Film

A Reminder That The Golden Globes Have Always Been Useless

Why do the Golden Globes keep making such bad decisions? The mystery isn't as deep as you think.

by Joseph Earp  11 December 2019
Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Handing out trophies to art has always been faintly ridiculous, but in the case of the Golden Globes, it’s particularly so.

Every single year, the Golden Globes do some ridiculous shit. Sometimes that ridiculous shit is racist, as when the white saviour narrative Green Book won a slew of awards over BlackKklansman, a work of art made by one of African-American cinema’s most visionary auteurs. Sometimes that ridiculous shit is sexist, as when no female directors or screenwriters were nominated for the 2020 awards.

And sometimes that ridiculous shit is just, well, ridiculous, as when notorious critical bomb The Tourist went up for Best Comedy.

But this isn’t just usual awards season shenanigans. There’s a reason for the Golden Globes being so ridiculous.

And it all comes down to the judging body behind the ceremony.

It’s All The Fault Of The Hollywood Foreign Press

The winners of the Golden Globes are picked out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Founded in 1943, the HFPA is a conglomerate of journalists who write for a handful of outlets that cover entertainment news.

To join the HFPA, you need a couple of bylines, friends already in the association who will write you a letter of commendation, and $500 bucks to pay the initiation fee. That’s it.

Oh, and there’s about 90 of them. Yep, the Golden Globes are decided by less than a hundred people.

Compare that to the Oscars. It’s not publicly accessible as to how many members of the Academy there actually are, but 928 were invited to join last year alone. That means there’s at least a couple of thousand — most estimates put the number around 6,687.

More than that, the Academy is made up of industry members. Directors, writers, actors, key grips, cinematographers… In fact, when it comes to the Oscar nominations, only the relevant disciplines get to decide who is nominated in that category. So, it’s the cinematographers who nominate Best Cinematography, the directors who nominate Best Director, and so on. It’s only when it comes to choosing the actual winners that the whole academy votes.

That means that nominations are chosen by people who understand the craft in question. It explains why the Best Director nominations in particular can often be pleasantly surprising — think of Paul Thomas Anderson getting nominated for the elegiac and quiet Phantom Thread, not the kind of film the Academy would usually honour.

The HFPA doesn’t contain a single tradesperson. It’s made up of journalists — and not even widely respected or read ones.

Corruption, Lies And Boomers

That’s why the HFPA has a reputation for being a bunch of starfuckers. They’re often accused of out-and-out corruption: in 1982, Pia Zadora won a Golden Globe despite having starred in only one (1) terrible film. It was widely whispered that her husband, a rich magnate, had bought off the HFPA for her.

That’s not the only controversy associated with the outfit. Remember the recent devastating profile of Brendan Fraser, in which he argued that his absence from the big screen could be blamed on his decision to name the man who he alleged had sexually assaulted him? That man is Phillip Berk — the one-time President of the HFPA. According to Fraser, after the incident, Berk used his power to bury the actor altogether.

But even if it’s not true that the HFPA wield their power controversially, they’re problematic in another sense — they’re just so old, straight and white. Exact demographics are not well-known, but it’s always been assumed that the HFPA’s habit for honouring terrible movies comes down to their terrible politics, which in turn come down to them being a bunch of boomers.

How else to explain their love of the antiquated and ancient Green Book?

The Best Way To Combat The Golden Globes Is To Ignore Them

There’s no reason to respect the Golden Globes as an important awards ceremony, but every year we do. This is a tiny bunch of random journalists, many of whom who have been accused of wielding their power unfairly, who throw a big expensive party to honour their own influence. They’re not powerful. They’re not masters of their craft. They don’t look out for art, or even respect the tastes of the public.

And each year, they do more and more to prove why nobody should respect them.

The Golden Globes only have any sway because we — the public — give them that sway. Maybe in 2020, we should consider finally taking that away.

Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @Joseph_O_Earp.