Despite the new year just starting, it’s been established that the current Golden Globe hosts haven’t had a clean record in entertaining the audience in years, proving the obsolete essence of the role itself. By removing the job of “host” and having celebrities rotate presenting awards, the award show has a better chance of gaining public approval and successfully amusing the crowd without any hurt feelings.

From this year alone, rookie sensation comedian turned infamous Golden Globe comedian-host Jo Koy, has already left a lasting impression on his audience, and not a positive one.

On Jan. 7, at the 81st Golden Globe Awards, actors, directors, and celebrities joined together to commemorate over the top grossing films in 2023. Fan favorites like Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Poor Things, as well as a huge array of other films, drew the customary huge viewerships.

At the beginning of the award show, Koy began by noting that Barbie and Oppenheimer were competing for the “Cinematic Box Office Achievement” award and while he praised Oppenheimer, even stating that he wished it was an hour longer, his remarks towards Barbie weren’t as tasteful. 

“Oppenheimer is based on a 720 one-page Pulitzer Prize winning book about the Manhattan Project and Barbie is [based] on a plastic doll with big boobies,” Koy laughed.

While seeming like a harmless joke at first, this brief comment completely diminished the sole purpose of the movie: to depict the struggles of women. By reducing this achievement to the kind of ideologies that drove the movie to be made in the first place, it was shown that despite bearing the responsibility of a host, Koy clearly didn’t research the film thoroughly enough. When the camera panned to the audience proceeding Koy’s comment, even Barbie costar Ryan Gosling couldn’t manage to muster a smile. 

Similarly in 2022, host Chris Rock made a jab at Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head while he was delivering a speech for the Best Documentary Award. Smith, who had been dealing with alopecia since 2018, was hurt by the joke and the situation escalated to her husband, Will Smith getting out of his seat and slapping Rock in the face. 

Both incidents, while different, share a distinct commonality: hosts whose insensitive remarks caused backlash from viewers. That leads to an obvious question—how meticulously are potential candidates for the job chosen when selecting the role?

It’s important to first consider that most individuals don’t want to host the Golden Globe Awards. After repeated occurrences of controversial hosts, the majority of celebrities choose not to be associated with these kinds of altercations and opt out of the choice to host. As a result, several newer hosts are often selected with short notice, in fear that they might reject the request if given too much time to consider the offer. Jo Koy himself even explicitly stated in his monologue that “[he] got the gig 10 days ago” before performing it live. 

It’s evident that being a Golden Globe Awards host isn’t an easy job, but why even select a host every year in the first place? From 1996 to 2009, the Golden Globe didn’t have individuals to host shows. Instead, celebrities would introduce the award show before proceeding to presentations given by various actors throughout the night. Compared to current years, this approach to running the show is bound to flow more smoothly.

Moreover, if we continue to choose new hosts every year, it’s likely that they’ll feel an external pressure to outdo the previous entertainer and as a result, might make a rash decision such as an offensive comment in an attempt to win the crowd over with thoughtless humor.

All in all, with the long history of controversy behind Golden Globe hosts, the best outlook towards hosting these shows is to completely remove the role of a single host.

Image courtesy of WIKIMEDIA COMMONS