OSCAR BARBIE WAS ROBBED!
Before you lose your sh%t...
OSCAR BARBIE WAS ROBBED.
This fine week, the internet lost its sh%t over the Oscar nominations.
Barbie was nominated for BEST MOVIE, BEST SCREENPLAY, BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, and BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS.
But the internet still managed to find outrage over an awards show while we live and breathe and try to understand ecological collapse.
“No, but seriously…this could have been a storyline straight out of the Barbie movie,” read one TikTok comment.
I don’t mean to rain on everyone’s rage but these nominations are fantastic, something to be celebrated, something to be grateful for. And Barbie is certainly not the first movie to be nominated for BEST MOVIE without the director or the lead actress getting a nod. I’ve always thought these random awards were very odd indeed, but I’m not going to lose my sh%t because a movie about a plastic toy, funded by a plastic toy company, did not get enough Oscar claps. From where I stand, Barbie should be stoked. No other action-hero films that rake in billions and blast out the idea of art ever get a mention at the Oscars. “Yeah, but Barbie is a metaphor, idiot, a genius metaphor and I wish you would get that,” I hear you say. Okay, but Christopher Nolan and his Batman films are filled with metaphors and never got a nod. So please, can we please untwist our knickers, can we please find our sh%t.
And can we please remember that America Ferrara’s Barbie monologue was pieced together by lots of feminist thoughts being thrown around over the last couple of decades. Thoughts that are so worn out and tired that I felt so uncomfortable for everyone watching that clip from the movie. Are we all just going to pretend that this is some kind of new radical revolutionary work?
Yes, yes we are.
It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. At writing school, the first lesson is “show don’t tell”. Do not have the character preach to the audience.
“PREACH IT, AMERICA, QUEEN!”
We are living in one of the most critical times in human history. We have six years to reduce our carbon emissions by 50% to hand something salvageable over to the next generation, our flesh and blood. We have to rethink our economic system, and we have to feel for the global south and the women in the global south…THIS is feminism. Whatever is happening or not happening at the Oscars is a distraction from the most sacred story of our time, the crisis of our days, How do we save ourselves? And if we can’t save ourselves…how do we save our souls?
This is feminism.
And we must find our way to it and stay there.
Feminism is work like Lynne Twist’s which sits with women in the global south who have lost their children to starvation. Feminism is listening deeply to this unspeakable pain. This is the feminine energy in all of its power. Moving toward the true pain instead of resisting it so that we feel fine enough to play with dolls while making billions and getting glammed up for award shows. The reason why Barbie feminism will never feel like it won the world is because it hasn’t won the world. It has played perfectly into the game of capitalism and the patriarchy. Parading one of the most beautiful women in the world looking like a doll does not equal self-aware irony. She is perfect. The cleverness in this escapes me.
When everyone got all pink and excited over Barbie I wondered why, but I tried not to lose my sh%t, and said to myself. Whatever makes people happy. We do need some joy in these trying times. I do not want to be a thief of joy. And then when Barbie made billions, I thought…okay. Okay. Well played Mattel and tried to stay focused on what matters. I tried not to imagine how many plastic dolls would end up in landfills or the ocean, and I tried hard not to imagine young girls embracing a terrifyingly perfect-looking doll for yet another generation.
But now, how dare Barbie lose her pubes over four Oscar nominations?
If this has twisted you up this week, I ask you to put on your pink pyjamas and sit in a quiet corner, rub your bubble gum-flavored lip balm lips together, close your eyes, open your heart, and listen. Let the truth of the world have its way with you. Feel the ocean screaming, feel the animals howl for their homes, feel the heat rising in places where people live with no escape. Wonder what you might do to ease some of this horror. That is the mission. This is the way.
This…is…feminism.
Podcast: The Eco Enthusiast