An Oscar nod for Ryan Gosling and not Margot Robbie misses the point of Barbie

Margot Robbie, who is one of the most celebrated actresses of the decade; Margot Robbie, who the Academy already controversially snubbed last year for her magnificent performance in Babylon; Margot Robbie, whose display in Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster Barbie made every confused little girl, angsty teenager and tired woman around the world realise that the way they feel is okay.

"Margot Robbie doesn’t deserve an Oscar for playing a plastic doll with big boobs," some people, including this year’s Golden Globe host Jo Koy, are probably desperate to argue, and perhaps I might be naive to argue back that Barbie was the most serious of contenders, especially when we compare it to the Oscar-baiting likes of Oppenheimer or Bradley Cooper’s Maestro.

But if you scroll just that little further down the list of nominees, you’ll realise that just beyond Robbie’s omission is a second name – one that all fans of Barbie will recognise: Ryan Gosling.

Ryan Gosling, who played Barbie’s overbearing and occasionally villainous counterpart, Ken.

If the Academy want to argue that Robbie was undeserving of an Oscar nod for reasons unbeknownst to me, then how can they argue that Gosling, who did little more than dress up in a faux fur coat, claim his job is "beach" and sing a somewhat unnecessary, and more than a little bit lifeless, musical number, deserves the accolade instead?

Now, I am by no means arguing that Margot Robbie should have 100 per cent, definitively won the Oscar – in fact, I think the wonderfully unique performance of Emma Stone in Poor Things and the tragic sincerity of Lily Gladstone’s Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon are equally, if not more, fitting for the award – but by completely erasing Robbie’s portrayal of Barbie and placing her male co-star in the limelight, it feels like something of a smack in the face, especially when we think back to the fundamental point of Barbie.

When Robbie’s Barbie left her idyllic home in Barbieland and travelled to the real world, we saw the harsh realities of what it’s like to be a woman in society. Barbie is groped. Barbie is harassed. Barbie becomes, like so many, the victim of misogyny.

"The real world is forever and irrevocably messed up," she tragically comes to learn, and by God, is she correct.

This is only further highlighted when Ken discovers modern-day patriarchy. And while, yes, he does initially believe it to be a concept mostly concerning horses and guitars, upon his return to Barbieland, he establishes his own version of the ideology to some unfortunate consequences.

He takes over Barbie’s house. He takes over her job. He takes over her identity and, for a while, she becomes indoctrinated by his ideas.

It's only later, after America Ferrera’s Gloria gives an incredibly poignant speech to the now broken Barbie, and the rest of the plastic doll community manage to, for lack of a better word, 'overthrow' the Kens, that we are reminded that women can do exactly what men can do.

Women can thrive. Women are important. Women don’t deserve to be left in the cold. And yet, it appears that the Academy have, ironically, entirely missed that point.

Just like how Ken usurped Barbie, the Academy has allowed Gosling to overthrow Robbie. But, unlike in Barbie, there’s nobody to save the day this time, even if America Ferrera somehow manages to pick up that award for Best Supporting Actress over Da'Vine Joy Randolph.

Margot Robbie deserved that Oscar nod, and it’s a crying shame that the Academy have refused to acknowledge that.

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