It’s fair to say that one of the biggest talking points from Sunday night’s Golden Globes Awards was host Jo Koy’s opening monologue, which received widespread backlash.
Many of the jokes were branded “misogynistic” by viewers at home, and they didn’t appear to be any better received by the celebrities in the audience — with everybody from Harrison Ford to Taylor Swift being caught on camera looking seriously unimpressed.
One of Jo’s most divisive jokes of the night saw the comic take aim at the Barbie movie as he compared it with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
“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,” he told the crowd.
It's worth noting that this "joke" came just days after Barbie star America Ferrera had reiterated how important the movie is for “generations of girls” being raised in a patriarchal society, as well as for “boys and men” who otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to feminist theory in any way.
“There are a lot of people who need Feminism 101, whole generations of girls [...] who don’t have words for the culture that they’re being raised in,” she told the New York Times.
And although the basic, entry-level feminism that is captured in Barbie has divided viewers in the months since its release, it has also been hugely credited with exposing people — especially young girls — to any level of feminism at all.
Director Greta Gerwig became the first female solo director in history with a billion-dollar movie, and Barbie’s staggering achievement was even recognized later at the Golden Globes when it received the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement Award.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that when the cameras panned to the audience during Jo’s monologue, many of the celebrity guests were visibly unimpressed with his jibe. Selena Gomez and Helen Mirren were both spotted putting their heads in their hands, while Ayo Edebiri didn’t even look up from her table as she seemingly refused to acknowledge the joke altogether.
Meanwhile, Emma Stone looked visibly underwhelmed by Jo’s comment and side-eyed the host from her spot in the audience.
And the Barbie cast appeared to be on the same page, with the movie’s stars — including Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie — being filmed looking less than pleased by the entire thing.
Greta’s reaction was also caught on camera. While the director didn't look impressed, she did appear to have a look of resignation on her face. It was also noted that Greta nodded along in response to the joke, leaving fans wondering whether she’d perhaps expected these kinds of comments before.
Now Greta has shed some new light on the whole thing in a new interview, where she insisted that Jo wasn’t “wrong” when he made the remark.
During an appearance on BBC Radio on Wednesday, Greta downplayed Jo’s monologue despite the overwhelmingly negative reaction that it has been receiving online over the last few days.
When asked about the “plastic doll with big boobies” retort, Greta bluntly replied, “Well, he’s not wrong. She’s the first doll that was mass-produced with breasts, so he was right on.”
Expertly moving the conversation along, she then added, “I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll. The insight that [Barbie’s creator] Ruth Handler had when she was watching her daughter play with baby dolls is she realized, ‘My daughter doesn’t want to pretend to be a mother. She wants to pretend to be a grown woman.’”
And while Greta’s comments definitely don’t echo the overwhelming consensus toward Jo’s joke, the star has been praised for her “classy” response.
Discussing what she said on a Reddit forum, one person wrote, “It's classy! and it'll be read that way! it also shows greta's knowledge of barbie history and lore / she restated the thesis of her project with a smile.”
“It is classy (and so easy to read in her voice!). She put his joke into a different perspective,” somebody else agreed before adding, “but I still feel like he was still trying to reduce the movie to just ‘HuR dER bOoBies’.”
“I'm glad she just wrapped it up with this and allows for everyone to move on from this,” another user added.
“Smart as fuck response,” one more added, while somebody else wrote, “I aspire to be this cerebrally unbothered.”
Greta’s response comes after Jo admitted that the reaction to his jokes at the Golden Globes had “hurt."
