On Tuesday, the film Barbie was nominated for eight Academy Awards, the fourth-highest total of this year’s upcoming ceremony. The film, the highest-grossing of 2023 at nearly $1.5 billion, was a massive culture phenomenon and a great critical success, a refreshing bit of fresh air in an environment where most blockbuster hits are sequels and/or superhero movies. It was a sharp satire filled with humor and heart; while its theatrical opening alongside Oppenheimer as “Barbenheimer” was initially a comedic juxtaposition of the seemingly lighthearted and comic Barbie and the existential horror of Oppenheimer, each film had more of the other’s expectations than most assumed.
And although Oppenheimer is easily the favorite to take home Best Picture, Barbie too was nominated, as were two actors (Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera for Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress, respectively), screenwriters Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, costume designer Jacqueline Durran, production designers Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, and the film garnered two nominations for Best Original Song, Billie Eilish’s heart-wrenching “What Was I Made For?” and Ryan Gosling’s power ballad quasi-parody “I’m Just Ken”.
Not nominated from Barbie include Greta Gerwig for the film’s direction and Margot Robbie for her performance as the title character. Although both women have received nominations for these awards before (Gerwig for Lady Bird; Robbie for I, Tonya), their failures to do so in the 2023-24 Oscar season raised eyebrows. Many weighed in to proclaim that the two had been snubbed, though none more cringeworthy than Hillary Clinton, who punctuated an otherwise tepid statement with the instantly infamous hashtag #HillaryBarbie. But more on her in a bit.
I expected that Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, in that order of likelihood, would receive nominations, though I am fairly unqualified to explain whether they should have. Robbie, who has spent a decade crafting her reputation as one of the most charming and exciting actresses of her era, was simultaneously funny and sincere as the film’s focal point, but I also have only seen one nominee, Lily Gladstone of Killers of the Flower Moon, and I would give her performance as a woman caught between her marriage and the constant suffering of her fellow Native Americans the edge over Robbie. Regarding Gerwig and Best Director, she competed against English-language cinema’s greatest living director (Martin Scorsese) and a beloved name-brand director who is the favorite to win his first Best Director award (Christopher Nolan).
It is a largely disrespected cliche to note that the real honor of the Academy Awards is just being nominated, but there is very much truth to this. And 2023 was a strong year for pop movies.
Margot Robbie was not assured of a nomination not because she wasn’t great, but because a lot of other women also were. By definition, to include Robbie would mean to exclude one of Annette Bening, Sandra Hüller, Carey Mulligan, Emma Stone, or especially the aforementioned Gladstone, who became the first Native American to be nominated for Best Actress. With the possible exception of Stone, a bankable star who already has an Oscar to her name, Margot Robbie had less to gain from a nomination than anybody. Consider what this means for Hüller, the 45 year-old German star of two Best Picture nominees, or for Bening or Mulligan, Oscar veterans trying to win their first statues. A bad-faith argument that has been dispensed is noting that “Ken got nominated and Barbie didn’t”, which is a statement of fact but also neglects how much easier it is get a nomination for supporting actor than in a lead category. A major part of the reason Gosling campaigned for supporting actor rather than lead, despite a ton of screen time, is because it was easier to get a nomination that way. You could make a case that Ryan Gosling’s hilarious if less emotionally enriching performance as a meathead literal boy toy was in some ways better than Robbie’s, but the case would be much weaker for America Ferrera, whose role as a Mattel employee-turned-Barbie ally was not especially developed. But it’s just a lot easier to have a top five supporting performance than a top five lead one.
Meanwhile, although Greta Gerwig was omitted from the list of Best Director nominees, history was made via another woman when Justine Triet became the first French woman nominated for the award. Triet, an outspoken critic of Emmanuel Macron’s government as being insufficiently to the political left, being recognized is a victory for women in cinema, whether it is a bigger victory than a Gerwig nomination would be or not. Perhaps Gerwig was more deserving than Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, box office returns at 3.5% those of Barbie) or Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest, 0.2% of Barbie’s box office), but based on the popularity of those films, it is unlikely that the typical person critical of Gerwig’s omission would have an educated guess on the matter. As was the case with Robbie’s, the criticism of Gerwig’s omission seems far less about the awards and more about the abstractions they are perceived to represent. But for those who want to take a wider-ranging look at the landscape of filmmaking, the fact that 20% of Best Director nominees were women should be an indictment not of the Academy, which actually overrepresented women compared to how frequently they get the opportunities to direct major feature films, but of an industry that is largely unwilling to give women the chance they deserve.
