Ricky Gervais is wrong: political engagement at the Golden Globes was essential
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Version 0 of 1. Stars such as Russell Crowe, Michelle Williams and Joaquin Phoenix were right to ignore his request – the time for silence on issues more pressing than showbiz has long passed “You know nothing about the real world,” Ricky Gervais told the audience at Sunday night’s Golden Globe awards. “Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.” Should you win an award, he advised, “thank your agent and your God and fuck off.” Yet what unfolded at this year’s ceremony was a mass rejection of such apoliticism, with winner after winner using the stage as a platform for speaking up about, variously, climate change, abortion rights, democratic inclusivity, LGBT visibility, the dubiousness of Facebook’s ad checking policies. In theory, of course, Gervais is correct. Hollywood stars are obviously out of touch. However wryly intended, Joaquin Phoenix’s request that people think twice before from taking their private jet to Palm Springs wouldn’t have struck a chord with more than a dozen people in the room, and may have alienated many at home. But he’s mistaken if he believes the scepticism us plebs feel for Hollywood isn’t bound up not just with revulsion at its excesses but because everyday news currently trumps it time and time again for horrific drama – and wild comedy. A speech in which an actor remained wholly inside their bubble would now be far worse than one in which they acknowledged that bubble was expensively insulated within a burning building, in a city on fire. Political speeches used to be a turn-off, but that was when A-listers’ calls for action were largely in-house. However much they were at pains to link Hollywood’s problems with gender parity or racial bias or sexual harassment to the wider world, their anxieties always felt like first world concerns. This year, no one talked about the troubles in Tinseltown. Not even they care anymore. When Patricia Arquette called for wage equality in her 2014 Oscar acceptance speech, she was hailed as groundbreakingly radical. We have all moved on. This year Arquette spoke about “young people risking their lives”, “people not knowing if bombs are going to drop on their kids’ heads”, then begged everyone to try and “give our children a better world”. Gervais’s call for silence on what everyone is talking about marked another way in which his presence felt like a throwback to a previous era; certainly a time before last year’s Oscars, when the necessity of the Kevin Hart implosion meant the ceremony went host-less – to unanimous acclaim. However clever or irreverent, the presence of one man telling us all how it’s going to go simply no longer sits easily. And, three hours after his initial instruction, even Gervais seemed more in the mood to ignore it. Introducing Sandra Bullock to announce the final award, he said: “Our next presenter starred in Netflix’s Bird Box, a movie where people survive by acting like they don’t see a thing. Sort of like working for Harvey Weinstein.” This was a considerable escalation of the acid reserved for the people in the room, less than a day before Weinstein’s trial is set to start. Gervais’s final words did not relate to Hollywood, however. They were: “Please donate to Australia.” |