The best of Sunday night’s Golden Globe Awards announcements—which is to say, tweets—were so gleefully, brilliantly terrible that you had to wonder if they knew what they were doing.
They were weirdly fixated on category, for starters—even, or especially, in instances where they got the category wrong. When Michael Keaton was named best actor in a limited series, anthology series, or television motion picture for Hulu’s Dopesick—a limited series by all definitions—the tweet which broke the news began, “This was a golden year for television motion pictures.” First of all, no, it wasn’t. Second of all, Dopesick is not a TV movie. It’s of an obviously different small-screen form (it’s eight episodes!) similarly specified in the category’s name. Oh, and as with many of these tweets, the project wasn’t included in the write-up or graphic. To know what Keaton won for, do your own research, I guess? (Also, who even says “television motion picture”?)
I’m rambling, but God did Sunday night’s Golden Globes Twitter feed make you think. About terrible puns (“Kenneth Branagh has the write stuff”). About the sad state of awards shows as we surf another wave of COVID-induced virtual pivots. About the gumption of an organization that’s been repeatedly humiliated over the past year, refusing to take a break from throwing its dysfunction in our faces. Indeed, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was without a network, talent, or even safe conditions to throw its annual, boozy, starry pre-Oscars bash this year. But press on it did, a few hundred people gathering as safely as possible in the Beverly Hilton, where they always gather (though usually with hundreds of others too), listening to a winners list via a series of speeches and lots of talk about the HFPA Doing Good. No nominees attended. No video stream was made available. Perhaps it was all made up. It probably doesn’t matter either way.
But it was entertaining—indeed, of a certain brazen chaos that two years of stale Zoom awards shows (including last year’s Globes) have desperately needed. If nothing else, the Golden Globes tweets met the moment. They forced a collective confusion over what was going on and why. They encouraged followers to reread tweets over and over and search for answers, like when they announced Ariana DeBose’s (thrilling!) supporting-actress win for West Side Story with the lyrics to “Lean on Me,” which are definitely not in West Side Story. (The best argument I’ve read is this was meant to speak to it being a supporting performance—like I said, weirdly fixated on category!) They selectively implemented emojis, best of all for Andrew Garfield’s comedy/musical-actor-winning Tick, Tick…Boom! performance: a weight-lifting man representing the “43 muscles” it takes to smile—“thanks for the work out.”
For the few dedicated Globes watchers, an odd sort of tension settled in over the nearly two-hour announcement time frame. One, because we couldn’t help ourselves, we wondered who would win—who could spoil, or in a normal year, kick off an improbable run to Oscars night? And two, because the HFPA couldn’t help itself, how would they win? Sure, Will Smith was a near lock for drama actor, but being told we should “save the drama” for the King Richard star was hardly assured. And cannily, the tweeter(s) really did save the best for last in West Side Story’s win for best comedy or musical. “If laughter is the best medicine” was how it started. Wait, not for West Side Story, right? The Globes actually deleted that tweet; outrage over implying that the iconic musical tragedy is a comedy came in too swift to ignore. But then they tweaked the phrase so it no longer made any sense, but at least correctly identified West Side Story’s format: “If music is the best medicine…” Sure!
The Globes, in a way, got lucky this year. They were initially going up against the Critics Choice Awards, which would have actually aired on TV, with the nominees actually in the room, with actual parties to follow. Then omicron landed ashore, followed by a trail of cancellations. How many people would have paid attention to the Globes tweets without that disruption? Very few, and still few did, but even those who briefly checked in after Euphoria’s season premiere, say, could bear witness to a virtual spectacle befitting the solemn nature of this awards season.
Seeing front-runner Jane Campion win best director for The Power of the Dog, or surging international contender Drive My Car take the foreign-film trophy, something in me wished you could watch them get their moment onstage, the first step toward hopeful Oscar glory. This is almost embarrassing to admit at this point, but it’s what we’re used to. Times are different, though, and to be clear, these Globes matter very little in the grand scheme of things. Without campaigners breathlessly in their ear (and vice versa) about who’s out front and why, Globes voters were ostensibly left to their own devices, rubber-stamping a slew of heavyweights—best-picture champs The Power of the Dog and West Side Story may very well win with the Academy, but don’t turn to the HFPA as the group that told us that—and keeping things as respectable as possible. (Of course, these voters have long loved both Nicole Kidman and Aaron Sorkin, so in the relatively shapeless lead-actress field, that win was a gimme. It’s Kidman’s sixth Globe.)
Powerful in Hollywood is the group that knows how to send a message. It’s hard to look at Michaela Jaé Rodriguez winning TV drama’s best-actress trophy too cynically, since the milestone is so groundbreaking and overdue. (She and her Pose collaborators cheered about it publicly, while most Globe winners were quiet on the whole thing.) The Underground Railroad has gone criminally under-recognized by just about every awards body over the past year, giving the Globes the perfect lane for a little corrective justice. If these awards are as malleable and manipulable as detractors say, here was a hint that, when the show inevitably returns to NBC next year, the association has learned a thing or two about how to use those qualities for good. Still, I’ll miss the tweets.
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