Written by Joseph Carrick
Before we delve into the spectacle that took over social by storm, let’s take a quick look at the Golden Globes itself. The Golden Globes honor film and American television shows and are hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press. There is a long slew of awards given during the ceremony – including 15 motion picture awards and 12 Television awards. However, there are usually only a few key awards that gain traction in the presses: Best Drama Film, Best Musical/Comedy Film, Best Drama Series, Best Musical/Comedy Series, Best Miniseries/Television movie, and two unofficial yet important attributes: Most awarded and most nominated.
In the same order as listed above, the winners are 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Succession, Fleabag, Chernobyl, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (3 awards), and Marriage Story (6 nominations). This also marked the second year the “Carol Burnett Award” was awarded, and therefore it is technically the first year it was awarded to someone who was not Carol Burnett. Ellen DeGeneres won the award this year thanks to her many television shows as well as her philanthropic work.
Now for the part literally everyone reading this has been waiting for: the opening speech given by Ricky Gervais. Gervais is a British comedian known for his insults, black comedy, and as a frequent host of the Golden Globes. Seeing as this was his last year hosting the event, he apparently decided to end his tenure by calling out the entirety of Hollywood and Corporate America for being two-faced, moral-less know-nothings not worth the grandeur they bestow upon themselves in these lavish award ceremonies only they seem to care about.
There seems to be no safe from his scathing tirade of an opening monologue. To give a succinct idea of how well-rounded his rebuke was, here is a list of just a few people targeted in the monologue in order of appearance: NBC (the network providing exclusive coverage), Kevin Hart (the previous host fired for offensive tweets), the Hollywood Foreign Press (the host), Felicity Huffman (who pleaded guilty to “mail fraud” and “honest services mail fraud”), all the TV and film executives present at the ceremony (for allegedly supporting pedophiles), the Hollywood Foreign Press again (for being racist), Jeffrey Epstein (for not killing himself), everyone who just groaned at the previous joke (for believing he actually killed himself), nearly every film (for being lazy sequels and remakes), Cats (for existing), Apple (also for existing and supporting child slavery), everyone in attendance (“if ISIS had a streaming service you’d call your agent”), and, again, everyone in attendance “Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg”).
The full monologue is available just about everywhere. You can probably just twitter search “golden globes speech” and it will likely still be trending there.