There is something about losing a presidential election that seems to scar people, usually in ways less harmful than compelling your most gullible supporters that your loss was a political conspiracy. Mitt Romney escaped the public eye, resurfacing as a more-small-c-less-capital-c conservative than ever as a senator from Utah after running as a relatively centrist Massachusetts Republican. John McCain defined his personal legacy so much as a political loser than he insisted that the manufacturers of his two biggest career losses, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, speak at his funeral. Hillary Clinton, perhaps more than any other losing presidential candidate, took her loss personally, in ways diametrically opposed to her longstanding political reputation, one built on not being willing enough to show emotion (a darkly ironic twist on the common sexist trope that women are too emotional to be involved in politics). When Saturday Night Live’s all-too-loving parody of Hillary Clinton, portrayed by Kate McKinnon, looked into the camera in a sketch about a 2016 presidential debate and said, “I think I’m going to be president”, it had all of the subtlety of a Michael Bay explosion montage but it was directionally pointed at the cockiness that the Clinton camp had.
To be clear, while Hillary Clinton was flawed and not very good at playing presidential politics, she was qualified for the job in ways that Donald Trump (who was also, to put it lightly, flawed and not very good at playing presidential politics) was not. But unlike the other Clinton administration-associated person to lose a presidential bid, Al Gore, who emerged post-2000 as an advocate for action on climate change, the vast majority of Hillary Clinton’s work and public statements post-2016 have been meditations either on herself or on Donald Trump. In fairness to Clinton, the extent to which Donald Trump became the main character in American life cannot be overstated; it’s difficult to blame her for acting in a manner not dissimilar to those belonging to her political coalition. But almost by definition, this means re-living her greatest professional trauma. Whether out of her own personal ego or out of constantly seeing Donald Trump’s remedial mistakes that any American president should be too competent to make, likely some combination of the two, the belief that Hillary Clinton was done wrong by American voters only exacerbated; for those of us who voted for her but were far more enthusiastic about the “not voting for Trump” piece of that equation, the issue is that America was done wrong by American voters. I am apathetic to the personal feelings of Hillary Clinton in the same way that I am apathetic to the personal feelings of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or any of the many Democrats that I view more favorably politically—I want these people to win not as a fan of a sports team does, but as somebody who wants their governance. Barbie made a billion and a half dollars; it didn’t need awards recognition to demonstrate to the movie industry that a type of movie like Barbie can and should continue to be worth the investment. And in that way, even if by accident, Hillary Clinton’s analogy of Barbie to herself does make some level of sense.
An unfortunate side effect of the era of “poptimism”, in short the belief that popular things ought to be valued as legitimate art and not disregarded simply because people enjoy them (true), is that critical analysis of popular things is somehow problematic. For instance, Barbie devoted a huge chunk of its run time to a Will Ferrell-led chase subplot that, despite having Literally Will Ferrell in it, turned out to be the least funny part of the film. It was too self-congratulatory about the toy’s significance as a feminist icon. Although America Ferrera’s monologue about feminism will likely be played on Oscars night and was by any reasonable assessment categorically true, it was so on-the-nose that it felt a bit distracting. And again, I liked Barbie. I liked it more than the movie that is probably going to beat it out for Best Picture. But it is not beyond reproach, and if anything, the financial security of the film should make people more comfortable to nitpick, not because popularity is a bad thing but because it’s not like one sick burn is going to turn major studios off Greta Gerwig. And nobody in modern popular culture has better embodied the poptimism pivot quite like Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift is the most popular musician on the planet and has been in the inner circle of candidates for that title continuously for over a decade-and-a-half. Reputation, her supposed comedown from massive popularity, went triple-platinum in 2017, when streaming had largely rendered the album sale as a commercially dead artform, spent four weeks at #1 in the United States, and produced four top-twenty singles including a #1 and a #4 hit. All ten of her studio albums have, to some degree or another, been enormous hits and critical darlings. I am, personally, more an enjoyer of Swift’s music than a hater of it—I think Fearless is one of the great pop albums of the 21st century though I also would support, if not outright charges, at least a resolution at the Hague condemning “Welcome to New York”. But despite her massive popularity, Swift has managed to be a deeply personal artist for millions of people. It’s not just that her fans enjoy listening to and discussing her music—it’s that her fans view her, personally, as an important figure in their lives. There are levels to this—some of which are categorically unhealthy but many of which are mostly harmless. Let’s put it this way: I am a massive fan of Oasis. I bought all their albums well into the streaming era, I would book the first flight I could find if they were ever to reunite, and I just had to look up if the Gallagher brothers were married (Liam is not; Noel is married but separated). But there are legions of Taylor Swift fans who feel genuine and personal happiness at the relationship between Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. And that’s fine.
