There was by no means any purpose to take the Golden Globes significantly, but it surely took a collection of damning revelations concerning the group behind the awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (H.F.P.A.), to threaten its prime-time network-broadcast slot and its prominence within the film trade. In current months, it has emerged that the H.F.P.A.’s roster of ninety members contains not a single Black particular person; that Philip Berk, its former president, referred to as Black Lives Matter a “racist hate movement”; that it might have damaged monetary laws by channelling funds to its members; and that some members appear to be unduly swayed by swag and junkets. On Monday, NBC, the community that has been airing the Golden Globes since 1995, introduced that it won’t do so in 2022, however the transfer was removed from proactive. Rather, the community’s hand was nearly compelled as different main trade entities and figures distanced themselves from the awards in current days. Tom Cruise sent his three trophies again to the group, Scarlett Johansson called on Hollywood to spurn the group, and Netflix, WarnerMedia, and Amazon introduced that they’d be boycotting the ceremony.
The H.F.P.A. has vowed to change into extra inclusive, however it’s beset by rather more than its homogenous make-up. The group, which has been doling out its awards since 1944, is understood for a membership that’s simply manipulable. As the Los Angeles Times reported, “Winning favor with a tiny pool of fewer than 90 H.F.P.A. voters is far easier logistically than tackling the film academy’s 10,300 members, of whom roughly 9,400 are eligible to vote on the Oscars, or the more than 25,000 members of the Television Academy,” which determines the Emmys. The public, nonetheless, has little trigger to be clever to this trickery, which maybe explains the twenty million or so viewers who tune in to the Golden Globes throughout a typical yr—numbers that come near rivalling these of the Oscars.
Confession: I’ve by no means watched the Golden Globes, as a result of its voters are neither members within the movie enterprise nor critics—in different phrases, no person whose skilled {qualifications} render their judgment of films any extra vital to the trade or the artwork than a congress of dentists. I’ve heard that the pleasure of the occasion arises from the truth that the nominees know that the awards don’t matter—that the ceremony lacks the solemnity and the self-importance, not to mention the precise significance, of the Oscars, and so the friends loosen up, a few of them drink, they usually lend the present a shambling appeal that distinguishes it from Hollywood’s personal self-celebration. Still, it has lengthy stunned me that earnest trade journalists cowl the Golden Globes with something lower than derision.
In any case, viewership was drastically down this yr, each for the Golden Globes (a sixty-two per cent decline, to about seven million) and the Oscars (a drop of fifty-six per cent, to simply over ten million). Some of this may be defined by the pandemic, which induced a lot of 2020’s greatest scheduled motion pictures to be held out of circulation till later this yr and even 2022. Oscar speak for subsequent yr has already began round one of many holdovers, “In the Heights,” which is opening on June 11th and is the type of movie that Hollywood and tv executives alike hope will revive the recognition of movie-awards ceremonies. That’s why there’s additionally already been speculation in the press about which ceremony might be tapped to fill the Golden Globes’ broadcast slot subsequent yr within the run-up to the Oscars.
My unsolicited suggestion: don’t trouble changing it in any respect. My guess is that the decline of awards ceremonies will proceed lengthy after the pandemic has handed, as a result of theatrical viewing itself is in irreversible decline, owing to the rise of streaming. Some motion pictures will probably be box-office hits once more, and a few small phase of these hits may even be awards favorites, however the divide between extremely managed franchise motion pictures and director-driven Oscar darlings will solely proceed to develop as extra motion pictures within the latter class (following ones resembling “The Irishman,” “Marriage Story,” and “Da 5 Bloods”) are produced and launched by streaming companies. By far the very best movie to win Best Picture lately was “Moonlight”; its whole U.S. box-office take was twenty-seven million {dollars}, a negligible sum for any superhero or Pixar film.
In current years, the Academy has been addressing its personal grievous lack of variety—and the skewed awards that end result—via a long-overdue enlargement of its membership. At the identical time, it has been struggling to take care of the recognition of the Oscars broadcast. One sign effort has been to hurry up the ceremony (since 2002, the present has run under four hours). This yr, the standard elbow-to-elbow seating on the Dolby Theatre was changed, for social-distancing functions, with a ballroom-like setting in Los Angeles’s Union Station. The ceremony featured much less filler between the precise meting out of awards—as an example, no reside performances of nominated songs—but it nonetheless ran about three and 1 / 4 hours. (If the Academy actually desires to cut back the working time, it ought to get rid of business breaks.) But the published’s bagginess is hardly the one issue contributing to its declining relevance. The very pleasure of the Oscars as of late is dampened by the media’s round the clock, year-long cycle of publicity and movie-awards infotainment. When the celebrities are already shining day and night time, the Oscars change into an anticlimax, and it takes a significant effort of audacity or a significant gaffe to make the present stand out.
Rather than desperately striving to extend viewership by gussying up the ceremony (or by tweaking the nominations in favor of extra standard motion pictures, because it tried to do a few years ago), the Academy ought to lean into the published’s declining recognition. What may save the occasion is having fewer however extra devoted viewers—ones who care concerning the sorts of films that the Academy, at its finest, sees match to rejoice. Currently, the Oscars happen on enemy territory: tv. The higher setting for them is the very place the place the Academy desires folks to see motion pictures: in theatres. The awards must be a movie-house occasion, not out there on-line and never broadcast on TV. The commercials downside would vanish: the present will probably be an hour shorter. This year’s ceremony, co-produced by Steven Soderbergh with the daring and admirable intention of creating the published, as he defined, “feel like you’re watching a movie,” was a very good begin; if the ceremony had been proven in theatres like a film, it may have been eligible for subsequent yr’s Oscars.
