What We Learnt From The 70th Annual Golden Globes

Though 90% of the reason I awoke uncommonly perky on Monday the 14th of January was to see if snow had graced our campus (causing me to accidentally knock over and smash my desk lamp in my flailing excitement), this was also in part because of the prospect of spending most of my morning Youtubing fuzzy Iphone-uploaded clips from this year’s Golden Globes. Though many may have seen it as ‘just another award’s ceremony’, with Sophia Vergara looking characteristically angelic and everyone admiring the audacity of Bill Murray’s beard/moustache combo (Stephen Colbert suggested it should have its own Twitter feed), particularly for the television categories the globes defined a change, and we can glean much from this years’ awards.
1) Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are the ultimate hosts, why did someone not think of this before
From their ingenious collaborations on Saturday Night Live to Tina photobombing Amy magnificently at the Emmys, these two are unquestionably a match made in comedic-heaven. Their BFF-ship made the show so comfortable to watch, with their seamless gags not even appearing scripted, avoiding the stilted feeling some hosts effuse. These two queens of the tube combined the right amount of sass and daring with wit, skilfully without managing to offend many of the egos on the continental US (holla Ricky), and engaging with their audience to create television gold. The fact they were both respectively nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy gives kudos to the marked impact these two women have on the industry, and throughout it was discernible the influence they wield in television and popular culture today – Anne Hathaway cited Tina’s creative genius in her acceptance speech. Many of SNL’s regulars appeared throughout the night, with Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig notably having the audience laughing their frocks off – all bar a perturbed Tommy Lee Jones with a face akin to a deflated whoopee cushion – pronouncing the effect this one show can have upon a whole industry.
2) Who run the world? Girls’ pronounced success
It’s obvious from the incessant Tumblr gifs and free manicures offered on their Twitter account to celebrate the start of season two that the blogosphere has become a shrine for Girls-worship. Lena Dunham’s win for Best Actress in a Comedy and the entire show scooping Best Comedy pronounced how this one programme’s impact is not solely confined to a certain ‘type’ of person on the blogosphere, but that show, without at all overstating it, has become the voice of a generation, as Dunham’s character so entertainingly referred to herself in the first episode. The fact that Dunham’s performance superseded that of the likes of Zooey Deschanel’s delightfully exuberant Jess from New Girl, or Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ sass-tacular Selina Meyer in Veep in a mere ten episodes amplifies the impact this creative wunderkind has had upon the institution of US comedy. Perhaps even more remarkably, in ten twenty-five minute long episodes Girls won the gong over widely-acclaimed Modern Family, and even the astronomically popular The Big Bang Theory, which has had five series to season. In this year’s globes we fundamentally saw a changing dynamic in comedy, in not favouring a status quo of what humour is constituted as – arguably previously orientated towards the sitcom – but allowing a hilarious show like Girls, with its feet firmly grounded in reality and all of its dark undercurrents, to be deservedly recognised, as Dunham so touchingly put it, “This award is for every woman who felt like there wasn’t a space for her, this show has made a space for me.”
3) Homeland can still blow everyone away
Perhaps a note-worthy confidence-booster for Girls is that this year’s globes proved an audience can still be captivated, challenged and engaged beyond the hype of a dynamite first season, as Homeland. The show triumphing over similarly fast-paced and enthralling dramas in the category such as The Newsroom, with Aaron Sorkin’s touch almost memento-mori-esque throughout it, inherently says something about the dynamism of Homeland, with the sustained ferocity of its storylines and performances worthily being credited. “I just wish you all could have seen Claire Danes, eight months pregnant, holding a steel pipe, being chased down a drainage tunnel by Abu Nazir at three o’clock in the morning, take after take,” said Executive Producer Alex Gansa’s in his acceptance speech. Claire Danes’ acceptance speech also highlighted something fundamental to the evolution of television dramas, commending her fellow nominees for being, “so badass, so brilliant”, emphasising the burgeoning gap being made between good television and bad, the good being discernible by featuring important and complicated female characters, which arguably now in 2013 we are being compensated for, with a lack of such a plethora of strong characters in television in years gone by.
So although the decisions are critiqued year in year out as being predictable and unvaried(the backlash this year came from Breaking Bad fans over being eclipsed again by Homeland) 2013 in many ways cemented a change in perceptions, heralding who may be seen as untypical but now vital figures to the evolution of television, be they recipients of the awards, or the hosts of the show in all their fabulousness. I am however disappointed that Bill didn’t get a gong for the beard, that thing is unrivalled in its majesty.