On Jan. 7, comedian Jo Koy hosted the 81st Golden Globes and is facing backlash for his questionable jokes.
Jo Koy’s monologue started okay but quickly turned sour when he made a sickening joke about the recently released movie, Barbie. When comparing Oppenheimer to Barbie, Koy reduced Barbie to just her plastic body.
“The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet. Or what casting directors call character actor!” Koy continued.
The crowd gave some polite laughs, but besides that, the room was very quiet. After the awkward Barbie jokes, the camera turned to Greta Gerwig and Ryan Gosling’s disappointed faces. Additionally, grimaces from celebrities like Selena Gomez and Helen Mirren could be seen in the background.
“Barbie once again proved its point: reducing women to be just sexualized objects and ignoring EVERYTHING they stated in the story. Who is he, anyways?” one user, @Mon_V, commented.
Koy had ignored the whole lesson of Barbie, that women aren’t just their bodies. Some people are even taking to social media to express their anger towards Koy’s incompetence and disrespect.
After receiving little to no laughter during his Barbie jokes, Koy attempted to take the heat off of himself.
“Some [jokes] I wrote, some other people wrote,” Koy stated. “Yo, I got the gig [to host the Golden Globes] 10 days ago!”
To clarify, the Golden Globes announced that Jo Koy would be hosting the Golden Globes on Dec. 21, 2023, which was 18 days before the Golden Globes show; however, 18 days is still a short amount of time to prepare a monologue.
“You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. You’re kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these and they’re the ones that you’re laughing at,” Koy continued.
Not only were Jo Koy’s jokes not good (some even offensive), but he also blamed his worst jokes on the writers. Blaming writers is very unprofessional and a good way to make enemies, especially after the recent writers’ strike.
Koy spent the rest of the night making more uncomfortable jokes that offended even more celebrities, including a joke that Taylor Swift wasn’t amused by.
Since Jo Koy only got the job 18 days before the event, I think it’s safe to assume that he wasn’t their first choice. Nevertheless, I do not think Jo Koy should’ve hosted the Golden Globes, and I’m pretty certain that he won’t be hosting anything else for a good amount of time.