Considering the relative lack of headlines that Taylor Swift’s six-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn generated, the sensation surrounding Swift and Kelce is astonishing—yes, the future Hall of Fame NFL player is more famous than the extremely private character actor, but Swift and Kelce’s few months of courtship have received British Royalty levels of attention. Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of the two—the quiet and artsy skinny Brit along with Taylor Swift wasn’t as interesting as the guy who looks and behaves like a professional wrestler. And while celebrity gossip is usually unveiled through paparazzi photos and such, public knowledge of the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce relationship has been disseminated via the most popular television program in the country—National Football League broadcasts.
Swift’s presence at the games is, objectively, innocuous. She goes to games, sits in a private box with people who are not clamoring for her attention, watches the games, and cheers when something good for the Chiefs happens. Many have speculated that her appearances, or perhaps even the entire relationship, is a ploy for attention; I have no reason to believe that it is, and if it were, it would be rather confusing because she isn’t really doing anything. That Swift’s star power is so high that broadcasts when she is present are so transfixed on her is itself an argument against the relationship being a public work—Taylor Swift’s profile has not particularly increased because of dating Travis Kelce. Kelce’s has, but that doesn’t explain why Swift would feel motivated to help him.
Backlash to the constant camera shots of Taylor Swift was inevitable, as she has faced backlash large and small throughout her career, but that it has taken on a particular political valiance has been somewhat unusual. Swift, who was notorious in some circles for being publicly apolitical (a certain particularly bored subsection of Hillary Clinton supporter blamed Swift, who it cannot be stressed enough never said a single positive public thing about Donald Trump, for Clinton’s 2016 loss), has since taken public political stances—they began in earnest when she advocated against conservative Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn and have since extended to pro-choice, pro-LGBT, pro-Black Lives Matter liberalism. Although calling Swift an ardent leftist would seemingly be overselling it—she has notably come under fire from environmental activists for her extensive use of private jets—it would be fair to say that Swift fits within the established parameters of American liberalism. Kelce, for his part, has never really been known to be publicly political—the closest thing to political activism he has ever done was appearing in commercials for COVID-19 boosters, a political stance echoed by such socialist revolutionaries as Donald Trump.
The Kansas City Chiefs are a uniquely toxic organization in several ways. The team, named after (white) former Kansas City mayor Harold Roe Bartle, who himself was nicknamed based on a widely criticized Boy Scouts sub-section formed by Bartle, has now spent over sixty years marketing itself with Native American imagery. The name of both the team and of its home stadium, Arrowhead Stadium, have been criticized, but even more egregious examples have permeated throughout the years. And while the Chiefs have nixed some of their traditions, such as the horse Warpaint, who was worn by a man dressed in a headdress years into the twenty-first century, others have remained intact. Despite years of Native American activist organizations imploring the organization to stop using such imagery as the “war drum”, fans dressing in traditional Native American clothing, and most infamously the “Tomahawk Chop”, the team has largely escaped the severe scrutiny levied against the former Cleveland Indians and Washington (it’s such a heinous slur that I don’t even feel like typing it out—if you somehow don’t know, just search “Washington Commanders” and go from there), and while the presence of the Atlanta Braves in the 2021 World Series invited an onslaught of criticism of their use of the Tomahawk Chop, the Chiefs have somehow avoided such a large public reckoning despite appearing in four Super Bowls in five years and not exactly sliding under the public radar
One can easily make the argument that Kansas City Chiefs ownership, headed by Clark Hunt, is not materially worse than the typical NFL owner. But as a lifelong resident of the St. Louis area whose readership has primarily come from the St. Louis area, the “normal” ways in which the Hunt family has behaved perniciously are especially personal. In 1988, Lamar Hunt voted to approve the relocation of the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals to Phoenix. In 1995, he voted against the relocation of the St. Louis Rams to St. Louis. In 2016, Clark Hunt was the lone owner (on a six-owner committee) to vote against a stadium plan in Carson, California that would have saved NFL football in St. Louis, and once that fell through, voted in favor of the Rams’ relocation to Los Angeles. The Hunt family finally gave away the game for good the month the Rams moved and admitted that they planned to market the Chiefs in St. Louis. The results have been somewhat impossible to gauge—the Chiefs likely are the favorite team of a plurality of St. Louisans, but it is hardly unanimous and hardly akin to the popularity of the Rams when they were in St. Louis, or even of, say, the Green Bay Packers in Milwaukee, despite the Chiefs being treated as a de facto home team as far as NFL broadcasting has been concerned and despite the Chiefs giving their fans an absurd amount of success in the eight seasons since the Rams left St. Louis.
