Here’s the thing about the failure to nominate Greta Gerwig for Best Director. Only one of the nominees is a woman (Justine Triet). The rest are men. And honestly, when every single nominee in that category is a woman, then maybe, maybe we can stop the counting of how many women vs how many men got nominated, and which movies got nominated how many times and for what things, as if we’re all filling some sort of gender quota to make sure “enough” women get nominated for “enough” things (and don’t even get me started on non-white people getting nominated. I’ve got snow-blindness looking at these nominees.). We’ll have enough women nominated when, to take a page from Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s book, when every nominee for Best Director is a woman.
Because this counting up to “enough” crap is what people are doing. I’ve seen so many people say “Oh, but Barbie got all these other nominations, it’s fine.” Y’all. No. It’s an excellent film. And she deserved that nomination. You know why? Because a great director is someone who takes the inequality, oppression, sexualization, and subjugation of women and makes it funny, engaging, hopeful, and heartfelt. You know what’s not as hard? Making the creation of the atom bomb dramatic.
And while that’s my hot take, and while Oppenheimer was fabulous and Christopher Nolan also made an excellent movie, he got the nomination he deserved. Greta Gerwig deserved to be nominated, too.
And yes, Margot Robbie should have been nominated for Best Actress. She was amazing.
The only positive thing to take from this monumental snub is that it’s brought The Academy and The Oscars that much closer to being totally irrelevant. You know what we remember most about last year’s Oscars? A slap!