Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash
It’s January 2024. A new year. A fresh start.
Even though I hadn’t watched the Golden Globes in several years, I decided to give it a shot. I was hoping for a lot of Succession wins, given how much I loved the final season. I was also hoping to get a glimpse of Taylor Swift and Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig—the Eras tour and Barbie were two of my favorite entertainment experiences of the year.
The pandemic had put a halt to awards shows for a few years. When we were all fighting for our lives, watching the uber wealthy swan around in designer gowns and tuxes wasn’t apparently anyone’s idea of escapist entertainment. And the Golden Globes had already been struggling with accusations of bias and racism given the appalling lack of people of color in many of its awards categories.
The organization was called out in 2021 when the LA Times reported that the organization behind the Globes, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, did not have a single black member among its 87 journalists. The original HFPA was dissolved, and a new group was formed with more than 300 members.
A new year, a new voting group, a new show, right? Well, I tuned in, as I used to do every year with my sister and my mom. A few minutes into the opening monologue by a relatively unknown comedian, Jo Koy, I was cringing so hard that my mouth was pulling almost all the way to the back of my head. The most painful and awful moment for me was when he compared Oppenheimer to Barbie: “Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page, Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project. And Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.” This man, with his entire chest, proved Barbie’s very premise in no more than 25 words.
This was a year in which women empowered Hollywood’s revival after the depths of the pandemic doldrums. Greta Gerwig used the fantastically pink Barbie world to bring awareness of the detriments of the patriarchy to both men and women; but she also brought deep and abiding joy back to the movie-watching public. Taylor Swift, who Koy also went after in a tired and sexist way, filled stadiums full of women lifting up their voices in joy and sisterhood, turbo-boosting local economies around the world.
When I wasn’t cringing back into my couch, I was also disappointed. Jo Koy is Filipino, and I’m always happy to see my people being represented. I was rooting for him. So, it was so disappointing to see him repeatedly punch down in his jokes.
This punching down, especially at the expense of women and minorities, seems to be a trend in the comedy world right now. And Netflix seems to be responsible for boosting a lot of these racist, sexist, and transphobic comedy specials.
I can’t lie. It’s been very disheartening to see so much money and attention be thrown at this lazy comedy designed to cheaply stoke outrage and publicity simply by saying “shocking” things that are guaranteed to generate angry opinion pieces and thousands of TikTok reactions.
Still, it was great to see Barbie win the first ever Golden Globe award for box office and cinematic success all while Greta Gerwig became the first “first solo female director with a billion-dollar movie.” As for the haters, they can go lock themselves away in some giant mojo dojo casa house and pat themselves on the back for recycling the same sad sexist jokes over and over again. After enough of that, maybe they will have the epiphany that uplifting women is a smart economic choice as women showed again and again in 2023.
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