Remember the good ol’ days, all the way back one year ago, when Amy Poehler and Tina Fey hosted their last Golden Globes and the whole night turned into a celebration of queer stories and powerful women? Sorry, those days are gone. Ricky Gervais hosted last night’s male-dominated, straight-dominated Globes. No queer TV shows or movies won (Carol unforgivably lost in every category it was nominated in!). If a man was nominated in a category with a woman, or if a male-fronted movie/TV show was nominated in the same category as female-fronted ones, the men won. The Globes were a lot of the same old blah blah blah, but Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio taking home trophies side-by-side weren’t the only things that made it feel like 1997 — Gervais opened the show with a bunch of stupid “jokes” about trans people that I’m not even going to repeat because come on, man.
It wasn’t all men doing men things, though. So here are the five best moments of the mostly boring 73rd Golden Globes.
1. Taraji P. Henson finally gets her hardware
Taraji P. Henson acceptance speech Part 2 #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/nYdbjiAH5s
— Coldest Winter Soldier Ever (@TatianaKing) January 11, 2016
Dang, Taraji is a shining star in a bleak universe of sameness. She handed out cookies on the way up to the stage and shut down the play-off music because, as she said, she’d been waiting 20 years to accept this award (and she probably remembers Kevin Spacey talking for five full minutes last year when accepting his trophy, which only left Ruth Wilson 30 seconds to accept hers). Henson became the first Black woman in 24 years to win for best TV actress, and the third black woman in the show’s 73-year history to win the award. Her speech was gracious, but she also didn’t shy away from pointing out that out of all the amazing roles she’s played in her life, it’s the black-woman-as-ex-drug-dealer/con that made people pay attention.
2. Eva Longoria and America Ferrera call out racism
https://twitter.com/MartaDelol/status/686556408586874880
It’s relevant in every way, but especially because the Golden Globes’ official Twitter mixed up Ferrera and Gina Rodriguez when the nominations were announced in December.
3. Lady Gaga wins, spooks Leonardo DiCaprio
https://vine.co/v/iMAHYTw00bH
Lady Gaga was the only openly queer woman to take home a Globe last night. She won for American Horror Story: Hotel and gave a really moving speech in which she truly seemed shocked to be standing up there. My favorite part was how she gave no deference to Leo on the way up to the stage, running right into/over him, a thing he is clearly not used to.
4. Aziz Ansari takes a page from Amy Poehler’s book
Neither Tambor nor Ansari won, though. Gael GarcÃa Bernal did.
5. Regina King wasn’t having Quentin Tarantino’s racist shit
https://twitter.com/TinaLaBang/status/686370919908950016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The camera cut away to her face when he was accepting the award for The Hateful Eight‘s Best Score award on behalf of Ennio Morricone, saying:
“When I say favorite composer, I don’t mean movie composer — that ghetto. I’m talking about Mozart, I’m talking about Beethoven, I’m talking about Schubert. That’s who I’m talking about.”
Jamie Foxx: Also unamused. When Tarantino left the stage and it was time for him to introduce his daughter (Miss Golden Globe), he called out Tarantino too.
My vote is for Eva Longoria and America Ferrera to host this thing next year, with one of those long cartoon hooks in their hands at all times to pull whomever they want right off the stage.
