It is a ceremony so historic in everything it involves that the media dedicate “retrospectives” to it. To understand what has evolved since then.
During the prestigious Golden Globes 2015 ceremony, two queens of US humor, the indescribable Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, take great pleasure in sifting through celebrities, gossip and sensations of the moment, as can the British Ricky Gervais. through its very “roast” presentations of the gratin. From Woody Allen (which already sets an “atmosphere”) to Steve Carrell, via George Clooney and Leonardo Dicaprio, no one escapes these funny rotating chairs between two presentations of statuettes.
But sometimes jokes age very badly.
Or that they become even more grating than they were back then. Like this very controversial joke about… Harvey Weinstein. While still at the head of his Miramax production company, the mogul and “Hollywood ogre” is only a few years away from the investigations (within the New York Times and the New Yorker) as well as the historic trial which will generate his fall. And in the middle of the 2010s, we can still laugh, apparently, at allegations which, without hatching, appear like open secrets.
The proof… With this joke, then.
10 years later, this joke about Harvey Weinstein resurfaces, and shocks
During this feverish evening of the Golden Globes which highlights two female icons of then phenomenal comedy series, we are still two years before the #MeToo revolution, one of the big triggers of which will be the speaking of the actress Rose McGowan.
-And between two jokes about Meryl Streep, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey pretend to play a family – a son and his mother. The question then arises, during this sketch displayed in public: who is the father? “Is that him, mom?” asks Amy Poehler to her colleague in the room, pointing to… Harvey Weinstein. And the whole audience laughs generously.
Weinstein included. And the discomfort doesn't stop there, in truth.
The one who was widely singled out for his unorthodox “methods” as an “untouchable” producer, before being singled out for acts of sexual violence, assault and rape, for which he will be condemned, has largely lent himself in the game, with an industry which, probably, took things lightly. A bit like Ben Affleck's generous thanks to the same “Harvey” during Will Hunting's coronation in 1998 at the Oscars ceremony, the sequence is rather difficult to pass today.
Because following this joke, an embarrassment sets in. As if Weinstein's reputation among women was already widely known, normalized, trivialized. We don't know if the goal is to denounce or to play on this curious impression of “everyone knows” in order to get a laugh.
“Harvey Weinstein is delighted to have participated in this sketch (it was a surprise for him)“, remembers The Ringer, a decade later. “But Tina Fey's lukewarm response (“keep going”) and the audience's awkward laughter suggest he realized something we all learned two years later. Harvey Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence for rape and sexual assault. Of all that's happening, nothing is more dated than this moment: a depressing and clear example of an entire industry's complicity“.
This is often where the downside hurts, when entertainment, like late shows and ceremonies across the Atlantic, fuels a sort of humorous connivance among the most powerful personalities. And it is rare that these games of derision improve over time…
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