After all, it has been five years since April Reign first launched the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag that resulted in seismic changes not just for the American Academy, but for BAFTA and many other awards bodies. In 2018, then-HFPA president Tatna took the Globes stage to deliver a much longer monologue about her support for the Time’s Up movement for women in Hollywood. The HFPA cannot possibly claim ignorance to the social awakening of the past half decade or more. Even if it had avoided the gaze of scrutiny in the past—which it has not—it would have evidenced by now any real interest it had in enacting true change. It has not.
There was much dogged reporting in the pieces by both the LA and New York Times that summed up the rot at the HFPA’s core. But as I read the pieces, the most surprising revelation was not any specific act, but rather how unsurprising all these details felt. It has long been a running joke that the HFPA is beset by systemic problems, infested by members of dubious standing whose only interest is in perks and access—opportunities to press the flesh with Hollywood’s great and good.
For an organization that claims to represent Southern California’s community of journalists delivering the Good News of Hollywood to the furthest corners of the globe, editors of international publications have told me they would never use an HFPA stringer because of the stigma attached to this kind of sycophantic, celebrity-obsessed power brokering. “You seldom see an HFPA writer’s by-line in any newspaper or magazine of any worth,” one editor said. “Literally all they do is put a recording device under the noses of famous people and ask for a selfie afterwards. My grandmother could do a better a job, and she’s been dead for 30 years.”
Hollywood’s response—not to discourage but rather to actively indulge this behavior—is understandable, if dispiriting. But what are we attempting to salvage by ‘fixing’ the Golden Globes? Even if the HFPA addresses its diversity problem, it is against its best interests to open its membership to every qualified applicant, since greater numbers will dilute the pool of campaigner perks they receive. And how can the HFPA possibly hope to keep up with all the lucrative committees it would have to create to accommodate them? No, the organization’s littered history of cracks, long since papered-over but never properly repaired, seems to evince an active disinterest in rocking the status quo. There is nothing to salvage here.
It is the guestlist for the Golden Globes that represents the HFPA’s greatest power, but it is not a power the HFPA controls. If Hollywood stayed away, there would be no plinth left to bear the heavy throne, and this is the organization’s greatest fear. If the HFPA is unprepared to make fundamental changes to its operating practices—changes it appears wholly unqualified to define on its own—a jovial slap on the wrists by a presenter or recipient on the Globes’ stage is not enough; a broader boycott would surely be the only effective step. It won’t be enough to sweep this under the rug now the show is over and assume this group will get its house in order in time for next year’s event. Some defend the HFPA’s good intentions—among them the honorable members who spoke up in the Times’ reports about trying to force change from the inside—or claim that their choices represent the nuance of a smaller, more informed group whose jobs revolve more directly around actually seeing the movies and shows. But given this year’s nominations included Sia’s Music and the frothy Emily in Paris, I’m not convinced there’s much expertise on display.
Perhaps the industry would need an early-season headline alternative to shape the road to Oscar; another show to fill the vacuum left by the absence of the Globes. I daresay there are a number of primed and ready contenders among the many critics’ groups that line up at this time of the year; groups with larger, more diverse memberships who are already applying much rigorous standards than the HFPA. It might make more of an event of another awards show like the SAG Awards or BAFTA. No group is beyond reproach, but few operate with as much cloak-and-dagger as this one, and there are brands ready to be built into lucrative broadcast opportunities that could achieve as many—if not more—of the charitable aims the HFPA hides behind. Plus, the community of international journalists in Hollywood probably deserve a much more inclusive organization dedicated to their interests. But I’d also point to the Emmys, which seems to do a fine job of choosing the year’s best television without the need for the same grand cacophony of precursors that lead into the Oscars.
In the end, Hollywood doesn’t need the HFPA as much as the HFPA needs Hollywood. It is time to unshackle the industry from its reliance on an archaic institution that does more harm than good, succeeds only accidentally in rewarding the best work, and casts this industry in a bad light. It might be high time to let the Golden Globes die.