On January 7, 2024, millions of viewers tuned in to watch the 81st annual Golden Globes. Personally, I always look forward to award show season as it highlights and acknowledges all of the hard work put into the movies and TV shows produced that year. However, this year I was immediately gobsmacked to have the host, Jo Koy, kick off the show with a monologue that can only be described as complete second-hand embarrassment and lack of social awareness. Jo Koy is an Asian-American stand-up comedian who has appeared on numerous comedy and late-night shows, as well as having two Netflix specials. As he has been in the comedy scene for nearly three decades, it was very unsettling to see him flounder so brutally during his host monologue last night. Essentially, the entire monologue was poorly received by those in the audience and by critics online for his distasteful and tone-deaf “jokes,” as well as for bashing his writers freshly after the 118-day-long SAG-AFTRA strike, and his aggressive deflection whenever he was met with uncomfortable chuckles from those in attendance.
Koy begins his monologue by talking about how he has “the best seat in the house,” referring to how excited he is to be hosting. He reminisces on how, when he was a kid, he would sit with his family and watch this very show. So, when he was offered the opportunity to host, he quickly jumped at the chance. Within the first minute, he jokes about how he did not have time to watch all of the content that was being nominated and awarded that night but did try to binge everything before the show in preparation for his big opening speech. I have to admit, my eyebrows furrowed at this statement, as it calls into question how he would be able to make accurate and topical jokes about the awards if he didn’t fully watch everything. My answer to that quandary would soon be answered as he began a lengthy 45-second bit focusing on the film Oppenheimer and how it had a very long runtime. He praises the movie heavily and begins tying in Barbie with the “Barbenheimer” craze this summer by saying:
“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 quickly goes to a shot of Greta Gerwig, director of Barbie, and her face is dripping with disappointment. He goes on to say:
“I watched ‘Barbie’, I loved it, I really did love it, I don’t want you guys to think that I’m a creep but it was kinda weird being attracted to a plastic doll… The key moment in ‘Barbie’ is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet, or what casting directors call: a character actor.”
The camera goes to a shot of the audience, where we see reactions like Selena Gomez putting her face in her hands, Emily Blunt uncomfortably scratching her face, Ayo Edebiri not even wanting to look up, Harrison Ford giving a disapproving glare, Hellen Mirren completely covering her face, and Emma Stone scowling distastefully. These two lines quickly sealed Koy’s fate. The sheer irony of Koy completely and blatantly missing the entire premise of Barbie by simply talking about how attractive he found Margot Robbie to be in the film and deducing the entire project to simply being about breasts and cellulite is very repugnant and only further emphasized the need for more media like Barbie. He started this “joke” by bringing so much attention to Oppenheimer and then dismissing Barbie, even though the two movies were known to be seen as a somewhat double-feature, as well as Barbie being the highest grossing movie of 2023 by making 1.442 billion in box office sales. I find it really interesting that he was being so lighthearted in his comments about Oppenheimer but so demeaning towards Barbie.
When murmurs and hushed chatter filled the audience, Koy began deflecting by going on an uncomfortable attempt to redeem himself mid-monologue that I could only react to by wanting to bury my face in the crook of my neck.
“Some I wrote, some other people wrote… 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 and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”
His immediate reaction was to blame the audience for not liking his jokes and throw the Golden Globes writers under the bus for his poor excuses for comedy whenever a line fell embarrassingly flat. It’s well understood that he did not have a lot of time to prepare for his monologue with only 10 days to study up, and he, like all other hosts, sometimes receives lines given to them by the Golden Globe writers. However, I find it perplexing how he didn’t want to vet any part of the monologue if he apparently knew that some parts of it were not satisfactory. To me, if you’ve been a comedian for almost 30 years, I would expect you to have at least some level of understanding about who your audience is and a general projection of how a joke would land. Did he think that jokes like these would stick with the audience he was supposedly catering to? Is it only when he heard stifled laughter that it dawned on him that his jokes were in poor taste? Perhaps the nerves of being on stage in front of so many celebrities caused him to try to deflect so haphazardly; however, with so many people in the room having been part of the SAG-AFTRA strike, it feels like a personal attack on writers through his tone and word choice.
After this, he proceeded to have three consecutive jokes that failed to spark any joy from the audience. First was a joke about the new film, Saltburn, where he calls out the lead actor, Barry Keoghan, for his handful of nude scenes, but then tries to connect it to Barbie through the contrast of human vs. doll anatomy. This joke received zero laughter. Next was Koy bringing attention to The Color Purple, an emotional musical drama based off of the 1982 novel by author Alice Walker (which received a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the National Book Award for Fiction) by making a frankly grotesque joke about Ozempic. And lastly, because death comes in threes, Koy applauded Succession and its very beloved four seasons to then tell any billionaires out there not to procreate. He repeats the phrase “pull out” too many times to count in hopes that it will resonate with a few audience members, to the point where he eventually gives up and huffs, “Leave it in, whatever.” His grave is finally set when his closing joke about The Crown doesn’t receive the reaction he had wanted (again) and he concludes his monologue by really “sticking it” to the Golden Globes writers by saying:
“Like I said, I didn’t write all of these, that one’s not mine… I have a deal too, chill.”
Later on in the night, he also made an uncomfortable comment at Taylor Swift in light of her relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce, in which he remarked:
“The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL: on the Golden Globes we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. I swear, there’s just more to go to.”
The Golden Globes has had its fair share of unsatisfactory hosts in the past; however, this year, Jo Koy took the cake for making every viewer cringe in every possible way imaginable. Part of me can’t help but feel bad for Koy, as the second-hand embarrassment is so immensely strong, and it was clear that he was very nervous to host, which most certainly did not help in his delivery. As the monologue progressed, the audience seemed to continuously lose interest in entertaining Koy’s jokes. After he bombed with the insensitive Barbie joke within the first three minutes of his 10-minute introduction, it was a tough uphill battle to get back the attention and respect he had in the beginning, and ultimately the audience never relented. Overall, I found it very disappointing to see a male comedian diss such an important and beloved movie for many women, as well as to easily bash other women in the media. The irony of the situation feels to be the strongest point of contention for many critics online, as he went on to publicly sexualize and degrade a movie that is about women being overly sexualized and not taken seriously. I’d advise Jo Koy to study up on the media he’s going to present, but I seriously doubt he’ll have another shot at hosting again.