It was the Golden Globe controversy before the Golden Globe controversy that got the entire thing pulled from NBC—and now, for what it’s worth, it’s solved.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Times, that it will, at last, allow films not in the English language, as well as animated films, to compete in the best-film categories at the Golden Globes.
The long-standing policy against those films being eligible for the ceremony’s top prizes came in for particularly sharp criticism earlier this year when Minari, an eventual best-picture nominee at the Oscars, was limited to the foreign-language category (which it won). And it had only been a year since The Farewell got the same exclusionary treatment, even as both films were set at least partly in America—featuring American actors and made by American filmmakers, though much of the onscreen dialogue was not in English. Actor Daniel Dae Kim summed up the controversy around Minari pretty succinctly:
Despite the controversy around Minari, the Golden Globes went forward as planned in February, even as a Los Angeles Times investigation into the makeup and ethical practices of the Hollywood Foreign Press threatened to overshadow the pandemic-era celebration. It was in early May that the dam began to break, and NBC announced it would not broadcast the 2022 Golden Globes. The network said it would reevaluate the situation after the HFPA fulfilled its commitment to “meaningful reform.”
The HFPA has since announced planned changes, including admitting Black journalists and increasing its membership by 50%. But in mid-June two members, Wenting Xu and Diederik van Hoogstraten, resigned in protest, writing in a letter to the HFPA board that “the majority of the membership resists deep change, despite our lawyers and spokespersons suggesting otherwise publicly.” As Xu told Vanity Fair’s Rebecca Ford, “I know leaving, to the members, might sound like a betrayal and a very cowardly action. However, our goal is to put more pressure on the HFPA, and hopefully it will speed up the real reform this organization really needs.”
Changing the qualifying rule for the top film awards is indeed a change, and a visible one given the outcry around Minari last year. But with questions lingering about whether the Golden Globes can ever return to their place of prominence—or return at all, considering how the Critics Choice Awards are rumored to be nipping at their heels—a change to eligibility rules seems a little small. If you’re on a sinking ship—one, say, the size of the ship that inspired a Golden Globe–winning movie—what’s the point of rearranging the deck chairs?
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