The last thing the Golden Globes needed was more controversy.
Since it came to light in 2021 that there were no black journalists out of the then-eighty-seven that made up the voting body behind the awards show, the Globes have dealt with massive celebrity boycotts, the re-airing of corruption allegations, and, even worse, the threat of oblivion. The show was dropped by NBC and awards were announced over Twitter that year. Last year, 2022, saw an attempt at a comeback: CBS agreed to air the show, and Jerrod Carmichael did a decent but ultimately forgettable job hosting it.
This year’s host was anything but forgettable, though. And how I wish I could forget him.
Jo Koy began his awkward opening monologue alternately ribbing and fawning over celebrities in attendance: Kevin Costner, Meryl Streep, Ali Wong. He made awkward jokes about How He Lied To The Golden Globes People And Had To Watch Oppenheimer On New Years While Everyone Else Was Partying (poor thing!). He very awkwardly went on and on and on about Robert de Niro. And then Koy decided that plain awkwardness wasn’t enough: he needed some good old-fashioned sexism to really spice his monologue up.
“Oppenheimer is based on a 724-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project,” Koy began in an insane, horrific moment. “And Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.” He then made fun of actresses’ body insecurities: “The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet, or what casting directors call ‘character actor.’” Already, there’s a lot to unpack here. But Koy just had to drive his objectification home: “I don’t want you guys to think I’m a creep, but it was kind of weird being attracted to a plastic doll.”
No night of sexism would be complete without digs at Taylor Swift, one of the most famous people on earth and a feminist icon. “The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL,” Koy said, is that “on the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift.” The camera panned to Swift: unamused, lips pursed, taking a sip of her drink.
Koy didn’t just have a bad night. He had a horrible night, rife with sexism and blatant disregard for not only the women in attendance, but their entire work and fan base. Calling Barbie a movie about “a plastic doll with big boobies” was reductive, yes, but it also missed the entire point of the movie. The film is about how harmful the patriarchy is, yes, but at its heart is an affirmation of all women’s—and all people’s—inherent beauty. To objectify the main character, then, is to totally misunderstand the film. And to insinuate that it is a less cerebral film than Oppenheimer is more than naive—it’s just plain wrong. All it shows is that Koy couldn’t understand Barbie; instead of tapping into its broad, feminism-for-the-masses message, he left with a degrading, inaccurate opinion.
A commentator described Koy’s opening monologue as a “horrid, sophomoric mishmash of lazy jokes,” but it was not only his objectively bad jokes that sank his monologue: it was how offensive they were that ran it into the ground. Koy is not the first person to make sexist jokes at a major awards show, but to hear derogatory jokes about women in 2024 is disheartening, to say the least. Explicit sexism can and should be a thing of the past. Koy, however, managed to offend every normal person at the Golden Globes with his sexist jokes.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.