Golden Globes 2019: Glaring problem with this year’s event - NEWS.com.au

Over the last two weeks, celebs went well and truly bonkers: Kevin Spacey released a homemade video in character as his amoral character Frank Underwood, claiming that we all wanted him to be, in real life, a sleaze and quite possibly a sexual predator.

Angelina Jolie, whose divorce has lasted longer than her marriage and was recently rebuked by a judge for parental alienation, said she might run for president because, after all, “I always say I’ll go where I’m needed.”

And Louis CK burned what little goodwill he had left down to the ground by mocking the teenage survivors of the Parkland high school shooting and whining that he lost $35 million in one day.

And what do we get at the Golden Globes? The squarest, least funny, most low-stakes ceremony ever — except if you’re Lady Gaga, who looked like she was waiting for her doctor to tell her if she was terminal. (She lost.)

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Oh — there was one lame jab at Les Moonves. Fourteen months since #MeToo and Time’s Up, and Hollywood has collectively retreated to its default position of back-patting and political hectoring.

Co-hosts Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh were a discordant pairing at best, and both fell flat in the opening monologue.

Samberg attempted a joke aimed at Ryan Coogler, one of the few black directors working today. After a clunky set-up leading into Coogler’s blockbuster film Black Panther, Samberg asked if there were “a bunch of old members of the Black Panther party” who were upset they couldn’t even get an audition. Coogler did not look amused.

Sandra Oh confused the crowd by suddenly turning tearful and trembly, reassuring a room full of sozzled celebs that things are really, really changing for the good in Hollywood.

“This moment is real,” she intoned. “Trust me, it is real.” Then, turning her attention to unseen actresses in the crowd, she deployed one of Lena Dunham’s favourite patronising phrases. “I see you,” she said. Some in the audience, clearly thinking this was a bit, laughed until they realised Oh was serious. “I see you,” Oh said, “all these faces of change. And now so will everyone.”

Huh? Only five of the 30 nominees in acting categories were people of colour.

Few dared to say anything off-the-cuff or interesting. It was left to two legends, Carol Burnett and Jeff Bridges, to show the room how it was done. Bridges accepted the Cecil B. DeMille award with shaggy enthusiasm, channelling his inner Dude while urging us all to “turn this ship in the direction we want to go — towards love!” It was the perfect mix of gratitude, perspective and absurdity in an absurd setting.

Burnett delivered a short, heartfelt speech about the power of comedy, and a vintage clip of her legendary “Gone with the Wind” sketch was the funniest thing to air all night.

If Kevin Hart has any desire to still host the Oscars, the Globes should have snuffed those out. It may sound like predicting the end of football, but the flatness of this year’s ceremony, to say nothing of declining ratings, just underscores the irrelevance of awards shows — and, comic book movies aside, Hollywood itself.

This story originally appeared in the New York Post and is republished here with permission.

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