If Hollywood were a classroom, the Golden Globes would be the nerdy kid who invites the most popular fellow students to his birthday party to ensure that the other guests turn up as well. The once-prestigious award, following a few embattled years of low ratings, plunging viewership and lack of interest from the A-list after a series of controversies, seems to have capitulated to the popular-is-best logic of the market.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which runs the show, has announced a new award for “cinematic and box office achievement” — with another new award honouring stand-up comedy on television — hoping, perhaps, that this will draw the biggies, and the viewers, who have, of late, mostly kept away.
Can any award — which is only a symbolic honour — top the nominees’ cold, hard cash earnings at the box office? These are, after all, the biggest blockbusters of the year, from Barbie and Oppenheimer to Super Mario Bros Movie and John Wick: Chapter 4. But that question is moot, considering that the real winner of this category will be the Golden Globes itself.
Neither Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour nor Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning are Citizen Kane, but they will ensure the presence at the event of two of the biggest celebrities on the planet — Taylor Swift and Tom Cruise — and, therefore, command the attention of their millions of fans.
The transparency of the move is, at some level, admirable. At the same time, it is a little disheartening that the thin fiction such awards maintain — merit is what always triumphs — seems to have finally been cast aside in favour of harsh reality. Smaller and independent films once found hope in being nominated and, therefore, noticed — now, they will have to step aside so that the spotlight may shine on the “real” stars.
