When the 2024 Oscar nominations were announced this morning, the snubs of the two most prominent women involved in “Barbie” — the director, Greta Gerwig, and the lead actress, Margot Robbie — became the breakout story. The top-grossing film of 2023, passing the $1 billion mark worldwide, is based on the imagined life and times of the iconic Mattel doll. A cultural phenomenon on its own terms, “Barbie,” along with “Oppenheimer,” became half of an unusually thoughtful summer blockbuster duo released on the same day in July (“Barbenheimer”): nothing to sneeze at. “Let me see if I understand this: the Academy nominated ‘Barbie’ for Best Picture (eight nominations total) — a film about women being sidelined and rendered invisible in patriarchal structures — but not the woman who directed the film. Okay then,” read a viral X post by the writer Charlotte Clymer.

---

Persons: “ Barbie ”, Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie —, “ Barbie, “ Oppenheimer, ”, ‘ Barbie ’, —, Charlotte Clymer, Gerwig, Noah Baumbach, Ryan Gosling, Gosling, Ken, “ We’re, Jodi Lipper Organizations: Mattel, America Locations: Barbieland