By Sophie Reid
With each year comes a flurry of various award shows. Each seems to claim to be different yet they all seem to have the same underlying ideas. Similar shows and movies are nominated, the wins are often predictable, and the same B-list celebrities make an appearance at everyone. Despite this, I always seem to find myself camped in front of my T.V. with snacks in hand, ready to comment on every dress, suit, win and loss. I, along with countless others, spend all night watching these hopefully exciting award shows on countless Sundays in the months of January to May.
Last Sunday the Golden Globes aired, one of the first award shows of a highly anticipated season. This year’s Golden Globes, while having some of the usual nominations, also brought in a much more diverse crop of shows and movies than before. This has become all the more apparent as the Oscar nominations just came out last week, bringing with them an onslaught of criticism. The Oscar nominations reflect almost no diversity with pictures such as Selma getting snubbed in all categories. Fortunately, we also have the Golden Globes, which, while being far from ideal, delivered much more on controversial, and diverse nominations and wins.
This year’s Golden Globes not only brought up issues through nominations, but also through the red carpet and various speeches and jokes. If we start all the way from the beginning, the red carpet, where the Charlie Hebdo attack was mentioned by numerous celebrities. Many people held up signs that read “Je suis Charlie” as countless paparazzi snapped photos. Though this was a small act, I found it very nice and powerful that such a large amount of celebrities decided to show their support.
The next big topic was brought up very early on into the actual award show. Joanne Froggatt took home the “best supporting actress in a series, mini-series or TV movie” for her role on Downton Abbey. Though the nomination itself did not represent the most diverse or controversial show, Froggatt’s speech was the strong point. In Downton Abbey, the character she portrays gets raped by a valet. This was a very powerful and heart wrenching storyline for the character, and Froggatt chose to bring it up in her thank you speech after receiving the award. What made it most powerful was that she spoke about a woman who had written to her after the episode where she got rapped aired. The women had been raped and spoke about wanting her voice to be heard. Froggatt ended her speech by saying that she hopes with this speech she feel that she is heard.
Transparent, a show about a father who comes out as a transgender woman to his family, went home with two awards. These nominations and wins alone brought up the topic of transgender treatment and rights, and the fact that it won in two separate categories makes it all the more powerful. Then they went on to make it all the more better by dedicating the award to Leelah Alcorn, and all of the transgender people who died too young.
One more topic that an actress decided to bring up were the issues surrounding the Hispanic community. Gina Rodriguez, the main character in Jane the Virgin took home one award and chose to dedicate her speech to the Hispanic community and spoke about “a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes”.
While the Oscars decided to deny the opportunity to bring important topics and issues to center stage with simple yet profound nominations, The Golden Globes did not. Countless important and profound topics were brought up, and actors and actresses spoke about issues both close to home and across the globe. The celebrities present at this event chose to bring things to the table that need to be talked about, and they all just started the conversation.
