Barbie versus Oppenheimer at the Oscars: Bias played a role
Oscar nominations rarely make anyone sit up the way this year’s have. Was it a classic preference for serious cinema or an old gender bias that swayed Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Of last summer’s two most hotly raved-about movies, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the award contenders picked for 2024 display a clear tilt towards the biopic of a scientist credited with the world’s first nuclear weapon. It was nominated this week for awards in 13 categories, including for Best Picture and Best Director, the two big ones, while the feminist remake of an iconic doll’s legend got eight call-outs, with Gerwig left out of the contest as an award-worthy director.
It is a gasp-worthy omission, even if her blockbuster—it raked in about $1.5 billion globally at the box office—is still in the running for a best-film Oscar. Gender equity in Hollywood matters not just because it holds global audiences in its thrall, but for its signalling effect. It is a creative industry in the world’s most advanced large country, and to the extent creativity needs a storm of diverse ideas, it’s easy to assume it must necessarily stay open to all forms of diversity to thrive.
But then, it was just over half a decade ago that Hollywood’s #MeToo scandal revealed a power equation so starkly loaded against women, it shook us. Could much have improved since? As worthy cinema goes, Oppenheimer has obvious merits. On gravitas, it’s up there.
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