Setting the stage
Black-clad Globes attendees direct the tone for the rest of awards season.
An army of fed-up Hollywood women — accompanied by increasingly chagrined Hollywood men — has proved they can turn the rowdiest awards show into an earnest declaration of female empowerment. Now what?
Will Sunday’s serious-at-last Golden Globe Awards be the template going forward for awards season, culminating in the Academy Awards on March 4?
And, more important, will anything really change about Hollywood’s historic lack of diversity, its gender pay gap and, more recently, its multiplying sexual harassment and assault scandals?
Maybe. But it’s ironic that the first big bash of awards season — traditionally studied for what it might portend for the Oscars — is now also being analyzed for what it might say about the future of the entertainment industry more generally.
Who would have predicted a year ago that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s annual celebration of the best of movies and TV — a show where glitz and boozing traditionally triumph over gravitas and sobriety — would turn out as it did for its 75th anniversary?
Almost the entire red-carpet parade and audience clad in black? Check. Host Seth Meyers striking the tricky balance between tackling a serious issue without harshing the fun? Check.
“Good evening, ladies and remaining gentlemen,” Meyers grinned as he opened his monologue of remarks that mixed scandal with inside-industry allusions. “For the male stars in the room, this will be the first time in months that it won’t be terrifying to hear your name read out loud.”
Meanwhile, activists for gender and racial justice dressed to the nines and accompanied A-list stars to the festivities. That assured further attention for the female-led #MeToo and #TimesUp movements to call out abuse of women before and behind the lights and cameras, not to mention in other industries.
Once the show began, there were repeated mentions of empowerment and something-must-be-done declarations in acceptance speeches, at least by the women. There were polite-but-pointed rebukes by some stars, as when presenter Natalie Portman, introducing the nominees for best director, said, “And here are the all-male nominees.”
And then there was Oprah Winfrey’s galvanizing speech, interrupted by standing ovations, as she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement, the first black woman to receive the honor. In her moving speech, she denounced racism and sexism, spoke of her own life and recalled the little-known story of Recy Taylor, a black woman abducted and raped by six white men in 1944, who died recently without ever seeing justice.
“What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have. Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell, and this year we became the story,” she said. “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up!”
Already staggered by two years of #OscarsSoWhite controversy about the awards’ lack of racial and ethnic diversity, the industry was upended by the Harvey Weinstein scandal involving accusations of sexual misconduct going back decades.
The toppling in October of the blustery, volatile producer, who dominated the Globes for years, was accompanied by a tsunami of allegations of sexual harassment and assault that has helped fell scores of powerful men.
Now all the old industry customs, patterns and rules have been thrown out, and their replacements are still uncertain. So the annual sybaritic shindig that is the Golden Globes came at a moment when few in the industry know where they stand anymore and everyone is feeling the way to a new normal.
The tone was set before the show started when the majority of stars paraded the red carpet in black in a sign of solidarity for gender equality and for the accusers in the harassment scandals.
“We feel sort of emboldened in this particular moment to stand together in a thick black line dividing then from now,” nominee Meryl Streep ( The Post) told E! Network’s Ryan Seacrest.
Backstage, each actor and actress was asked about the controversy. Sam Rockwell, holding his Globe for best supporting actor for Three Billboards
Outside Ebbing, Missouri, didn’t feel comfortable answering what men could do to contribute to the cause.
“I don’t know the answer,” he said. “People have to stop being bullying. I think that’s what it comes down to.”
There was no missing the almost grim determination of many female stars to declare where they stand and what they want from the industry.
Elisabeth Moss, who won the Globe for best actress in a TV drama series, the relevant-again The Handmaid’s Tale, talked backstage about the need for more women to be involved in front of and behind the camera.
“We want to tell stories that reflect our lives back at us,” she said.
When Frances McDormand won for best performance by an actress in a drama for Three Billboards, she said she usually keeps her politics to herself.
“But it was really great to be in this room tonight and to be a part in a tectonic shift in our industry power structure,” she said. “Trust me, the women in this room are not here for the food. We’re here for the work.”
Portman’s remark about the all-male nominees suggested she may have read the latest University of Southern California survey on directors, released a few days before the Globes; it revealed “no meaningful or sustained change” in 2017 for female, black and Asian directors.
The activists who accompanied the stars say they’ve been inspired by the effort. They say they hope by attending the Globes that they can help shift focus away from the perpetrators of sexual misconduct and back to survivors, and create lasting change.
“I hope people see the momentum and the energy of the movement,” said Streep’s guest Ai-jen Poo, head of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Said Streep: “People are aware now of a power imbalance.”
“For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.” Oprah Winfrey Accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement