— पांच हजार तीन सौ बयालीस —
Last night was my one evening this week to stay home without any social engagements. I scheduled this deliberately, because it was the Golden Globe Awards, bizarrely shifted from the previously-typical Sunday night to a Tuesday night.
I won't go into the complicated, embattled history of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as a racist and in many other ways problematic organization, although you can basically get the current scoop
here and
here. Plus,
this take I ran across on Twitter is something I seem to be unable to shake:
For years, the Globes meant nothing in a frothy, dismissible way.
Today they mean exponentially more nothing - 0 to the millionth power - and seeing them so blithely treated as if the last couple years didn’t happen is blowing my damn mind.
There's a lot of truth to that, and I had to agree that watching them felt strange last night in a way they never quite did before, given the bizarre chasm between host Jerrod Carmichael (who I think is great) quite directly addressing the HFPA's history, basically taking them to task and directly admitted he took the gig for the $500,000 paycheck; and the many, many celebrities who got onstage insisting it was a "great honor" to be recognized, specifically by this organization! This was true across all ethnicities, by the way, and quite a lot of people of color won last night.
For many years, the HFPA voting body was a paltry 100 or so people. This past year, they basically
doubled the number. Big deal! Having barely more than 200 people voting on these awards, all of them
members of the foreign press who have no overlap with Academy voters (who number roughly 10,000), still makes them irrelevant to the awards season—except that we give them that relevance, grant them this global stage.
And the weirdest thing of all is that, last night, even after the last couple of years (and last year they did no telecast at all), the winners of Golden Globe Awards still likely have at least some, if still relatively minimal, impact on the metrics for their chances of Academy Awards—because now Academy voters have seen the speeches of people who won something else on live television.
The weirdest part was when they had Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky speak, and address their war with objectively unjustified Russian aggression. What does this have to do with a nearly completely irrelevant TV and movie awards show? Well, it was a means of becoming relevant, I guess, by granting a platform to an embattled nation that otherwise has nothing to do with them. I totally get Zelensky's willingness to take the gig, wanting to get his message out however he can. I had a hard time thinking of it as fitting with the evening otherwise, though, aside from a wildly privileged class wanting to feel like they're making a difference for the less fortunate, which smacks a little bit of desperation.
I did help give them their audience, though. My only defense is that I cannot resist film awards programs. I'll be even more eager to watch the SAG Awards—except that those are on February 26, when Shobhit and I will be in Australia. Sydney, to be exact. I suppose we can see if any local channels will air it, although it won't likely be live given the vast time difference.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ बयालीस —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ बयालीस —
Anyway. I left work early to give me enough time to return a book to the Central Library downtown, and then still get home in time for the ceremony starting at 5:00. We still recorded it so I could start it a bit later, as the Braeburn got new furniture for the Community Kitchen and the old furniture is being given away, so Shobhit and I deliberated a bit on how much of it we wanted to take. There was an ottoman, something Shobhit has wanted for ages, and also two matching chairs, which at first I thought we should take. Except, that gives us too much furniture for the space we have, and I didn't want to replace our love seat with chairs. In the end we only took the ottoman, which is kind of large, and I still don't know how we're going to integrate it into our living room.
Because of its two Golden Globe wins, we went ahead and watched some
Abbott Elementary for the first time, which I was surprised to find available on HBO Max even though it apparently airs on ABC, which is owned by Disney. What on earth is going on there? Whatever, we watched three episodes and it is moderately charming.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ बयालीस —
[posted 12:29 pm]
