At the 81st Golden Globes on Sunday, the event’s host and stand-up comedian Jo Koy cracked the world’s best joke during his opening monologue. The joke was about Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and it was seemingly cracked to lighten everyone’s mood. Except these were the reactions –
For your context, Koy was like, “Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies. I watched Barbie, I loved it. I really did love it. I don’t want you guys to think I’m a creep, but it was kind of weird being attracted to a plastic doll.”
Of course, his ‘funny’ sentences haven’t landed very well with the public online, as with the event’s attendees. And it’s not about people’s incapability to process humour. Rather, it’s about the sheer audacity to reduce the movie to everything it stood against.
Barbie portrayed what it meant to be a woman in a man’s world. The joke came across as just that, in its tastelessness and sexism. It was meant to be funny, but, in the process, it precisely proved why the movie needed to be made. With all the complexities it attempted to tackle for a man to come and say it was about a plastic doll with big boobies.
People have been calling out the flat joke for all the right reasons. Take a look –
ngl i never found Jo Koy funny and what he said at the golden globe was actually why the barbie movie was made, because of sexist comments like those. It has come out that even the cast hated the joke and I understand why, never hand this man a mic again. pic.twitter.com/qV8aiFb2Ij
— SavLeftUs (@SavHasLeftUs) January 9, 2024
The fact that that joke was the whole reason the barbie movie was made pic.twitter.com/Xgwp54IBHs
— dorothea 🎄 (@heydorotheai) January 10, 2024
imagine reducing a movie with the most heartbreaking/influential speech for women ever to a movie about “big boobs” like I’m so serious we need to find a way to reproduce without men pic.twitter.com/3C62KPIToh
— ASH (INDY N3 ✨) (@ashslippedawayy) January 8, 2024
This is rancid, unfunny misogyny coming from the #GoldenGlobes host (who even is this man?) I don’t think Barbie was some feminist masterpiece but to reduce it to being about a plastic doll with “big boobies” is gross. pic.twitter.com/xfCf1Xezdb
— Ciara (@Ciarabelles) January 8, 2024
"Barbie is about a plastic doll with big boobies" my brother in christ the movie is exactly about the objectification of women, just the way you did in front of the whole Barbie cast and a room full of women have some shame pic.twitter.com/PbvnOcrsrF
— pata laguga 😋 (@Muskan_singhhhh) January 10, 2024
the fact the movie Barbie was literally made for society to understand women to know what women go through and men somehow still missed the entire plot and called it “a movie about a plastic doll with big boobies” is so SO disappointing…. nothing will ever make them understand
— ✭ (@0iminsane) January 9, 2024
I know it was yesterday but I’m still mad about last night’s award show the host praised Oppenheimer but when it came to Barbie all he could say was that it was about a a plastic Barbie with boobies thankfully nobody really laughed at that part it was tasteless #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/ggFurSEbES
— 🏳️🌈Angelnn Barrera she/her 🏳️🌈 (@Angelynnbarrera) January 8, 2024
barbie was an amazing ass movie that represented women vs society perfectly we r not dumbing it down to “a plastic doll with big boobies” ew????
— lilkaayy✧˚ · . (@ilycrzyg1rl) January 10, 2024
“barbie is on a plastic doll with big b00bies!”
— beccaaaa (@beccabusie) January 9, 2024
imagine spending all your time filming the barbie movie that highlights gender inequality and the reality of sexism only to have it undermined, proving the whole point of why you made the movie for the sake of one ignorant mans ego
the fact that men have the audacity at this day and age to say the barbie movie is about “a plastic doll with big boobies” on LIVE TELEVISION??? wtf
— Yara🖤 (@X7Yara) January 8, 2024
Not that it makes a difference, but the joke was unnecessary. With movies like Barbie, one hopes for a positive change, but it proved we’re right where we started. We have been there for a long time now.
