Every year Hollywood’s finest gathers at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for a night of entertainment, fine dining, and nerve-wracking competition to decide who gets to go home with the esteemed award.
This years hosts were SNL alumni and star of NBC’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Andy Samberg, and the revered Sandra Oh, mostly known for her performance on Grey’s Anatomy. This year Oh was the winner of the Best Actress in a TV Drama award.
As for Best Motion Picture, fan-favorite and critic-catastrophe, Bohemian Rhapsody, took home the gold. This became a sudden topic of discussion as the biopic has been consistently under fire for its queer erasure.
Throughout the film neon lights and longing stares were apparently enough to equate for queer representation, and while this was almost more than enough, and not too displeasing for straight viewers, the queer audience shifted in their seats uncomfortably; conflicted because there were heavy tones and faded subplot lines that almost worked, but still didn’t quite meet the mark.
When Freddie officially addresses his bisexuality in the film, he is promptly corrected by Mary Austin (his then fiancee), “Freddie, you’re gay.” This was a key moment in the film, for its what caused the deep rift between Mercury and Austin and forever changed the nature of their relationship, but it also caused a rift between Bohemian Rhapsody and its queer audience. By diminishing Mercury’s self-identification, Bohemian also decimated any idea of bisexuality validation and representation in the film.
While Bohemian struggled with proper representation, the other nominations for Best Motion Picture oozed diversity. The runner ups, BlacKkKlansman, Black Panther, and If Beale Street Could Talk, all had dominantly African-American casts, which isn’t something you see very often at American awards shows.
Seeing the nominations prior to the show almost led one to believe major change was taking place, and while its definitely in the works, the film industry has a long way to go, in more ways than one.
Harriet Hall of the Independent had her own idea of what was the worst part of the 2019 Golden Globes. And it wasn’t Bohemian’s win that upset her, it was the ever-deteriorating percentage of established female-directors and the ever-growing male dominance in the industry.
Hall wrote that all was well in the “pale, male and stale film industry,” it was elsewhere, like usual, that the problems lied. Men left the Golden Globes with all of the frontrunners; Best Drama, Best Musical or Comedy (Peter Farrelly’s Green Book), Best Director (Alfonso Cuaron for Roma), Best Screenplay (Green Book) and Best Foreign Language film (Roma).
And while there’s other awards that women happened to win, and they matter too, we can’t pretend they’re as equally mentionable and honorable as Best Drama, Best Picture, and Best Director.
Hall closed her piece with a powerful statement: “Thank goodness women were there [at the Golden Globes] to stand up for themselves—because its clear no one else will.” If nothing else, this years Golden Globes reiterated once again that the film industry has a long way to go before women and people of color alike receive equal standing.