The previous paragraph is not intended to engender Chiefs hatred among neutral fans—it’s not as though the ownership of the York family of the San Francisco 49ers is exactly spotless—but rather to engender an understanding of why this hatred exists. The same goes for the controversies regarding Native American imagery, except for the part about it not being intended to engender Chiefs hatred—you should absolutelycondemn the Tomahawk Chop, even if allegiance to Kansas City ties you to still root for the team. As for me, I was a lifelong St. Louis Rams fan with abandonment issues, an extremely socially liberal sensibility, and a Native American wife who hates the Chiefs every bit as much as I do (for the obvious reasons) despite never having been a St. Louis Rams fan and despite Taylor Swift being her favorite musical artist of all-time—I am essentially the exact demographic destined to hate the Kansas City Chiefs. And the point here is that these reasons already existed.
In the wake of particularly stupid right-wing cranks like sports radio host Clay Travis, recent presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamay, and countless right-wing media freaks claiming preposterously that Taylor Swift is somehow a CIA plant (which might be a bit but post-Pizzagate, it is essential that we take even the dopiest sounding conspiracy theories seriously on their face), it has now become fashionable among a certain well-off white liberal milieu to openly support the Kansas City Chiefs as a means to spite the Clay Travises of the world. Having an instinct of repulsion towards this group is sensible, but it’s also worth remembering that very few, if any, of these people actually care. This group of culture warriors that gave us Bud Light protests because Anheuser-Busch (a company with plenty of actual questionable business decisions of its own) provided one special Bud Light to one transgender person got bored and have moved from one Extremely Online cultural grievance to another, and now, years after declaring that they had abandoned the NFL after Colin Kaepernick, the extremely anodyne “END RACISM” signage on end zones, or some other controversy that we have all likely forgotten, have moved on to getting angry because TV networks are showing Taylor Swift too much for their liking.
I don’t personally find the Swift cutaways especially annoying—it’s not like they are cutting away from game action (the NFL famously has no shortage of down time)—but some people do for the same reasons they get annoyed whenever Fox’s broadcast of the World Series will cut to conspicuously placed stars of an upcoming show that will last eight episodes. Yes, there are certainly misogynists among the NFL’s fan base, but do you know how I’m pretty confident that the misogyny factor isn’t all that significant? Because the NFL, for better and for worse, is a deeply, deeply capitalist organization, and every move they make is with an eye on maximizing profits, and the networks keep showing Taylor Swift. The NFL’s blackballing of Colin Kaepernick was a business decision—a gross and evil one, but a business decision nonetheless. Kaepernick was dispensable (I have long speculated that Tom Brady, or even a Black equivalent of Tom Brady, so I guess Patrick Mahomes now, would have survived the blowback he received in 2016) because whatever people were turning off their televisions in disgust was higher than the percentage tuning in for Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem. Taylor Swift is bringing people in.
But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I have cogent reasons for hating the Kansas City Chiefs, but that is barely material in this—if I rooted against them because I hated the color red, stewing about Taylor Swift might seem silly but it would be ultimately harmless. But the idea of expressly backing the Kansas City Chiefs, as an ostensible liberal, as solidarity with arguably the single woman on the planet who least needs solidarity at this moment, ventures into the territory of the truly absurd. It is the same uniquely white liberalism that prompted such reactions as those who were up in arms about Barbie’s lack of Oscar nominations. Posting about Barbie or Taylor Swift is, almost literally, the least one can do for the feminist cause.
I hope the San Francisco 49ers win the Super Bowl by so much that the traveling Kansas City Chiefs fans who managed to get an audible Tomahawk Chop going after the team’s road victory over the Baltimore Ravens are shamed into leaving Allegiant Stadium. But just as Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie woke up on Wednesday as extremely wealthy and respected auteurs, Taylor Swift will wake up on Super Bowl Monday as a literal billionaire. We know that Taylor Swift will root for the Kansas City Chiefs, just as we can reasonably assume that Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone, via her social media retweets, will root against the team whose name she has advocated changing. And a version of feminism that regards the opinions of a white woman but not the concerns of a non-white woman is not true feminism—it is white supremacy.
