Kacey Miller

Comedian Jo Koy gave an infamous Golden Globes monologue as the host of the event this year. His jokes caused a lot of controversy and speculation over the internet, leading to disapproval and hate over his “jokes.”

Two Sundays ago, on Jan. 7, I sat down on the couch to watch the 81st annual Golden Globes. I was pretty excited to watch this year’s Golden Globes, with all of the new media that came out last year and the much anticipated appearances of some of my favorite actors and singers. Seeing Emma Stone, Margot Robbie, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence and Billie Eilish made me so excited about watching all of the awards about to be presented. I’ve always loved award shows because I think it’s so fun to have all your favorite celebrities gathered together and interacting in one room. I also love watching them win, and getting to feel all excited for the ones that I was rooting for. So when I went to watch these Golden Globes, I was pretty stoked. When I initially saw this year’s host, my first thought was “oh, thank god it’s not Trevor Noah again.” But boy oh boy did I beg for Trevor Noah to come back…

This year’s host for the Golden Globes was the American comedian, Jo Koy. Koy has been doing stand-up comedy for much of his life, has starred in many TV shows and even has his own series of comedy specials. He was announced as the host of the Golden Globes last year, and has since gotten quite a bit of backlash from his monologue.

During Koy’s presentation at the Golden Globes, he decided to make quite a few jokes that targeted celebrities in the audience. I would say that the main snipe he made that upset people the most was his comparison of Oppenheimer to Barbie. With both of these popular movies being released at the same time in the summer, the movies were often watched back to back, hence the term “Barbenheimer,” and people often comparing the two movies to each other. With both of these movies nominated for Golden Globes, Koy naturally wanted to make a joke about them and their fame. He decided to do a comparison on how Oppenheimer is this big Pulitzer Prize winning book about the Manhattan Project, and how Barbie is about “a plastic doll with big boobies”.

Koy then goes on to make more jokes about the Barbie movie, saying that the key part of the Barbie movie was when she went from being perfect, to having flat feet, cellulite and bad breath. He then says that this is “what casting directors call a character actor.”

Koy also made a joke at singer Taylor Swift’s expense. With the news of her dating Travis Kelce, a player on the Kansas City Chiefs football team, she tends to get a lot of broadcasting camera time when she is at his games. He went on to say that the difference between the NFL and the Golden Globes is that there are less camera shots of Taylor Swift at the Golden Globes.

My complaints about his “jokes” are just how awful, unfunny and offending they are. Starting with his Barbie quips, simplifying the movie to just being about a doll with big breasts is incredibly offensive to the audiences that enjoyed the movie, and its profound messages about womanhood and overcoming insecurities. It contradicts everything that the movie is preaching to audiences and puts salt in the wound of gender inequality. A movie that was supposed to embrace and praise womanhood was reduced to a movie about an object that is only remembered for its body.

Koy’s joke about the character actors having flat feet, bad breath and cellulite is insulting to them and completely degrades them. Character actors are basically side actors that are not usually the lead. So comparing “ugly/bad” traits to character actors and saying that they equate to being one, is incredibly insulting to these actors, who already aren’t the main characters and obviously don’t want to be called ugly. It’s incredibly rude and demeaning to these actors who work their butts off to get to where they are, to only just get called ugly. 

Koy’s joke on Taylor Swift is honestly not the worst one that he made that night. It’s still pretty rude, especially with her being right there in the room. She can’t necessarily control the cameras on her at the football games, and all she’s doing is just supporting her boyfriend. So implying that she’s taking over and controlling the NFL networks isn’t valid, nor is it something that she can control.

During this monologue, some members of the audience were not having it (Selena Gomez literally put her head in her hands), and Koy of course was upset. He tried to place the blame on his writers, and claimed that he only had ten days to write these jokes. Personally, I can get a good essay written in two hours, so the fact that he complained about not even having to write his own jokes, but only having ten days to do it, actually blows my mind. I just think it’s ridiculous that he felt like he had to blame other people, instead of taking accountability for his jokes that didn’t land.

Overall, these Golden Globes were not a complete disaster, nobody punched anyone, but I think that the attitude and overall vibe of the host really dictates how these award shows play out, and Jo Koy definitely disappointed. I think that these types of jokes are not just unfunny, but also insulting and completely disrespectful to women and the acting community as a whole. Jokes like the ones about the Barbie movie completely set us 70 years back as a society, and “comedians” with these kinds of mindsets should not be hosting these award shows.