The Golden Globes are considered much more of a party than a credible awards ceremony. Despite that, I always tune in for the entire three-hour show. This year, the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocition (HFPA) and Dick Clark Productions (DCP) somehow managed to make a roomful of celebrities with alcohol even messier than usual.

From the awards themselves, production quality, hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, to the uncontrollable and embarrassing celebrities, the ceremony was all over the map.

One reason the Globes seem trivial and illogical is the structure of the Hollywood Foreign Press. The HFPA is a group of journalists from abroad that cover Hollywood and the U.S. entertainment industry. Salon’s Neil Drumming describes the HFP as “complete strangers whose tastes and preferences differ from my own about as much as those of…any group of people randomly selected from the streets.”

During the Sunday ceremony, the notoriously odd taste of the HFPA came through. “Brooklyn 9-9” took home top honors despite many critics calling the show a failure from its start.

The HFPA also paid tribute to Woody Allen, a man who notoriously abhors awards and everything they stand for. Thousands of people tracking the Globes on Twitter took issue with the award because of Allen’s questionable past. His son, Ronan Farrow, tweeted: “Missed the Woody Allen tribute — did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age seven before or after Annie Hall?”

The program as whole was often bizarre and seemed ill-prepared. Cameras were out of focus, cutting away to awkward crowd moments and drifting too far off the subject. The teleprompter was often incorrect, most noticeably during Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie’s introduction of “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

The hosts attempted to frame all these production mistakes with the promise of their quick wit. Based on their performance last year, it seemed like Fey and Poehler would do a great job in 2014. However, the ladies infrequently appeared throughout the show. When they were on screen, they produced some gems like “Randy,” Amy acting as Tina Fey’s angsty teenage son.

A lot of their jokes and banter were tainted with racism and insensitivity. At one point, Tina Fey said “The Blacklist” was the list of the men who’d be coming to her room later. She then took it a cringe-worthy step further by pointing at Barkhad Abdi and saying in a Somali accent “I am the captain now.”

Despite their questionable antics, Amy and Tina couldn’t trump Jared Leto, Michael Douglas, and Matt McConaughey’s uncomfortable remarks.

The three men should have used their acceptance speeches to defend the important issues discussed in their films. However, Douglas spoke on his worries that his role in “Behind the Candelabra” might make him seem gay in real life. McConaughey and Leto were in “Dallas Buyers Club,” a gritty AIDS drama, but neither mentioned AIDS in their acceptance speeches, whatsoever. Leto dared to remark that the most difficult part of his role was a full body wax.

Overall the Golden Globes were an example of how the privileged can get away with almost anything they want during an awards show. We’ll see them all in a month at the Oscars, reputations unfortunately unscathed.

Cassie-lee Grimaldi is a senior television, radio and film major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and reached on Twitter @cassiegrimaldi.

Published on January 15, 2014 at 1:32 am