On January 7th, The Golden Globes, an awards ceremony celebrating achievements in film and television, kicked the 2024 awards season into high gear—or, rather, low gear because it was not that exciting. The show itself was not as entertaining as it was hoped to be, especially considering that this was the first year the event ran under its new channel and ownership. That, however, is not to say there wasn’t any drama.
Immediately after the ceremony, the internet was buzzing with angry comments about the host, Jo Koy’s, jokes. A supposedly successful stand-up comedian, Koy’s jokes were anything but funny. Each one more painful than the last; a majority of his jokes were received with awkward smiles and reluctant laughter. There wasn’t anything wrong with most of his jokes other than the fact that they weren’t funny, but his controversial jokes about Taylor Swift and the movie, Barbie, were largely the source of the internet backlash.
Koy’s jab at pop music icon Taylor Swift not only bothered Swift herself but also her enormous fanbase of ‘Swifties’ standing in her corner. He rhetorically asked the audience, “What’s the difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL?” to which he finished the joke with: “On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift.” As the camera then panned to Swift, she made a face, unamused and proceeded to take a sip of her drink. This clip soon went viral and people across social media were quick to make comments criticizing Koy and supporting Swift. Though at first I was confused and didn’t see anything wrong with the joke other than it being entirely unnecessary, I quickly realized the underlying sexism of some of his jokes.
Within the short span of Koy’s monologue, he made several jokes about women that were widely perceived as sexist. What sparked the most backlash was Koy’s joke about the Summer 2023 Barbenheimer phenomenon, “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.” With that one sentence, Koy erased the complexity of Barbie and belittled the meaning of the entire movie. I had the chance to see Barbie on July 20th, the day before it officially came out, with my mother. We were going into the movie blind, unaware if it was going to be a childish kid’s movie or a thriller. We were surprised in the best way possible. We found that the movie was really about women not just fitting Koy’s description. It was about navigating the experiences and anxieties that come with being a woman, and the reality of being a woman in a patriarchal society. A society where women are objectified, in the very way that Koy did when he overgeneralized this movie. Needless to say, women jumped to call out Koy and stated that his joke, and others like it, are the very reason this movie needed to be created in the first place.
After these two jokes were met with disgust, Koy did not apologize but, instead, blamed the poor jokes on several circumstances. Following another controversial joke about women becoming character actors when they go from “perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet,” Koy justified his poorly landed jokes, saying, “Some I wrote. Some other people wrote… Yo, I got the gig ten days ago! …I wrote some of these and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.” There wouldn’t have been any problem if Koy just owned up to his distasteful jokes, but instead, he decided to put all the blame on his writers and on a lack of time. I don’t know about you, but I think ten days is enough time to write good jokes, or at least look over the jokes written and remove the blatantly sexist ones.
Considering Koy was not really in the show after his monologue during the first 10 minutes, the rest of the ceremony ran smoothly and uneventfully. The widespread criticism of Koy as a host is a bad look for the newly revamped Golden Globes, but historic wins in some of the categories—like Lily Gladstone as the first Native American to win best female actor in a motion picture and Ali Wong as the first Asian actress to win best female actor in a limited series—redeem the show a bit.
With award show viewership on a decline, some wonder if there is still justification to keep the show going. Koy’s controversial jokes and the negative reviews of the ceremony hint that the award shows are following a downward spiral. With the right host and no offensive or sexist jokes, though, the show may be just fine. Ultimately, their fate will be up to the award shows themselves if they find a way to remain relevant, entertaining, and unproblematic.
