The 81st annual Golden Globes Award show marks a time for the entertainment industry to glam up and go all out with their formal attire and eye-catching looks. Awards for Best Motion Picture- Drama, Box Office Achievement, Best Actor Performance, and more were presented among the attendees. While many moments of this year’s golden night were adorned with smiles and sparkly outfits, the host, Jo Koy, brought on uncomfortable and unamused silence with his seemingly careless and inappropriate remarks masked as comedy 

The stand-out and most talked about joke referenced the hit movie Barbie- with its director Greta Gerwig in attendance. Koy compares the highly nominated films of 2023, saying, “Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.”

Many point out the ignorance of the joke, emphasizing that Barbie was meant to highlight the constant struggles of women in a world with the clearest glass ceiling, which is defined as. 

Gemma Garcia, a sophomore, responded by saying, “I think it was a very disrespectful and uncalled-for thing to say and inappropriate, especially due to the circumstances. [Koy] should go watch Barbie.” 

“I think the joke was misogynistic and flat-out stupid because the whole movie is based around feminism and the effects that patriarchy has on women,” says freshman Corrine Pollard. “It’s so obvious that the comedian has never even bothered to watch the Barbie movie because his saying it’s ‘about a doll with big boobs’ contradicts the entire plot of the movie.”

But others don’t think the remark was as significant as many are making it out to be

“He’s a comedian, he’s just trying to make a joke, trying to get a reaction from people— what a comedian is supposed to do,” says Tyler Schoenfeld, freshman. 

Koy stated during one of his monologues that he only had 10 days to prepare for the Golden Globes. “I got this gig 10 days ago,” he told the audience. “You want a perfect monologue?” Many sympathize with the comedian, understanding he was in a rush to prepare for such a stressful role. It’s important to consider the circumstances; that Koy had a limited amount of time, plus the pressure of such an important audience and thousands watching at home, that his comment on Barbie likely wasn’t from the heart- rather a quick whitt he wrote days before the Golden Globes. 

Junior Logan Mietezer shares his opinion on the joke: “It was very sexist and it wasn’t even funny.” Fellow junior Jaeden Broddrick disagrees with this, saying it wasn’t sexist and he found it enjoyable. 

Greta Gerwig, the writer and director of the Barbie film, weighed in on the controversy. “Well, he’s not wrong. She’s the first doll that was mass-produced with breasts, so he was right on,” she told BBC Radio 4 Today, “and you know, I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll.”

Grewig goes on to share that her mother was hesitant to allow her to play with Barbies when she was younger. “[Baribe] has no character, no story. She’s there to be projected upon.”

No matter your standpoint, this joke and many others from the night added shock value to this annual award show. Clips of the most surprising moments circulated on social media such as TikTok, causing the viewership ratings to rise in comparison to last year’s show, with an increase of 50% and a total of 9.4 million watchers. Like many other award shows, the Golden Globes have slowly lost the public’s interest, especially after the pandemic, where views hit all-time lows. They’ve struggled to recover pre-2020 numbers, which, on average, was 18 million watchers. Whether scripted or natural, shocking moments during these shows might be what keeps them relevant. From the Chris Rock-Will Smith slap at the 2022 Oscars to Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs, live award ceremonies have had plenty of these unexpected, and often controversial incidents. 

The icy silence and following uproar for and against Koy’s monologues put a brighter spotlight on the Golden Globes and reopened the conversation of feminism, award hosts, public figures, and the film industry as a whole.