebrated film.”
Although America Ferrera has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Mattel employee Gloria in the hit 2023 movie, many were left scratching their head over the fact that Barbie director Greta Gerwig and the film’s star and producer Margot Robbie didn’t earn nominations in the best director and lead actress categories respectively.
However, what has really sparked the internet’s ire is Ryan Gosling’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Ken in Barbie. And when we say ‘ire’, we really mean it. Pitchforks are being virtually waved.
The hate isn’t directed at Gosling personally: it’s more the symbolism of the fact that a very feminist movie about the issues women face in a patriarchally dominated society has fallen victim to, well, the issues women face in a patriarchally dominated society. Here are a few tweets that sum up how people are feeling:
Even Bette Midler got involved:
However, there were quite a lot of voices who rose up to offer a very important counterpoint, accusing the Ryan Gosling Barbie Oscar nomination outrage of drowning out a significant milestone: the fact that ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone has made history as the first native actress of American descent to be nominated.
Is the outrage over Ryan Gosling’s Oscar nomination for Barbie justified?
Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle was quick to reference the erasure of Lily Gladstone’s achievement:
Others agreed that the Barbie discourse was ‘very white behaviour’:
While others politely pointed out that Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie weren’t really snubbed, and that Barbie had quite a lot of nominations when you think about it:
(It’s also worth noting that Gerwig was nominated in the best adapted screenplay category and Robbie was recognised in the best picture category as a producer, so they haven’t been excluded completely).
But in amongst all of the arguing and vehement back-and-forths, one person managed to get to the real crux of the issue… well, for lesbians anyway:
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