So, I woke up to everyone gushing about Gervais and his performance at the Golden Globes. People lauding him for speaking truth to power, for having the guts to make the Hollywood elite feel uncomfortable, and so on.
I don't get it. It's not like the man went off script, upsetting the people who hired him. He said what he'd planned to say. A friend of a friend works in the industry and worked on the Globes, and she said that he said the exact same thing during rehearsals the day before. So, it was all approved by the suits at the Golden Globes. Nothing prophetic here, but pure scripted and rehearsed outrage.
Not only that, but why aren't people talking about the fact that Gervais is one of the people he was complaining about! He's as big a celebrity as most people in the room. He's won Golden Globes, for heaven's sake! This wasn't an outsider speaking truth to power, this was a guy talking to his peers, telling them how awful they are, and never acknowledging that he's just as bad.
That's part of what irritated me. If he had shown a bit of humility and said "we" instead of "you", I would have appreciated it. Instead, he took this outsider role that he cannot play, feigned practiced outrage, and suddenly he's a hero?
It's especially irritating because it worked. Here I am, talking about it a couple of days later, which is all they wanted in the first place. Of course it's all about branding, about ratings, and none of it is about telling the truth. I don't blame Gervais or the Golden Globes for doing it, because they were doing exactly what they do.
I'm just disappointed that so many of us fell for it.
Submitted January 07, 2020 at 05:17AM by ThimblerigsArk https://ift.tt/39NKMqT