“We fixed it!” Amy Poehler exclaimed after best supporting actor winner Daniel Kaluuya conquered a bad connection and was finally able to give his acceptance speech. She was, of course, referring to Kaluuya’s video conference issue. But one could almost hear the Hollywood Foreign Press Association saying it through Poehler, issuing a sigh of relief that a Black actor had won the first prize.
The HFPA has been under fire of late, for alleged corruption related to the receiving of gifts and other perks in exchange for nominations, for a lack of diversity among Globes nominees, and for the fact that none of the organization’s 80-something members are Black. So it was incumbent upon the HFPA—and on NBC, which airs the lucrative broadcast every year—that there be some sense of excitement, uplift, and righteousness throughout the evening. Kaluuya’s performance as Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah was certainly worth celebrating. But his win tonight didn’t feel like it fixed anything.
Maybe there was no fixing the Golden Globes—not this year, anyway. The double onus of addressing existentially threatening controversy while doing a big live broadcast during the continuing COVID-19 pandemic was perhaps insurmountable. From the jump, the show was stilted and pained, a lame attempt at happy, glitzy fanfare that failed stylistically and substantively.
Three members of the HFPA did take the stage to address the issues of their group’s lack of diversity, but it was a short, perfunctory moment. It nodded to a big problem only to quickly wave it away so the splashy show could flounce on. There is, of course, a bigger question of why marginalized people would want to be made members of an organization so constantly under ethical scrutiny, but following that line of thinking would lead the broadcast down a darker road of self-reflection that the HFPA will probably never be ready to publicly air.
Hosts Poehler and Tina Fey—the former in Los Angeles, the latter in New York—did their best to make light of the situation while also throwing some barbs at their employers. But without the cushy trappings of a star-packed, booze-drenched auditorium at the Beverly Hilton—with fun parties to follow—to justify their, and anyone’s, presence there, one had to wonder why Fey and Poehler would even bother. Why would anyone, for that matter?
Maybe the Hollywood community believed that a functioning awards show would signify healthiness within the broader industry. And we certainly can’t fault anyone for that kind of “the show must go on” thinking after such a disastrous year for the film and television business. But that can-do spirit could do little to combat the cursedness that surrounded this year’s Globes broadcast. We appreciate the effort of a frivolous awards show only if it seems a lot less effortful—and less premised on crisis PR management for the shadowy cabal pulling the strings.
The most I’ve ever stage-managed is a couple of college theater productions, so I certainly have no idea how complicated a technical endeavor a broadcast like this Golden Globes was, with its two stages and hundreds of video-conference windows to juggle. But it was awfully janky, full of lags, scratchy audio, and speeches and jokes swallowed up by the muffle of digital fuzz. It was far more stressful than it was fun—and fun is really the most you can hope for when it comes to the Golden Globes, whose prestige value was all but nil even before this latest round of criticism and exposé. Probably better that the HFPA and NBC just scrapped the thing and waited until next year—to do it truly live and in one room, and hopefully under the auspices of a changed and contrite Hollywood Foreign Press.
It was all just so awkward. The horrifyingly cringe-y cuts to people Fey and Poehler had just made fun of, or who had just lost in their category (fine in the room, excruciating on Zoom or whatever). The stuttering “should I talk now?” confusion of various winners. The speeches that meandered without the guiding pressure of being up on a stage in front of peers. It was bad. Hopefully, the Academy Awards—being directed, in part, by Steven Soderbergh—will iron out or avoid many of those kinks in April. The Oscars have more of an inherent pomp than the Globes, which will presumably make some of those inevitable glitches more tolerable. The Globes, though, played even sillier—dare I say more useless—than usual.
It’s hard to be so down on a show I used to love, a frivolous early-winter distraction that was a chance to watch Oscar acceptance speeches road-tested while wondering what all the celebs were talking about as the feed cut to commercial breaks. But that airy levity cannot survive under so much strife, and there was a heaping pile of that this year. I almost immediately felt sorry for the various first responders invited, as some kind of thank you gift, to be in the live audiences in New York and L.A. They, more than anyone else, deserved better. (That said, I did laugh a little at the pre-taped bit where various stars asked healthcare workers deliberately obtuse questions.)
Some of the winners were good, at least. Kaluuya, John Boyega for Red, White and Blue (part of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology), the lovely Minari in foreign language film, Chloé Zhao as best director for Nomadland, Andra Day pulling off a surprise victory for The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Jane Fonda, accepting the Cecile B. DeMille lifetime achievement award, gave a graceful and meaningful speech, citing many of the nominated films and TV series for helping her expand her own political and personal empathy.
Those moments were rare bright spots in an evening otherwise marred by internal ills and those imposed from without. Some naysayers on Twitter were declaring the Globes dead even before tonight’s broadcast, figuring the HFPA could never pull out of this particular tailspin. I wasn’t quite ready to get behind that pronouncement before the show. But by the end of the torturous ceremony, I was just about ready to join the funeral procession. “It’s always the most fun awards show,” The Crown creator Peter Morgan said of the Golden Globes while accepting the best drama trophy. I believe that it once was. But those good times can surely be had elsewhere, with far less weighty baggage. How’s about giving it a go again, Blockbuster Awards?
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