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The biggest stars in film and television gathered for the 77th annual Golden Globe awards last night—or should I say, the final Golden Globes. Yes, it’s true: 2020 marks the last ever Golden Globe ceremony, because the End Times are in full swing, and there likely won’t be a Beverly Hilton to occupy in 2021.
Every year, I watch each awards show and pre-event red carpet. As a child of the ’90s and early 2000s, I love it! I plowed through adolescence as the curtain of celebrity “glamour” drew back in favor of a push toward relatability. Gossip rags promised me “Stars: They’re Just Like Us,” then social media offered the proof. Because stars are just like me, I feel attached to and invested in celebrities and their stories. The Globes have always been the perfect place to celebrity-watch, because it’s a jambalaya of film stars, TV stars, and alcohol. I feel a duty to ritualistically tune in each year and watch them interact IRL, for further evidence that they are just like me (Goofy! Consume French fries! Love memes!) This is where Famouses are their most human, truly devoid of inhibition. Right?
Wrong. Last night’s show sucked. Actually, the show was probably fine, but we no longer exist in the Brad and Jen-fronted In Touch, Star and OK! era. We are quite literally burning this place (the Earth) to the ground. This is the apocalypse, and the stars are not just like us.
The old school model of the award ceremony is dead. Like, mummified, entombed, and damned to an eternity in a cursed locket-dead. Awards shows used to be these grand, magnificent cultural moments that the public itched to tune into for a taste of celebrity, glamour, riches—the high life. Consider that before social media, there were only a few nights per year that the gen-pop could watch celebrities interact in unscripted environments. At the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, and their corresponding red carpets, we could finally see who Famouses were really friends with, who they were making red carpet “debuts” with, and what aspirational sartorial dreams they’d wear.
Today, I see so much of these people. Like too much. I’ve seen Jessica Simpson’s swollen foot on Twitter, which she treated like a WebMD search bar. I’ve seen former child stars Macaulay Culkin and Aaron Carter air out extremely personal familial drama with their famous brothers online. I’ve seen Cara Delevingne and Ashley Benson carry a sex bench into their home. And what’s worse, I also get to see these people go on Jimmy Fallon and like, smash their foreheads into pies or something. The jig is up. The curtain has been pulled back. We were certain that the stars were just like us. Yet, last night solidified quite the opposite for me.
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Being alive in the year 2020 means experiencing powerlessness. Australia is burning. Millions of animals are dying. America’s fuck of a president just murdered Iran’s top military leader and is tweeting daily threats about committing war crimes. I feel utterly helpless. I feel guilty for buying a drink at Starbucks knowing that’s $5 I could put toward my heaping student debt. If I had literally $200 to spare, and it wasn’t allocated toward rent, car payments, student loans, or health insurance, I’d love to donate it to Australia. Or to keep Elizabeth Warren in the race. I’d give anything to reverse the damage Trump is doing to our planet, to our people. So, yeah, watching Jennifer Aniston and Ryan Seacrest banter on the red carpet about bidding on the same multi-million dollar mansion sucked. Watching Famouses use a combination of dress, jewelry, and shoes—of which the net total could literally change my life—for one single night sucked. Guesstimating the combined wealth of a bunch of fuck you-rich white people occupying the Beverly Hilton last night sucked. I don’t know how to enjoy something like the Golden Globes anymore.
We used to have fun. Remember when we used to have fun? We were so cute, naming celebrity couples Brangelina, Bennifer, Zanessa, K-Stew and R-Patz. Oh, J-Law, remember J-Law?! God, we were so young. I usually believe that pop culture serves as a much-needed escape from our hell-reality. But with Greta Thunberg glaring at me, the warm breeze of Joe Biden’s breath on the back of my neck, and my ever-growing credit card debt and existential dread, watching the Golden Globes made me feel Hulk-like. The stars are not just like us. But soon, we will all be stars. Like stardust, post-apocalypse.