Now Hollywood realizes the Golden Globes are meaningless?
Such perfect timing, now that viewership has tanked and there is seemingly no awards show — not the Oscars or the Grammys or the CMAs or the SAGs or anything, really — that a pandemic-battered America wants to see.
Scarlett Johansson — constant defender of Woody Allen, most recently declaring, in the UK magazine The Gentlewoman, that “I don’t think actors have obligations to have a public role in society” — nonetheless was taken seriously when she suggested the Globes be canceled next year.
In blasting the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — which nominates for and awards the Globes, and which everyone knows is an organization that actors, publicists and studios bribe, flatter and seduce in exchange for a win — Johansson proved herself as tone-deaf as ever.
“The HFPA is an organization that was legitimized by the likes of Harvey Weinstein to amass momentum for Academy recognition,” Johansson said in part, “and the industry followed suit.”
Is she for real? Everyone knows that’s what Weinstein did for years — bully and cajole and launch whisper campaigns to win awards for dubious choices. Monster though he is, Weinstein understood that everything in Hollywood, even its highest honor, is transactional. It took him being tried and sentenced to prison for her to object?
We’re six years out from #OscarsSoWhite, and apparently the woke brigade thinks they’ve won that fight — even though the telecast just embarrassed itself assuming the late Chadwick Boseman would win Best Actor over Anthony Hopkins.
So let’s move on to the much more transparent and entertaining little sibling, and pretend it just occurred to Hollywood that the HFPA is insular, strange and mostly white. Guess the word “foreign” in the name fooled them.
Here’s Tom Cruise, the least political of any actor this side of Tom Hanks, returning his three Globes in protest. I love this. You think if Cruise had an Oscar — those of us old enough remember his hard, humorless campaign for “Born on the Fourth of July” — that he’d ever, ever return it? No way. “Oscar winner” is the first line in the obit, always.
“Honestly, as a recent winner of a Golden Globe, I cannot feel proud or happy about being a recipient of this award,” said Mark Ruffalo.
Really? I went back and rewatched his acceptance speech, less than three months old, and it was as I remembered it: an overjoyed Ruffalo surrounded by his wife and two jubilant children.
“The good news is that inclusion and justice … is breaking out everywhere,” he said upon winning. “The godly light of decency is breaking through the hideous dark storm we’ve been living through.”
So, Mark Ruffalo: What’s gone so sideways since this inclusion of the Globes as part of said godly light? Since you accepted your Globe with giddiness and glee?
Adding to this hypocritical woke chorus are Netflix and Amazon, two behemoths that don’t disclose anything about their viewer ratings or algorithms, let alone staffing choices. NBC says it won’t air the Globes in 2022, convenient since it brought in a record-low 6.91 million viewers this year.
The HFPA said it had an 18-month timeline to adjust its framework to include 50 percent more black members. Does that seem excessive? UCLA’s 2020 Hollywood Diversity Report said Hollywood in general is failing to hit supposed benchmarks.
But sure, let’s cancel the only awards show that was fun, that even nominees and winners took so lightly, they get drunk before taking the stage, that surpassed the Oscars year-over-year in sheer watchability.
Want to see real Hollywood outrage? When the Globes air again, which they will because stars can’t resist getting trophies, announce that Ricky Gervais is host for life.
