The Golden Globes Awards have been held every year since 1944 for great movie and TV-show achievements honoring actors, actresses, cast members and crewmates. This year, comedian and actor Jo Koy hosted the ceremony.
As many may know, this past July one of the most memorable movies of the year (or possibly decade) was released. Barbie, starring Margot Robbie, brought close to $1.3 billion at the worldwide box office, becoming one of the only female-dominated movies among the top-grossing films of all time. Now, there is a lot of controversy between Jo Koy and the Barbie world, as he began making sexist jokes towards the film. Jo Koy spoke during the Globe awards and remarked, “‘Oppenheimer’ is based on the 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project — and ‘Barbie’ is about a plastic doll with big boobies.” The audience apparently found the joke far from funny, as they stayed silent.
Entertainment news source Variety writes, “Given that Barbie actively fights against gender stereotypes, many Golden Globes viewers found Koy’s joke to be tasteless and reductive.” Barbie was a revolutionary movie released to try and spread a message that being a woman… is still hard and you should stay true to yourself. America Ferrara’s character displayed this perspective in an extraordinary way in delivering a speech in the movie. Aside from the joke, Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie were not nominated for an award at the Globes this year. Some thought this to be shocking and surprising but it turns out their efforts just weren’t “Kenough”. They were instead snubbed by Ryan Gosling, the famous actor who played the role of Ken. Barbie was also the only movie to earn a billion dollars at the box office in 2023. Greta Gerwig is also known for directing the movies “Lady Bird” and “Little Women”. Mrs. McManus, WFS upper school English teacher, was asked about her recent thoughts on the Golden Globes, and in addition how it impacted the performing arts community. She responded, “The ceremony seems to have gotten bigger, and serves as a “pre-Oscar” kind of awards preview. I have mixed feelings about awards shows for the performing arts– I love that artists get much deserved recognition– but the idea of a “competition” for “the best” performance, editing, costumes, writing, etc, can pit worthy artists against one another and turn performing arts into more of a thunderdome than a celebration.” Although the Golden Globes award performing arts categories, the creativity piece can get disregarded as the mass media turn artist projects into Tik Tok trends, memes, or even just viral videos. Even though Barbie or Jo Koy made a big impression this year, the next few years will tell how far the art of film is undermined.
