The 81st Golden Globes Proves the Message of Barbie
By Elizabeth Chen
The Golden Globes, an awards ceremony for American and international films, celebrates outstanding films produced by hard work in the industry. This 81st Golden Globes should have served “as a bid to return to awards so relevancy” due to the controversies in recent years, but an opening dialogue from comedian Jo Koy, the host of the ceremony, set an uncomfortable tone.
One of the most trending problematic jokes made by Jo Koy, out of the ones targeting Taylor Swift and Meryl Streep, was made about the Barbie movie. He said, “Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies. The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet. Or what casting directors call character actor!” Jo Koy’s joke earned unamused reactions from Selena Gomez, Barbie director and co-writer Greta Gerwig, and star Ryan Gosling who played Ken.
For context, the entire message of Barbie was to highlight the difficulties of being a woman in this modern age and time, which Margo Robbie’s Barbie explores as she is faced with having to go to the “real world” and leaving the perfect, women-dominant “Barbie world.” However, in Ryan Gosling’s Ken’s patriarchal society, Barbie does not feel like she is good enough, despite a Barbie doll being perfect. The movie talks about the unrealistic expectations a woman has to keep up to and the misogyny women have to put up with. Not to mention the barbie doll was invented to teach young girls how to be a woman, not how to be a mother.
Although Barbie has a huge influence on women today and is highly praised for its message, clearly the movie is not enough. Koy’s joke attempted to put women down for comedy. His comparison to Oppenheimer attempted to comedify Barbie as unserious, which is exactly how women can be perceived compared to men. In trying to be comedic, Koy ironically reaffirmed the entire point of the movie, showing that there is still toxic masculinity in the world despite the film’s attempt to spread women empowerment.
Even after facing backlash, Jo Koy defended himself, saying “I’m telling a joke — what happened to society where we can’t even joke with each other anymore.” However, society is changing, and attempting to make women the center of a joke by putting them down is nothing to laugh about. In fact, it just highlights the lack of gender equality in the modern world, where women still have a long way to go.
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