Laufey is a trad-pop superstar (and that's enough)
With the Grammys coming next week and the Oscar nominations out, I've been thinking about the ways the culture industry — including writers like me — throws things into buckets in order to see what floats to the top. Awards season is a fun game, but also a folly.
Consider the debate over the newly nominated "I'm Just Ken," the power ballad parody that bursts into the Barbie movie in a 1960s Pop Art musical sequence and lifts the film to a wholly new level of pink plastic pathos. The song already won a Critics Choice Award, its success fueling the moment's unfortunate Ken backlash. (Greta and Margot's bona fides aside, Ken's the peachy heart of that film, give him his flowers!) Even Ryan Gosling himself has indicated that he thinks "I'm Just Ken" isn't all that.
The thing about "I'm Just Ken" is that it doesn't fit the usual bucket for Oscar-winning songs. It's a parody of such songs, with its sweeping chorus and heroic lyrics lamenting the existential crisis of a ripped polyvinyl chloride doll.like the kind of sweeping, sentimental hit that the Academy loves, but that's a disguise allowing Gosling and his Kennish chorus of dancers to critique the very bravado trumpet. "I'm Just Ken" is Oscar bait, while also standing outside that category. It shows how such categories are inadequate.
