A drama filled night at the Golden Globes: blame Jo Koy
The Golden Globes, the first major media award show of the year, just happened on January 7th. The broadcast has caused a huge stir in the pop culture world, and not because Oppenheimer took home a cumulative five Globes.
The award show sparked an unbelievable amount of drama, from petty arguments between celebrities to controversy regarding “questionable” invites. But no one is being talked about nearly as much as the show’s host Jo Koy and his commentary that has been received as distasteful.
Jo Koy is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Since 1989, Koy has starred in six comedy specials released by popular comedy show mediums Netflix and Comedy Central.
Despite his experience in the realm of comedy, Koy’s performance was received negatively by the Golden Globes’ viewers. Vulture New York described him as “bombing” his performance and Entertainment Weekly described his hosting as a “stint”.
Contrastingly, there have been articles coming to Koy’s defense, explaining that he had a much shorter timeline for writing his jokes than a typical couple of months.
According to Koy, he only had ten days to write and review his monologue. At the event, he even commented “I got his gig ten days ago! You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up.”
During his monologue, Koy noticed the lack of response to his jokes and responded “You’re kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”
So what were these controversial jokes?
The most widely talked about joke made by the Golden Globes host has been his comment about Barbie, a movie that grossed $1.4 billion in global profits and tackled topics regarding sexism and feminism in modern society.
During Koy’s monologue, he began to talk about the biggest titles receiving awards that night, saying that “‘Oppenheimer’ is based on a Pulitzer-prize winning book and ‘Barbie’ is on a plastic doll with big boobies’”
This statement has received a lot of backlash, many people reiterating that Koy had missed the point of the Barbie movie. Cady Lang from Time Magazine said, “Koy’s lowest point in a decidedly unfunny monologue was cracking a joke about Barbie that unintentionally highlighted the underlying sexism that the film faced—and, in many ways, the point of the whole movie.”
Koy also made a particularly controversial joke about pop star Taylor Swift, who has found herself in the spotlight after supporting her boyfriend Travis Kelce at his NFL games. Koy notably said “The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift,” which got a sour reaction from Swift and her fans.
Lastly, on the list of the most controversial moments of the monologue, Koy made a joke poking fun at actor Barry Keoghan for his nude scene in Saltburn, a movie that had been nominated for Golden Globes awards. Many social media users came to Keoghan’s defense, calling Koy’s joke “immature” and “painful”.
Although many have regarded Jo Koy’s performance at the Golden Globes as embarrassing and disrespectful, there is no point in going after him personally. As he mentioned, he did not have very long to write his monologue, which may explain why many of the jokes seemed to have fallen flat the way that they did.
At the same time, it is important to note that many of the jokes he relayed at the award show were taken as offense, which is never something that should be taken lightly. Koy has gone on the record and apologized to the Golden Globes writers for “throwing them under the bus” in explaining how little time he was given to prepare his speech, and has responded to the backlash he received following his performance.
He has not formally apologized to any of the actors/performers he made jokes about, but he has expressed feeling sorry that his “jokes fell flat”.
Recent Comments