Fall of the Golden Globes: They No Longer Shine

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Award ceremony without public and without stars: The Golden Globes anno 2022

Photo:

Emma McIntyre / Hollywood Foreign Press Association / Getty Images

For an event that no one would take for granted, the Golden Globes were pretty important.

Full, one could say, was rather the crowd of guests consisting of the biggest Hollywood stars, who cheered at the galas, laughed crookedly at the meanness of multiple presenter Ricky Gervais and expressed their acceptance speeches against Donald Trump (Meryl Streep 2017) and campaigned for climate protection (Russell Crowe).

Who won which prize was always of secondary importance.

But no event in Hollywood history has been passed down as brutally as this globally known award for film and television.

What remained this year of the scramble on the red carpet, the flashing lightning storm and the arrival of the stars, was a Twitter thunderstorm to which nobody of any name in the dream factory reacted. Not a whispered “Oh my god!” By Kate Winslet, who was awarded for her role in the miniseries “Mare of Easttown”, not a video clip with at least pretended enthusiasm by Will Smith, who was best actor for his role in the movie “King Richard” was chosen. Silence, with a few exceptions.

This is not only to blame for the omicron wave that has hit the US and is also forcing other organizations in Hollywood to cancel their events during the price season.

Instead of a gala, this year's Golden Globes awards ceremony in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton Hotel took place exclusively in front of the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which has been awarding them since 1944.

The winners were announced with cramped-moody tweets.

No, Hollywood has fundamentally broken with the awards given by the Non-American Entertainment Journalists Organization, and the fact that they were given at all this year could have dire consequences - namely, that the boycott won't be aired next year either.

Because the express wish not only of the TV station NBC, which will broadcast until 2020, was that the HFPA should take a year off to really deal with its internal problems. "Change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we think the HFPA needs this time to get it right," the broadcaster told the organization when it announced last year that the gala would not be available for the time being to broadcast more.

This was preceded by a revelatory piece by the Los Angeles Times about members who were corruptible and who were invited to film sets and given gifts.

This research on corruption confirmed what had long been an open secret in Hollywood and accelerated the ultimate break of the entertainment nobility with the small organization that, apart from its annual gala, had never distinguished itself through journalistic relevance.

Even before that, the grumbling had grown louder in the face of erratic awards, which regularly ignored women, non-white creatives, and outstanding films and series.

As recently as last year, the organization consisted entirely of white members.

The HFPA hectically vowed improvement, elected a new president in the form of the German journalist Helen Hoehne and accepted 21 new members, six of whom are not white.

There are now 103 foreign journalists in total, including those who were invited by Netflix to film the series "Emily in Paris", including accommodation in a five-star hotel.

One chance remains

Of course, the noble soap received two nominations last year.

Incidentally, both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have stopped working with the HFPA until further notice.

Stars and other organizations have also made it clear to the last that the attempts by the HFPA in terms of transparency and diversity are far from being enough for them.

The Golden Globes used to be a way for Hollywood to celebrate itself without the state-laden ballast of the stiff Academy Awards.

But without the glamor of big names, this event is nothing.

And if the stars don't return, the HFPA will continue to award their prizes behind closed doors, even after Corona.

Quite simply because then the public will no longer be interested in them.

The Golden Globes still have one chance: They will celebrate their 80th birthday next year.

Will there be another lavish party with intoxicated stars?

To do this, the HFPA would first have to show what it has so far failed to recognize: genuine will to reform.