The Golden Globes were filled with gorgeous dresses, big stars and horrible, unfunny jokes. Held on Sunday, Jan. 7, the Globes have been trending since they aired, and not because of the big movies that were released in 2023, but because of the host, Jo Koy, who made misogynistic, offensive and generally unfunny “jokes”.
Jo Koy, largely unheard of before this event, is a comedian who was given the position of host ten days before the event, a point he brings up when his jokes don’t land. The jokes (used in a very loose sense of the word) are largely aimed at making fun of women and women-made films.
He starts off his monologue, the main point of his night, by making fun of “Barbie,” one of the best-performing movies of all time. He claimed the movie was about “big boobies” and Ryan Gosling. His direct quote, “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.” Way to miss the point of the entire movie.
He then makes fun of “Oppenheimer,” the most decorated film of the night, for being too long and said, “Oppenheimer answered a lifelong question that’s been on my mind for years. Yes, scientists do get laid—as long as they look like Cillian Murphy.”
To make up for the lack of laughs and general awkward tension in the room, he blames his writers, only a few months after the writer’s strike ended. He also tells the audience to “shut up,” as if he isn’t in a room with the biggest stars of all time while he is a comedian literally no one knew.
“Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. You’re kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these [jokes], and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.” Koy said.
Because misogyny wasn’t enough, Koy changed to making jokes about race, saying that the plot of the movie “Killers of the Flower Moon” is just “white people steal everything,” which is true, but not the whole plot. Then, when no one laughed (again), he blamed the missed landing on the room being too white to think it was funny.
Instead of celebrating the star-studded, diverse cast of “The Color Purple” he called it “what happens to your butt when you take Ozempic.” Another “great” take on a movie meant to celebrate diversity!
Then, the fated moment most people are talking about, he pokes fun at Taylor Swift. Every person on the planet knows not to mess with T-Swift, or you will be destroyed.
“As you know, we came on after a football doubleheader. The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift, I swear.” Koy said. As if we were worried? Maybe don’t poke fun at Time’s Person of the Year and the biggest star in the world right now.
Overall, the monologue flopped. It felt like Koy was going for a “Ricky Gervais monologue” where he calls stars out, but Ricky was calling out actual bad people for real issues like rape, sexism and more.
Koy just looked at the women in the room and decided he was better than them. Many are calling for Koy not only to apologize, but to never be hired again. Others have turned to the Golden Globe organizers themselves for green-lighting the jokes.
The Golden Globes, whether meaning to or not, proved the exact point “Barbie” was trying to make: women will never be taken seriously by men, and men will always be afraid of powerful women.
