By Professor Finola Kerrigan
Professor in Marketing, Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham
The 2024 Academy Awards’ Ceremony will take place on Sunday. It comes just after 2024’s International Women’s Day and during Women’s History Month. Much has been made of Ryan Gosling’s best supporting actor nomination for his role as Ken in Barbie with Margot Robbie overlooked for a best actress nomination for portraying Barbie herself. As gender politics was at the heart of the film, with Barbieland flipping around the usual male dominated social norms and seeing women in power, this was seen as highlighting the very themes of gender inequality; Ken was commended for playing the trophy male while Robbie’s characterisation of empowered Barbie was shunned.
However, there is a need to move beyond the headlines and set reception of the Barbie movie in the broader film industry context. Research from Stacey L. Smith and the USC Annenberg inclusion initiative and Adobe Foundation which looked at the Academy Awards since their inception in 1929 up to 2023, found that only 17% of nominees over that time were women with less than 2% women of colour. There has been much debate as to whether the best acting categories should be merged, but the consensus is that women would lose out if this were to happen, due to inherent social bias.
There is clear inequality in terms of whose work becomes valued within the film industry. A lot of attention in this discussion has been paid to what is portrayed as the snubbing of Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig for nominations for best actress and best director. However, Ryan Gosling’s nomination for his portrayal of Ken is for best supporting actor. In fact, this reflects the film’s subordination of men to supporting cast rather than the leading role in society. We might argue that symbolically it makes sense for Ken, a supporting role in the film, to be nominated for best supporting actor. When looking at this in terms of gender equality, we see that America Ferrera has been nominated for best supporting actress for her character, Gloria. So, if comparing like with like, supporting actor with supporting actor, we could argue that the nominations reveal a move towards gender equality rather than inequality. Similarly, both Barbie’s song and Ken’s have received nominations.
What’s more, both Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig have received Oscar nominations. This isn’t apparent from the many headlines focusing on the acting and directing categories. Robbie, as a co-producer of the film is nominated for the Best Picture category and Gerwig, as the screenwriter as well as director, is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Again, there is a need to look further into these nominations. Research by the European Audiovisual Observatory examining active film professionals in the European film industry found that between 2017 and 2021, only 28% of screenwriters were women, and 34% producers. The same study found that women in these roles were more likely to work as part of teams, than male producers or screenwriters, and more likely in gender mixed teams, as is the case in relation to Robbie and Gerwig in Barbie. These nominations allow us to look beyond the most public facing roles in the industry to acknowledge both the under representation of women in key roles in the film industry and equally to celebrate their success in receiving these nominations.
Barbie as a film also needs to be put into broader context. While it was phenomenally successful at the box office, as a film classified as a ‘musical or comedy’ according to the Golden Globes, this does not bode well in terms of awards. Comedy is a popular genre, but it rarely wins the most significant awards. In fact, The Golden Globes introduced a new category this year, Cinematic and box office achievement, which was seen as an attempt to acknowledge more commercially successful films. Barbie was in a category with other blockbusters from 2023 and as the highest grossing film of 2023, unsurprisingly Barbie took home the prize.
While this discussion over who has been nominated for which award continues to be important, we need to look at the bigger picture. Following awareness raising around #OscarsSoWhite and #MeToo it is important to keep focused on the pipeline of projects that get approval and how these projects are being marketed. We need to continue to explore and amplify the importance of storytelling mediums such as the film industry in shaping our sense of identity and how we understand others. With films by, for and about women attracting less favourable reviews, it can be difficult for women centric films to break through and achieve high box office and critical acclaim. The blockbuster marketing campaign behind Barbie allowed this film to break through the celluloid ceiling. However, issues around inequality of opportunity persist and much more work needs to be done to support currently under-represented filmmakers to make and market their films.
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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Birmingham.