If the controversy surrounding the Golden Globe Awards didn’t already push the show into irrelevancy, announcing this year’s winners via bizarre, out-of-touch tweets sure did (via TechCrunch). As a refresher, the Golden Globes was barred from airing on NBC following a Los Angeles Times investigation that uncovered possible racism and bribery within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the organization that doles out the awards.
A physical event, consisting only of a small number of HFPA members, still took place behind closed doors without all the usual glitz and glamour. But to keep the rest of us in the loop, the Golden Globes sent out a rapid-fire succession of tweets to reveal its winners, and, as New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan noted, that live Twitter show was purely “chaotic.”
For one, it failed to mention the films that awardees got a Globe for in several of its tweets, leaving users to rely on Google search to find that very vital piece of information. The Globes tweeted out Kenneth Branagh “has the write stuff” when granting him the award for best screenplay, but didn’t add the film he actually wrote the screenplay for, which was Belfast. The Globes repeated its mistake when announcing Andrew Garfield’s Golden Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy, leaving out that the award was for his appearance in Tick Tick… Boom!
In perhaps its biggest blunder of the night, it tweeted out, “If laughter is the best medicine @WestSideMovie is the cure for what ails you” when giving West Side Story the award for the best musical. It’s a film modeled after Romeo and Juliet. Someone on the Golden Globe’s social media team eventually noticed as the tweet was deleted and replaced with one that reads “music” instead of “laughter.”
Sure seems like the Golden Globes social media team doesn’t have a Twitter Blue subscription — an investment the HFPA should’ve made before hosting their entire event on Twitter. The premium plan lets you edit and undo tweets, something that the Golden Globes could’ve really used last night. But hey, if West Side Story doesn’t give us the laughter that ails us, at least the Golden Globes does.
