This year’s Golden Globes were certainly… something. Let’s hope we never do it like this again.
The Golden Globes are my favorite award show, typically. It’s not because the ceremony is, like, good, or an accurate representation of artistic excellence in any way. I like the Golden Globes because the whole thing is a mess. Awards are given out almost willy-nilly, people are often quite drunk, and there’s a cloud of corruption and grift hanging over the whole affair. All award shows are silly, but the Globes is the one that makes no attempt to hide it, which I appreciate on some level. My general stance on award shows is as follows: “there’s no good reason to do any of this, but if we’re committed to doing it, we might as well try to do it right.” There’s a flip side to that coin though, and it goes like this: “if we’re not going to do it right, let’s at least try to be hilarious about it.” That’s why I usually enjoy the Globes. Because I love chaos and anarchy. It’s also why I was secretly kind of excited about this year’s ceremony. I figured this would all be like the Chaos Emmys from 2020 but more and bigger and messier and I could delight in the glow of the raging flames. I am sad to report this did not happen. I did not enjoy any of it. Well, almost any of it. We’ll get into it shortly. Now, actually. No need to drag this out any further. Presenting the Winners and Losers from the 2021 Golden Globes. Congratulations to Anya Taylor-Joy for winning Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television at the #GoldenGlobes. pic.twitter.com/bDQqL2stbU Golden Globe Awards (@goldenglobes) March 1, 2021 Really just a fantastic night for England. The show started out with two consecutive wins by British actors — Daniel Kaluuya and John Boyega — and continued apace throughout the night. The Crown and its stars won a slew of awards, Anya Taylor-Joy won, Sacha Baron Cohen won for Borat, Rosamund Pike won, etc. Just a tremendous showing throughout the evening for the Queen’s subjects. Heck, even when Jason Sudeikis won for Ted Lasso, he was Zooming into the ceremony live from across the pond — in a hoodie, at like 2:15 AM local time — because he was over there working on season two. Say what you will about the bi-coastal ceremony, with Tina Fey helming the New York half and Amy Poehler filming the Los Angeles half, but they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by just doing everything live from London. They could have let Paddington host and hand out CGI trophies to the winners. Animated bears cannot catch or spread viruses to the best of my knowledge. This idea keeps getting better the more I type about it. Lord in heaven knows I do not want to do another Pandemic Awards Show next year, but if we absolutely have to, this is an option. Maybe this was just me and the filter through which I was viewing it all, but I got a very distinct whiff of “I don’t really want to be doing this again” from many of the people involved. Not that they didn’t try. Bless their souls, they did try. Everyone is doing the best they can. But there was a weariness about it all, a feeling that, like, we’re still doing this, that I couldn’t escape. It didn’t help that the show was littered with technical difficulties — Laura Dern had to put her damn glasses on and apologize for a glitch during the first presentation — even though there should, in theory, be an agreed-upon way to handle things by now. What I’m saying is that it was a messy and chaotic affair, but not in the good and fun way I was hoping for.
