This year’s 81st Golden Globes Award Show was held on January 7, 2024. The night was filled with wonderfully talented people, celebration, well-deserved recognition…and a few bad jokes.
While the night was filled with films earning the recognition they deserved, there were still some insensitive and nit-picky jokes made about some extremely successful movies and people. Jo Koy, comedian and host for the night, made a few great jokes and references to extremely successful movies like Oppenheimer, he also had some interesting choice of “jokes” about other successful films, like Barbie.
On the night of the Golden Globes, Barbie was nominated for the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement Award. This was a tremendous achievement for all of the people involved in the Barbie movie: cast, crew, directors, and producers alike. Before Barbie even won the award, Koy decided to make a joke…an interesting “joke”. After naming some wonderful traits about Oppenheimer, he follows with a comparison of Barbie and its plot.
“[…]Oppenheimer is based on a seven hundred and twenty-one page […] prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies […],” Koy shared in his monologue during the Golden Globes event.
Koy claimed he saw and loved Barbie, yet his joke completely contradicts the entire message Barbie tries to convey. A comparison of movies that were both extremely successful, bringing one up to a great degree and belittling the other is entirely unfair, even if it was just a “light-hearted joke”.
The entire message of the Barbie movie was to get the world to understand the struggles and misunderstandings women face. The fact that Koy claimed to have seen Barbie and still made a sexist joke about it just displays how the true meaning of the film flies over so many people’s heads, seeing as many politicians and reporters felt as though Barbie was made to pick at men. If he really had seen the movie and paid enough attention to it, he would have known how insensitive the joke was and could have denied making it.
Not only did Koy make a joke about Barbie and its feminism, but he also picked at other extremely successful women that night. Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour concert film was nominated for the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement Award, which is, again, a huge accomplishment. Even when addressing this milestone, Koy still had something to say about Taylor Swift.
“The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL; on the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift,” Koy states in his poor monologue.
In recent months, there has been lots of controversy about Taylor Swift attending many Kansas City Chiefs games and showing up on camera multiple times in one game. Although she does not control the camera, there have been so many men who have been infuriated by this fact and demanded that Taylor stop being shown. Koy’s joke really just added to the sexism Swift faces for simply showing up to an NFL game. That same sexism is what is being shown through these comments made by Koy.
After this comment, the camera shifts to show Taylor Swift taking a sip of her drink and making a bit of a snarky face. This reaction was deemed as an “overreaction” by the media and thousands people were commenting on how Swift reacted poorly. Truly, it doesn’t seem like Swift’s reaction was all that bad, especially taking into consideration some of the other actions taken by celebrities who have had jokes made about them…ahem…Will Smith. In Taylor Swift’s words, “A man is allowed to react, a woman can only overreact.”
Honestly, it is not only Jo Koy who is the problem, the problem is that men will take advantage of women and lower them to an extreme measure, just for their own benefit. Saying Barbie is about “a plastic doll with big boobies” is not the kind of humor we women are looking for. Even though these jokes seem harmless and light-hearted, words can be powerful and the fact that so many of these comments are made about women makes it so much worse. It really is a man’s world.
