Anna Marks, Opinion staff editor: The first statuettes of the 2025 awards season were handed out Sunday night at the Golden Globes. Despite a valiant effort by the host, Nikki Glaser, the show was, on the whole, rather boring, as always. Can it be saved?
Adam Sternbergh, Opinion culture editor: The Globes need to make a splash somehow! Just being Oscars Lite won’t cut it. Last night was fine, but it definitely felt like Oscars Lite.
The Globes used to be delightfully wacky in their TV selections, but now it’s a rehash of the Emmys. The TV wins were the most predictable of the night, from “Shogun” to the absent Jeremy Allen White.
Jessica Grose, Opinion writer: “The Bear” is the most overrated show on the planet, so of course he won.
I was happy to see Kieran Culkin win for “A Real Pain,” because he is delightfully wacky. For the most part, the speeches felt like everyone played it safe to avoid getting ripped apart on the internet.
Marks: Even the dresses were rather tepid. Pretty much everyone was in their best Old Hollywood-style glam, which is like the tradcore of red-carpet fashion. Ick.
Sternbergh: If the Globes want to survive, they must become the Oscars’ wacky drunk cousin. That starts on the red carpet. Jeremy Strong’s outfit fit the bill. You ask for red-carpet risks and I give you a mint-green bucket hat!
Marks: Ha! Honestly, I’ll take any risks, anywhere. I guess that’s why “The Substance” getting its shine, in the form of a best actress award for Demi Moore, felt so good — that movie’s actually interesting, if gruesome.
Sternbergh: I’ll be curious to see how much of the momentum of “The Substance” carries over to the Oscars. It feels like a Golden Globe movie and decidedly not like an Oscar movie.
Grose: Moore’s got an uphill battle — the Oscars hate horror. Even if the movie’s rebuke of right-wing gender conformity is so urgently political.
Marks: It’s indeed a deeply political film, with body horror that subverts traditional gender presentation. It also critiques cosmetic “enhancement” culture, which was a stark contrast to an awards show in which nobody’s forehead moved.
Grose: There were so many ads for GLP-1s during the show. Like, a truly wild amount of them.
Marks: The entire show was a GLP-1 ad. It’s sort of nutty to be handing out awards to a film that is in part about the punishing restrictions of beauty standards while everyone watching is being sold a way to better conform to the standards on display in the show itself.
Grose: It’s also troubling that the actresses from “Wicked” — a movie with a message about acceptance despite physical differences — seem to be wasting away. The politics of the film do not match the body politics of its stars.
Sternbergh: Perhaps another path to relevance for the Globes would be embracing an activist political role. An activist Globes would have more overtly celebrated “The Apprentice,” rather than leaving it for Sebastian Stan to mention in an acceptance speech for an award he won for a different movie.
The big wins for “Emilia Pérez” did feel somewhat political, given that its subject matter — gender transition — has become so politically charged.
Marks: That film’s lead actress, Karla Sofía Gascón, gave the most overtly political speech of the night. Perhaps it was so personal that it didn’t feel out of place.
Is the key to politics at awards shows that the most powerful and wealthy people who attend actually have a stake in the issue at hand?
Grose: Yeah, probably — otherwise it just looks like rich people cosplaying as social justice warriors for a night before returning to their mansions. No one wants to hear celebrities talking about politics directly anymore.
Sternbergh: Sure, no one wants to hear about politics in acceptance speeches, but the show itself should be more explicitly political in its nominations. Otherwise it ends up being a weak echo of the Emmys and a weak preview of the Oscars.
Grose: I don’t think the Globes need to exist. The night just felt like more Hollywood self-congratulation. Do we really need more of that in a moment when celebrities are more powerful than ever?
Marks: What say you, Adam? Should we abolish the Golden Globes?
Sternbergh: I would say that if the Globes disappeared, no one but publicists and red-carpet stylists would notice. It did disappear a few years ago, and no one noticed! I can’t make an impassioned case for its continued existence — but since it’s improbably staggered back from the grave, the Globes need to make the case on their own. They haven’t yet.
