Last week, comedian Ricky Gervais made a lot of people very angry. If you know anything about Gervais, you already know that this is not the newsworthy part of the story.
What matters, as always, is context. In this case, the setting: the 68th annual Golden Globes, held Jan. 16, where Gervais gave a monologue that was simultaneously as hilarious as watching your average episode of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and as painful as being the subject of said videos.
If you haven’t yet seen the monologue, I highly recommend it. I feel I can say with some impunity that this is the first and only time you’ll hear Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Cher, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Hugh Hefner insulted in the same four minutes.
Needless to say, there was a bit of an uproar after the ceremony. Skimming news results after the fact, it looks like about half the world wants Gervais’ head on a platter, and the other half wants the heads of the previous half for daring to suggest such a thing.
I’ve decided to take a third position: Who gives a damn?
I’m not trying to find a witty middle ground where I say humor is in the eye of the beholder and we should just laugh it off, or not, and move on. I just don’t see any reason to care about the Golden Globes in the first place.
As one of the first awards shows of the season, it’s basically the ceremonial equivalent of an opening act, and while I’ve seen good opening acts, the Globes isn’t one of them. Sure, worthy movies and shows win awards there, but it’s easier to win when some of your competition includes lousy flops brought in because of bribes.
More importantly, the Globes are redundant. They’re a flashy version of the Oscars and Emmys, and they get ratings, which is why they’re still around.
But good cinema and television has never been about flash and ratings. In order to be successful and get seen, there has to be a little flash, but too much and the very things that made a show great are wiped out. (Here’s looking at you, “Glee.”)
Luckily, there are places where “flash-less” film can receive the attention it deserves, like the Sundance Film Festival, which quietly opened last week in the wake of Gervais’ denunciation. Television shows have fewer options, but viewer outcry can and has saved good shows on the verge of cancellation.
But just because there’s a place for non-Hollywood media doesn’t mean we need to give super-Hollywood media its place in the sun. The Globes’ only justification is to stroke Hollywood’s ego and put its prized celebrities on the pedestals they believe themselves deserving of.
That’s why there has been such an outcry over Gervais’ monologue and hosting of the Globes. If you’ll notice, he didn’t insult anyone who ended up winning anything — except Cher, but he can’t have been expected to see that coming.
The one thing the Globes do right is they rarely hand out statues to the flashy additions thrown in amongst the good films. But I’ll personally be holding out for the real awards ceremonies, where the focus is on rewarding acting, writing and directing — not celebrity.
