Emma Stone’s Best Actress Oscars win honors a brilliant performance of a clichéd character

Awards season had a shaky start, with Golden Globes host Jo Koy facing criticism for some truly unfunny jokes about Barbie and Taylor Swift back in January. Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel played it safer, acknowledging the fervor around Greta Gerwig’s perceived snub—though her film was nominated for Best Picture, she was not nominated for her direction—while saving the raunchier jokes for Ryan Gosling. 

There were some standout wins: Da’Vine Joy Randolph took home the first award of the night, the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in The Holdovers, while Billie Eilish won Best Original Song for “What Was I Made For.” Justine Triet, the French director, won Best Original Screenplay for Anatomy of a Fall, along with her life partner Arthur Harari. 

And Best Actress went to Emma Stone for her turn as Bella Baxter in Poor Things. She gave an emotional, tear-filled acceptance speech, acknowledging the women on stage who presented her with the award and the other actresses in her category. Among the latter was Lily Gladstone, who portrayed Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon and was the first Native American woman to be nominated for the honor. 

Poor Things was hailed by some as a feminist film about a woman learning about and embracing her independence, particularly her sexuality. (I saw more than one TikTok saying it was the feminist film Barbie wishes it was.) I don’t view it that way; in fact, it left me feeling uneasy, especially as I grappled with the largely positive reviews I read. In the film, Bella Baxter has her brain replaced with her unborn infant’s after an attempted suicide leaves her near-death; throughout, she slowly learns to become a woman again, thinking and exploring the world on her own. That’s largely done through sex, including when she has the mental maturity of an adolescent and, later, when she becomes a prostitute. 

Stone is magnificent in the film, and she clearly has a fruitful artistic relationship with director Yorgos Lanthimos. My unease with the underlying dynamics of the movie doesn’t change what an achievement it is for her to win Best Actress for the second time at age 35. But “woman learning about herself through her sexuality” is as cliché and predictable as another white man winning the Oscar for Best Director. We’ve all seen that film before.

Alicia Adamczyk
[email protected]

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PARTING WORDS

"I want people to know that if you have something on your heart that you can’t stop thinking about, it’s meant for you to do it and you should do it."

— The Holdovers actress Da'Vine Joy Randolph describing why she acts