Despite the lack of female nominees in unisex categories—Natalie Portman and the nation are looking at you, Best Director—women stole the show at the typically festive Golden Globes Awards Show. The women almost exclusively wore black, except for the
few who felt they just didn’t need to, and many of them left their partners in favor of having activists for gender and racial equality as their dates.
Some women took the red carpet interviews as opportunities to divert attention to the inequality and sexual harassment crisis that is now blaringly obvious in Hollywood, even calling out the news networks they were talking to for paying female reporters less.
And, the men wore black, too. At least some of them did so. Oh, and they wore “Time’s
Up” pins. Reporters strayed from asking about the Weinstein case, and sexual harassment, and gender inequality, in favor of asking about their work.
Some of them were a little uncomfortable when Natalie Portman bravely threw shade at the all-male nominees of Best Director; she had every reason to throw shade, seeing as Greta Gerwig’s directing was the reason for many of the wins that night but she was snubbed.
Sure, they thanked their wives and girlfriends and mothers and female costars, and that’s all fine and dandy, but not a single one of them used a minute of their redundant speeches to mention the most pressing topic in Hollywood; not a single one of them mentioned the reason they donned black suits and pins in the first place. That is the most telling occurrence of the current state of the nation’s views on gender and racial equality as well as sexual harassment.
The men were all too uncomfortable to mention the issue they were supposedly supporting. The men were all too uncomfortable to own up to the fact that women were indeed snubbed in the unisex categories. These are the men who represent the nation’s culture on worldwide screens, and they can’t defend or support their female counterparts, who work just as hard, if not harder, than they do to achieve their levels of success and influence.
The problem runs deeper than the predators and the discrimination. The problem also lies in those who are content with staying in their bubbles of comfort and silence, who say “I stand with the cause but I am too uncomfortable to speak up.” In reality, the show went on as if the Weinstein case never occurred, as if the issues of gender inequality and racial inequality don’t exist. However, kudos to the women who made the effort to bring these issues to light, who stood strong when everyone else cowered away and avoided eye contact, who used their platforms to be a voice for the voiceless.
