Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday and fans of “Barbie” – 2023’s highest grossing movie – are criticizing the omission of the movie’s director, Greta Gerwig, and star, Margot Robbie, from their individual respective categories. “Barbie” received eight Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture. Costar Ryan Gosling, nominated for his role as Ken, joined in the chorus of disappointment, saying in a statement that “there is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the two people most responsible for this history-making, globally-celebrated film.”
Caroline Smith is an associate professor of writing at the George Washington University. Her classes have focused on the topics of visual culture, women’s writing, and popular culture. Smith completed her dissertation project on chick lit which was later published as Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit (2007) by Routledge Press. She has also published work on Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Her research interests include women’s fiction and popular culture productions. Her current project, “Season to Taste: Rewriting Kitchen Space in Contemporary Women’s Food Memoirs,” examines the work of contemporary female food memoirists for the way in which these women construct their identities in relation to the kitchen. Additionally, she is co-editing an anthology about the contemporary heroine in popular culture.
Smith has explored feminism and heroine roles through different mediums, including literature, film and TV as well as the portrayal of female friendships, among other topics. In her classes, she has also explored the Oscars and how the Academy’s awards processes play out. She can discuss the significance of Gerwig’s and Robbie’s absence in their individual categories and other topics and themes portrayed in the history-making film.
"Popular media outlets claimed that 2023 was the year of the girl, but the recent Oscar nominations indicate otherwise," Smith says. "While Greta Gerwig’s Barbie got a nod for best picture, Gerwig was overlooked in the category of best director, and Margot Robbie, the film’s star, was also passed over for a best actress nomination. While social media campaigns such as #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite have drawn attention to gender and racial biases present in Hollywood, the most recent nominations show that the patriarchy is alive and well at the Academy Awards, ignoring the significant achievements of women and devaluing women’s cultural productions."
If you would like to speak with Prof. Smith, please contact GW Senior Media Relations Specialist Cate Douglass at [email protected].
-GW-
