Flack Attack
Well now the HFPA has done it! They’ve made the PR community rise up in outrage!
How could they, poor little publicists, have known that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was a racket and that it wasn’t a glittering fount of diversity!? I mean, it’s not like they sat in on the board meetings or anything. Who would’ve suspected? They were so, so outraged about this that they got together and waited until just the minute the show was over and everyone had a chance to rest up to fire off a letter letting them know they had had enough! They were outraged, but not so outraged that they would’ve wanted to mess up any kind of access on show day or anything.
Perfect timing, as well, to get their outrage on the record just after one show is done, but in time so that it will be totally forgotten by the time next year’s seating charts get made up.
Btw, since this cause means so much to them, would any of the signees of this letter want to step forward and give an accounting of diversity at their firms? I’d definitely be curious to hear about that.
The Golden Globes show has now become Hollywood’s leading showplace for performative outrage. It’s surpassed the Oscars in doing exactly what the awards sector was built to do: keep people distracted and focused on symbolic measures and on baubles, so they completely ignore the issues underneath, the issues that don’t just drive the awards sector but the industry itself.
Side Thought 1: How did Time’s Up, an organization formed—at the Golden Globes, now that you mention it—to, as described on its own website, “create a society free of gender-based discrimination in the workplace and beyond,” get in the middle of this one? They have taken a dive on every major harassment scandal that’s broken out since they were formed, and they insert themselves into the middle of this, that is about a lot of bad things, but none of them related to gender discrimination?
Side Thought 2: The petulance with which the HFPA announced they would add 13 Black members is pretty incredible. ‘Okay, you say we need Black members. Fine, we’ll add 13! Maybe a couple more!” Don’t hurt yourself or anything guys.
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