This isn’t the first time the Golden Globes have seen a social media backlash after the announcement of Golden Globe nominees. Much of the online criticism over the 2020 results has been over how white-washed and male the categories are, especially for Best Director, whose nominees included Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Sam Mendes (1917), Todd Phillips (Joker), Martin Scorsese (The Irishman), and Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). Social media users were quick to spread a video of Natalie Portman from the 2018 Golden Globes where she presented the “all-male nominees” before giving the Golden Globe to Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water.
See the video of Portman below.
After the 2020 announcement, Twitter users retweeted the video while listing examples of the abundance of female directors that could have been chosen from. Amongst the names that repeatedly showed up were Greta Gerwig for Little Women, Lulu Wang for The Farewell, Lorene Scafaria for Hustlers, and Alma Har’el for Honey Boy. Har’el commented in an interview with Variety, that the Academy “dare[s] to say they don’t judge by gender but that’s exactly what they do. There were so many films this year that connected with audiences and critics as well as performed at the box office, and this group is out of touch and doesn’t see any of us. Zero women script writers. Zero best films by women. Zero women directors nominated. I will not live my life as a filmmaker who plans to keep working subjected to a group of voters that doesn’t see us.”
The Golden Globes has a history of having male-centric nominees, so much so that the only female that has ever won a best directing award was Barbra Streisand in 1984 for Yentl. Other commentators were displeased to see that many black men and women were snubbed in a lot of the acting categories, lamenting how Lupita Nyong’o wasn’t nominated for Us, Regina King for Watchmen, and Zendaya for Euphoria.
Some filmmakers and fans are waiting to see if the Oscars fare better for their beloved directors and actors. Hopefully, we’ll see a better representation of the artists who are actually out there making art than what the Golden Globes are trying to represent.
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