The Golden Globes 2024: Funny or Tastelessly Degrading?

Photo from Golden Globes.

Sage Osesek

The Golden Globe Awards are an annual award ceremony hosted to recognize the television industry’s achievements. To earn a Golden Globe is a remarkable feat and held with high prestige. As a result, millions of people tune in each year to hear the results of the Golden Globes. 

This year, Joy Koy hosted the Golden Globes and attempted to make the show comical by adding a few jokes. Unfortunately, one joke in particular was notably tasteless. The audience responded accordingly and controversy erupted. 

While discussing the nominees, Koy says, “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.” 

This comment was created around the idea that many people think the idea of degrading women is funny. It praises Oppenheimer, then objectifies women while inadvertently criticizing Barbie for its shallowness. Koy, who should be familiar with the tastelessness of live misogynistic humor, blatantly missed the point of Barbie while promoting sexism in a singular comment. 

Barbie is about empowering women, not reducing them to their bodies. It is about accepting yourself despite your flaws and letting your imagination influence you. Barbie explores existentialism, societal expectations, and equality with a humorous flair. It masterfully explains these themes, showing its complexity and likewise remarkable achievement. After this touching movie was released, Koy decided to devalue its meaning and make Barbie: a film about finding and accepting yourself into Barbie: women are objects. His comment proves the point of Barbie. The real world laughs about patriarchal ideals and ignores the important problems—problems that this movie dissects. 

There will always be those who interject to claim that society has gotten too soft, and Koy was supposed to make jokes that won’t please everyone. It’s true; society has gotten soft, but we can’t always look at this fact negatively. As a society, through movies like Barbie, we are recognizing what’s wrong with the world. We’re moving past the age of vulgar and demeaning jokes that may be funny to some but offensive to others. We all recognize that Koy was making a joke, but we should all see it was weak. When a host resorts to misogynistic jokes in their monologues, you know they are lacking comedic material.

Koy attempted to joke about Barbie, but based on the frowns from the audience, he crashed and burned. Barbie shouldn’t be reduced to objectifying women; it should be celebrated to empower women. Hosts and comedians need to find new material rather than degrading quips to fill their monologue. Comedy doesn’t have to lower others’ worth, and it certainly doesn’t have to insult a meaningful film, especially at a ceremony celebrating a film's accomplishments.