‘You want a perfect monologue?’ Would it be too much to ask for a funny one?
At this year’s Golden Globes, comedian Jo Koy stepped up to the daunting gig of hosting, but has since faced backlash for some of the more off-putting comments made during his monologue.
Koy taunted all of the major film nominations with sarcastic remarks. He joked that Oppenheimer ‘needed another hour’ and that ‘The Colour Purple is also what happens to your butt when you take Ozempic’. Directly addressing Barry Keoghan, the star of Emerald Fennell’s bawdy satire Saltburn, Koy asks ‘Where’s your penis seated? That was the real star of the show’ – an unnecessarily vulgar remark that had Keoghan (and the entire audience) squirming.
Koy sparked outrage when he butchered the monumental moment that was ‘Barbenheimer’ – a portmanteau of ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’, famously released on the same day and both up for the Cinematic Box Office Achievement award.
Centre-stage, Koy jokes, ‘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!’ The camera pans to a disheartened Greta Gerwig. She nods as if to say, ‘my point exactly.’
The comment received widespread upset from fans of the film, who felt that the joke was trivialising and demeaning, and that Koy had completely missed the ethos of the film. Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ has become a cultural phenomenon for unashamedly embracing and celebrating femininity; (finally!) a blockbuster movie centred around the female experience that validated millions of women by depicting ‘becoming a woman’ as a heroic journey. Its Box Office achievements proved how women responded with widespread joy and approval, so it’s no wonder that the ‘big boobies’ comment came off as distasteful and reductive. In fact, Barbie’s discovery of the patriarchy in the film includes moments where she is sexualised and cat-called – this heightens the sad sense of irony; degrading comments about Barbie’s body were essentially mirrored in the award show.
Barbie ended up winning the award, and Margot Robbie gracefully quipped back, saying ‘This is a movie about Barbie but also a movie about humans. It’s about you. We made it for you and we made it with love, and thank you for loving it back.’
Other jokes that received backlash include an ill-advised jab at Taylor Swift. ‘The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? On the Golden Globes we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift’, to which Taylor sips her drink with a straight-face, conveying the message ‘Do Better’.
Koy has since explained that he was ‘trying to make fun of the NFL’, ‘but it just didn’t come out that way’. He summarised his thoughts on the debacle, ‘I feel bad, but I got to say I still loved what I did.’
If anything, the widespread disapproval of Koy’s performance has highlighted that crude jokes that appeal to men just aren’t funny anymore. It is safe to say that Jo Koy’s obvious shortcomings will act as a cautionary tale for future hosts to take better care of their female audience, and hopefully urges them to celebrate cultural wins for women.