Andra Day, Chadwick Boseman, John Boyega, and Daniel Kaluuya Won Golden Globes, but It’s Not All Good. Here’s Why.
White people solo-judging television and film is so normative for them that it didn’t even seem wrong until recently
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It’s easy to get swept up in the big emotions of it all. Daniel Kaluuya’s Golden Globe win for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture–Drama for playing Black Panther Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah helped kick off the show. Fellow Brit John Boyega followed him with his win for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for director Steve McQueen’s ambitious Small Axe series Amazon’s Prime Video. Then there was Chadwick Boseman’s posthumous win as Best Actor in a Motion Picture–Drama for his role as Levee in the Denzel Washington-produced Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom for Netflix with a heartbreaking speech from his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward. And, finally, there was Andra Day’s win for Best Actress in a Motion Picture–Drama as the great Billie Holiday in the Lee Daniels-directed The United States vs. Billie Holiday.
This year, the heat was turned up on the Golden Globes, the annual event of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) that has long kicked off awards season. The Globes date all the way back to 1944. And certainly staging it this year during the pandemic was a huge feat. Reflection is one of the many byproducts of the pandemic, and it has been used to shine a glaring light on the HFPA.
Eyebrows were already raised when such actors as Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett of Lovecraft County, along with such shows as Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, which aired in the United States and the United Kingdom, failed to receive nominations. The crime, it was later discovered, was even more egregious with the discovery that the HFPA had not had at least one Black member out of its nearly 90 members in 20 years. At the top of the show, hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler shamed the organization. “There are no Black members of the Hollywood Foreign Press,” Fey said, appearing from New York. “I realize, HFPA, maybe you guys didn’t get the memo because your workplace is the back booth of a French McDonald’s, but you got to change that. So here’s to changing…
