The air is humid and sticky as people pour out of the theater all dressed in pink and excitedly discussing the ending of the movie. In the crowd is a little girl clutching a barbie in a neon pink cowgirl outfit. This image becomes familiar to individuals all across the country and even world.
The barbie movie was a box office hit this summer making 1.446 billion and becoming a cultural phenomenon. You couldn’t walk in a store without there being some sort of barbie themed item or music from the movie blasting over the speakers. Schools had barbie themed spirit days including Urbana where students wore their favorite pink outfits and shouted hi barbie! At each other throughout the halls.
Last month when nominations for the Ocsars came out Ryan Gosling clinched a nomination for best supporting actor as Ken while the movie’s leading female duo Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig did not. The barbie movie did still rack up 8 Oscar nominations including best adapted screenplay writing (for which Gerwig was named as a writer) and best picture (for which Robbie was named as a producer). However Robbie did not receive a nomination for her acting. “I think it’s fair for Ryan to get a nomination but if we’re talking about acting, I think they should all get a nomination.” stated Emily Wlodarczyk.
This caused a lot of confusion and chatter amongst the film’s fans due to the irony of the situation. “The Barbie movie is about Barbie, Ken does not exist without Barbie,” stated Lily Woodham. This point is made by many and brings up the discussion of “did people really miss the whole point of the movie”? The Barbie movie gets its praise for addressing problems many women face today and representing the beauty and struggle of womanhood. Robbie and Gerwig spent a lot of time on the movie and getting the message across. Simu Liu who starred as one of the Ken’s and Robbie’s costar even tweeted “I witnessed just how hard Greta and Margot had to fight to get Barbie made, how flawlessly they executed it. Together they started a movement, touched the world and reinvigorated the cinema, they deserve everything. They ARE everything.” This is exactly why the lack of nominations caused such a stir and reaction from fans.
Some on the other hand don’t think it’s such a big deal and that the nominations reflect fairly compared to the other movies that came out last year. “I would say that the Barbie movie got the nominations they deserved and they actually got a lot of nominations compared to other movies that came out this year.” shared Evie Raithel. Barbie came in third for number of nominations to poor things with 11 and oppenheimer with 12. Looking at it from a perspective of sheer number of nominations Barbie appears to have been treated fairly. The main problem for many just lies with the type of nominations the movie received.
Even though Barbie did not receive as many nominations as fans had hoped, the movie has earned itself a plethora of other awards and nominations. Some of those including Golden Globe Award for Cinematic and Box office achievement, Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Original Screenplay, and America Film Institutes Movies of the year. Barbie might not have earned the Oscar nominations fans believed the movie deserved but that does not depreciate the impact the movie had on individuals and pop culture.
