It’s not much of a surprise that the Golden Globes will be seeing new hosts, or old hosts coming back in Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, though it’s enough to wonder if it’s just because Ricky Gervais said he didn’t want to do the awards again or because of his scathing rebuke of Hollywood which, like it or not, was fairly accurate. Poehler and Fey might be a little more willing to play ball and congratulate their fellow actors on a job well done while Gervais was willing to let it all go and say what a lot of people might want to say but never find the voice for when it comes to award shows. As Kevin Burwick of MovieWeb points out Gervais has said he didn’t want to return before and has still done so, and even Poehler and Fey stepped away from hosting duties after a while, but are back again. It might be an intriguing ploy to get people to watch and to up the ratings, but despite his somewhat crass delivery Gervais managed to get a lot of people to listen since he said things that weren’t exactly polite but were a little more accurate than people might have liked. Poehler and Fey likely won’t go into such speech at the next Golden Globes and will probably be more likely to fall back on their comedic chops in order to push the show through in a smooth and controlled manner.
Railing on about how and why celebrities need awards when they’ve already reached Hollywood and have everything they could possibly want would be quite time-consuming and sound like so much whining, even if most of it turned out to be true. One thing about Poehler and Fey is that they are truly funny together and when it comes to being on screen or onstage with each other they tend to feed off of the energy that each one of them produces so as to create a better show and a more engaging time than if it was just one or the other. While Ricky Gervais is a very funny man and did create a bit of a stir that has a few people thinking hopefully, Poehler and Fey will no doubt go by the book, as much as they ever do, and attempt to create a show that will glorify the stars once again and remind people why the awards are there for those that have achieved the kind of status that seems like its own reward but somehow just isn’t enough.
There is a definite dividing line between those that consider award shows important and those that consider them just another way for actors to pat themselves on the back, and it’s become a point of contention throughout the years considering what the awards actually mean. One would think that making hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars with each job might be enough for a lot of people given that it’s enough to build a lifestyle that many only ever dream about. Yet for some reason the award shows have been going strong for decades as actors continue to gather and congratulate themselves for this or that and pat each other on the back for a job well done. Let’s be real, entertainment is a big part of our culture and it has become an increasingly important part since the escape from reality that we so desperately want at times is in fact quite important to our mental and spiritual help. But at the end of the day it’s pretend, it’s make-believe, it’s telling a story and convincing people that it’s worth spending the money to go and see grown men and women, and adolescents and kids, act out scenes from a fiction that we desire to see. In other words, it’s congratulations on a job well done creating something that wasn’t real in the first place.
One might think that a paycheck would be congratulations enough as many of us feel that getting paid for the work we do is expected and is its own reward, but the award shows tend to take things a little further. If Ricky Gervais said anything sensible during his monologue, and he did, it’s that the Hollywood elite have disconnected themselves from the general public, and vice versa. They have little idea what it is to live from paycheck to paycheck any longer, or what it feels like to have not enough. While some of them might have come up in such a manner, many appear to have forgotten. Likely as not when Poehler and Fey take the podium next year there will be those listening closely to what they say, though it’s likely that there will also be those that are ready to judge the moment things go back to the way they were.
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