Natalie Perez
Audio By Carbonatix
The Golden Globes made its broadcast comeback on Sunday and the ceremony was rife with drama.
Honestly, this was inevitable no matter how the show played out. Last year’s broadcast was canceled after a 2021 Los Angeles Times expose revealed that not only did the voting block for the awards have no Black members, but that certain members had been accused of making bigoted remarks and soliciting favors from nominees.
You could look at getting the disgraced awards back on the air at all as a major accomplishment, but you’d have to look past some pretty significant glitches. Comedian Jo Koy was selected to host at the eleventh hour (presumably because nobody else wanted to do it) and his eight days of preparation showed.
Koy’s jokes were lame at best and offensive at worst. The worst joke of the night was at the expense of Barbie, the critical, commercial and cultural juggernaut of 2023. The film’s feminist messaging went clear over Koy’s head, as he referred to it as a movie about “a plastic doll with big boobies.” In other words, he delivered the exact level of class and tact for which the Golden Globes are historically known.
The joke about Barbie was certainly disrespectful to the film’s creative team in attendance (particularly executive producer and star Margot Robbie), but it wasn’t the only comment to raise eyebrows.
Another joke in Koy’s monologue had to do with Taylor Swift, whose concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour was nominated for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement.
“The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL?” Koy quipped. “On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. I swear.”
Like many of his jokes, this one landed with a thud. Swift’s instantly memeworthy death glare was a better punchline than he could’ve come up with.
The one funny thing Jo Koy has done so far is mention Taylor Swift by name because it led to this cutaway shot where she's extremely "keep my name out of your mouth" #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/8E1dvWjs5c
— Shawn Pasternak (@ShawnCP92) January 8, 2024
But was the reaction warranted? Sure, the joke was a doozy, but it wasn’t glaringly offensive like the comment directed at the Barbie team. Awards show monologues are designed to poke fun at attendees. Did Swift honestly believe she’d be exempt?
At some point when Taylor Swift learned of (and no doubt, about) the word “misogyny,” her entire PR strategy changed overnight. Don’t get us wrong. Swift has absolutely been on the receiving end of bad-faith mockery that would never be directed at a man. We sincerely hope to never hear a hacky joke about her “only writing about breakups” ever again.
On the other hand, there is plenty of legitimate criticism that one could aim at Swift. Fans and critics alike have noted her excessive use of her private jet, the apparent greed that played a role in last year’s Ticketmaster debacle and her association with problematic ex Matty Healy. These and other fair critiques are often brushed off by both Swifties and Swift herself as misogynistic and disrespectful. Koy’s lukewarm joke is no exception.
“I have never in my life heard of a Jo Koy, but suddenly I am ready to campaign for him to never work in Hollywood again,” read one tweet. “I’m so sick of misogyny in 2024.”
Of course, no reaction spoke louder than Swift’s, which is now the stink eye heard ’round the world. Some fans are defending her by saying she hasn’t actually spoken about the joke and that she has a right not to laugh at it. While this is true, we can’t ignore her long history of negative reactions to jokes like this.
During the 70th Golden Globes in 2013, hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler made a brief joke about Swift’s dating history during a string of jokes about the celebrities in attendance. In an interview with Vanity Fair two months later, Swift responded by saying that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women.”
In 2021, a similar joke was made on Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia: “What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift.”
As we said, jokes like this are unfunny, unfair and even factually inaccurate during a period when Swift was several years into her relationship with ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn. That doesn’t make Swift’s response any less bizarre and inappropriate.
“Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back,” Swift tweeted. “How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse shit as FuNnY.”
The actress who delivered (but did not write) the line in question, Antonia Gentry, was immediately subjected to relentless harassment at the hands of “feminist” Swifties. Her Instagram comments were littered with demands for an apology as well as racist remarks.
Swift never called on her fans to leave Gentry alone. She was complicit in the bullying of a young woman who did nothing wrong in the name of “feminism.” What was that quote about the special place in hell again?
Her fans’ reaction to Koy’s joke, which wasn’t a sexist rehash of her dating history and was honestly more at the expense of the NFL, says the quiet part loud: This was never about feminism. It was about weaponizing feminist buzzwords to shut down any perceived negativity toward Swift, justified or otherwise. Swifties aren’t interested in “women supporting women.” They’re about everyone blindly rallying behind one woman: Taylor Alison Swift.
We don’t know if Taylor Swift will ever directly comment on Koy’s joke. But if she was as bothered by it as she was by the remarks from Fey and Poehler over a decade ago, we humbly recommend she stop going to the Golden Globes. It never seems to end well for anyone involved.
