By Nicola Craig (she/her)

Awards season is officially underway with the 2024 Oscar nominations recently stirring up debate as fan favourites Priscilla and Barbie were snubbed in major categories.

The greatest upsets include the lack of nominations for Greta Gerwig’s direction of Barbie, Margot Robbie’s starring role as Barbie and Cailee Spaeny’s lead role in Priscilla.

Many can’t help but feel disappointed and also sadly not surprised given the Oscar’s history of failing to adequately recognise and value female-led stories.

‘Best Director’ in particular is a category that year after year has failed to produce any female nominees, and even more scarce are female winners. Only 8 women have ever been nominated, with just 3 winning and the first not being until the 81st Academy Awards in 2009. The 92nd and 93rd Academy Awards produced female winners in Chloe Zhao for 2020’s Nomadland and Jane Campion for 2021’s The Power of the Dog. However, this sadly now feels slightly performative given the Oscar’s failure to award female directors since.

Despite this history, it remains unfortunate that Greta Gerwig failed to receive a nomination, especially as she has become the first woman ever to solo direct a film that has made over $1 billion at the box office. Barbie’s blockbuster success and status as the biggest movie of 2023 was supported with mass amounts of critical praise. It was given five stars by publications such as The Independent and received rave reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone, NME and Empire.

This is not the first time Greta Gerwig has been snubbed in this category, with 2018’s Little Women failing to be nominated at the 92nd Academy Awards in 2019. This is despite the film having immense critical and commercial success as well as receiving nominations in other categories.

Margot Robbie was also snubbed in the Best Leading Actress category, despite other members of the Barbie cast receiving nominations. America Ferrera is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Gloria, whilst Ryan Gosling is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Ken. The ignorance of Robbie’s clever performance in the titular role as Barbie and simultaneous praise for Gosling’s role as the ‘himbo’ Ken just proves the whole message of the Barbie movie itself.

This highlights the willingness of organisations such as the Oscars to award the highest praise to men whilst failing to recognise their dependence on their female counterparts and the chemistry needed between them in order to achieve their performance. If neither Robbie, Gosling nor America Ferrera were nominated then perhaps there wouldn’t have been such an outrage as it is understood that Best Actress in a Leading Role was a highly competitive category this year.

Other women who many thought ought to be nominated for Best Director include Celine Strong for Past Lives and Sofia Coppola for her direction of Priscilla. Priscilla’s star Cailee Spaeney also failed to receive a nomination for her starring role despite her performance being nominated for other awards such as the Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Female in a Motion Picture – Drama.

This may be due to the film’s critical portrayal of Elvis Presley as an emotionally abusive, adulterous and cruel man to the woman he so desperately pursued and who was thought to be the love of his life. This especially reigns true when you compare the response to Coppola’s Priscilla with that of 2023’s Elvis directed by Baz Luhrmann. Luhrmann’s interpretation saw Austin Butler’s sympathetic turn as the rock and roll legend which sharply contrasts to Jacob Elordi’s performance as Elvis in Priscilla. In Elvis, Presley was shown as a man that was conned and manipulated by his manager, a grieving son and an icon of popular culture.

Elvis received a staggering eight nominations in 2023 whereas Priscilla received zero. This highlights how the Academy were reluctant to reward any criticism of the male icon but were more than happy to praise the film which saw Elvis portrayed in a positive light. This is despite Priscilla receiving similarly glowing, if not even more positive, reviews from critics and fans alike.

The Academy’s snubbing of Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie and simultaneous failure to acknowledge Priscilla entirely highlights their ignorance toward female filmmakers and female-centred/led stories. This is while films made and enjoyed by men continue to receive the highest praise, with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer receiving 13 nominations, the most of any film for the 2024 Oscars. With both movies being released on the same day dawning the cinematic phenomenon event coined ‘Barbenheimer’, 66.2% of Barbie audiences were female while 70.7% of Oppenheimer viewers were male. This reflects a sad long history of films (and really anything) popular with women and enjoyed by a female audience being under-valued, ignored and disrespected.

The 2024 Oscar nominees make clear we still have a long way to go for women’s interests to be taken seriously and for women to be equally respected in the world of filmmaking.