evidence: In this case, the "thing that’s just begun" was Barbie receiving eight Oscar nominations on Tuesday. Writer-director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie were nominated for writing and producing, respectively, with the movie’s screenplay and best picture nods. But Robbie wasn’t nominated for best actress and Gerwig was not nominated for best director. [...] The New York Times helped lead the charge with "Barbie Is Bad. There, I Said It," an essay that seemed rather nervous and defensive about having a potentially heretical non-Times-y opinion, yet nonetheless made a solid case for the blowback being overwrought: "Every time a woman fails to win an accolade doesn’t mean failure for womanhood. Surely women aren’t so pitiable as to need a participation certificate every time we try. We’re well beyond the point where a female artist can’t be criticized on the merits and can’t be expected to handle it as well as any man." And as for the film, "There were no actual stakes, no plot to follow in any real or pretend world that remotely made sense. In lieu of genuine laughs, there were only winking ha-has at a single joke improbably stretched into a feature-length movie," and that "For those who hailed it, there was a manic quality to the Barbie enthusiasm, less an ‘I enjoyed’ and more of an ‘I endorse.'"