A man mocking something he can’t directly relate to? Groundbreaking!
By now, you’ve surely heard the backlash against Jo Koy’s attempts at being funny as host of the 81st Golden Globes.
In addition to joking about Taylor Swift’s romance with the Kansas City Chief’s Travis Kelce, which left both the singer and audience totally unimpressed, Koy also took a stab at diminishing Greta Gerwig’s highly grossing movie Barbie.
While discussing another Globes’ nominee Oppenheimer, Koy quipped: “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.”
Not only is the joke lazy at best and misogynistic at worst, I think it’s safe to say that Koy didn’t really understand Barbie. Like, at all. But in his defense, he’s not the only man I’ve come across that didn’t have interest in not only seeing Barbie but frankly understanding why the movie matters so much to women and girls.
The reason for this is manifold, but I think the biggest one is that the things that do not directly serve or interest men are deemed as worthless and unimportant. And given the fact that Barbie is a film made for girls and women, it makes sense why it’s been dismissed. As Callie Byrnes so eloquently put it in her beautiful essay “‘Barbie’, Taylor Swift, And The Summer Of Feminine Joy“:
“Some might attribute Barbie’s success with the way it taps into the nostalgia of the doll. I won’t deny that was probably a contributing factor, at least to some extent. But I would also argue it was because it tapped into something bigger, even without people having seen the full movie yet—it was a movie geared for women. Not girls, not just teenagers, but women of all ages. It was advertised as campy. It was advertised as funny. But more than anything, it was advertised as brazenly and shamelessly feminine.”
The things men find interesting and that are associated with masculinity are conflated with sophistication and importance. Depth even. Art. Genius. Women’s interests and creations, on the other hand, are deemed as frivolous. Not to be taken seriously, much like the women enjoying it. It’s why we have the phrase “chick flicks” in the first place. It’s why Barbie has been given the same treatment.
Barbie was a film that used principles of feminism to tell its story, which may be another reason some men felt disinterested in the movie; they don’t believe feminism is something for them. However, what they are forgetting is that feminism is about equality. Men too are part of feminism’s equation for a balanced, just society. This movement is just as much for women as it is for men. Things such as toxic masculinity hurts men and boys just as it wounds women and girls.
Barbie didn’t resonate with Koy because it wasn’t directly made to, in the same ways I guess The Godfather doesn’t really vibe with me. But at the same time, I still understand The Godfather’s significance. I still appreciate the film’s accomplishments. Maybe that’s because I’ve been socially conditioned to put myself in shoes I don’t fit in just as other women are. Men, on the other hand, in so many ways are not taught the same. Koy is a prime example of this. If he had actually paid attention to Barbie, maybe he could have learned something, laughed, and had a new perspective. And, I don’t know, maybe even made a joke that actually landed. Who’s to say, though?
