Let’s play a game. Of all the best picture nominees from this year’s Oscars, which film is the most feminist? Is it Barbie, a family-friendly paean to our childhood’s plastic It Girl? Poor Things, a racy riff on Frankenstein that charts one woman’s process of self-emancipation? Or is it Anatomy of a Fall, about a hotshot bisexual writer accused of murdering her man?
You can make a solid case for any one of them. Conversely, a takedown of each is easy, too. Barbie’s girl power is nothing but good PR for Mattel, and besides, why did they allow Ryan Gosling to steal the show? Poor Things is a man’s manicured vision of women’s liberation. If it’s so feminist, where’s the menstrual blood? The armpit hair?
