Get Upset About the Oscars

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Get Upset About the Oscars

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By Ben Elliott

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For movie lovers, waiting for the Oscar nominations is like waiting for Christmas morning, except you know you won't get everything you want.

This year, the biggest letdown seems to be the omission of Greta Gerwig as Best Director and Margot Robbie as Best Actress for their work in Barbie. Add in the fact that the Academy nominated Ryan Gosling for his role as Ken, and you might be wondering how exactly Oscar voters completely missed the point of Barbie.

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Omissions like these make it easy to write off the Oscars as silly and imperfect — which they are. Whittling down a year's worth of movies into a handful of nominations always leaves out worthy artists. But the Gerwig and Robbie snubs also hint at the ways in which the Academy is trying to improve.

Since 2015, when the lack of diversity among acting nominees led to the #OscarsSoWhite backlash, the Academy has been trying to expand its membership and create a more international, diverse, and younger voting body. The impact of the international members has been evident over the last few years — at least one director of an international feature has been nominated for Best Director since 2019, when Pawel Pawlikowski was nominated for Cold War and Alfonso Cuarón won for Roma.

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This year the international voting bloc threw their support behind two titles: Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest. Both movies picked up five nominations, including Best Picture and Director. Anatomy of a Fall, with its nominations for director Justine Triet and lead actress Sandra Hüller, seems to have pushed out Gerwig and Robbie.

In an ideal world, both acting and directing teams would be recognized. But there will never be a perfect Oscar ballot, and that’s the point. The debate over what deserves recognition makes these movies a part of a conversation that’s lasted 93 years. That we care enough about award nominations to be disappointed proves why they matter in the first place — and why we should keep insisting they do better.

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