With awards show over, Golden Globe-winning films finally eligible to be watched by public for first time
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Lily Robinson pondered a few moments before answering. “Hmmm, I don’t know for sure, but if you ask me it should have been Top Gun: Maverick,” she said. “I liked that movie so much I watched it three times. Twice in theaters.”
She was responding to a Battle Line reporter who had just asked her which film won “Best Drama” at last week’s Golden Globe Awards. She was one of many individuals from the middle of the country that we interviewed, in this case at a dive bar 40 minutes north of Kansas City.
When told the winner was instead Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, she appeared perplexed. “Did you see that movie?” the reporter asked.
“No, I didn’t see that one,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve never heard of it.”
“I saw it,” said Brent Levy from across the bar. “Terrific film. It’s about this little boy who gets kidnapped and taken to this school where a bunch of weird stuff happens. Anyway, he becomes friends with a boy named Ron and this girl named Herman or something. For the hell of it, they start calling themselves ‘The Fabelmans.’ Turns out the little boy’s parents were wizards. And so is he. And so is everyone else at the school. They’re all wizards.”
Battle Line stopped Levy upon realizing he was merely providing a rudimentary synopsis of the Harry Potter series. He eventually admitted that he mostly only watches kung fu movies from the 80s.
We should have stopped him much sooner. Of course he hadn’t seen The Fabelmans. Nobody had. And that was the point.
That is because the group tasked with handing out the 2023 Golden Globes – the Cabal of Intellectuals Granting Accolades & Recognition (CIGAR) – elected to give awards only to films that no one had watched. Due to its vast popularity, Maverick, for instance, was disqualified during its opening weekend.
It’s a phenomenon that occurs more often than people realize. A few times every decade, in fact, and more frequently in recent years. It is not by accident.
“It’s a way for uppity critics to flex some muscle once in a while,” said Mary Lou Rosenwald, a blackballed former film professor at Rutgers University. “They enjoy the superiority they feel by picking films that nobody has seen. It is a way to maintain separation between their highly sophisticated tastes and those of the public, who in their minds couldn’t spell ‘nuance,’ much less appreciate it.”
The result: The dwindling home audience sees a movie win an award and says, “Huh?”
That was precisely the reaction that Robert Kramer gave when he was told that the “Best Musical/Comedy” went to The Banshees of Inisherin.”
Likewise, when he heard that Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio was named “Best Animated Picture.” “Wasn’t that movie made in like the 40s?” he asked. “And wasn’t it already animated?”
Another customer had heard of actress Cate Blanchett but was dumbfounded when told Cate won “Best Performance by an Actress” for her role in Tár. Ditto Viola Davis in The Woman King.
Now that the awards show is over, these films are finally available for public viewing. Battle Line will follow up with the interviewees in a few months, after they’ve had an opportunity to watch the films.
“Sure, I’ll watch ‘em,” said the Maverick-loving Robinson. “Well, I’ll at least put them in my Netflix queue.”
Interestingly, people did not have the same ignorance or confusion when it came to television. Nearly everyone had either seen or at least heard of the year’s top TV shows: House of the Dragon, Yellowstone, The Dropout, Ozark, The White Lotus, and so on.
Apparently, critics chose not to use the same selectiveness for TV. It will be interesting to see if in 2024 they revert back to choosing movies that anyone has seen. Or whether their streak of stubbornness will continue for another year.