Last night’s Golden Globe Awards, presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, celebrated the best in movies and television of 2016, and there were plenty of moments that stood out for being female-friendly, feminist, and empowering for women.
The first thing on everyone’s minds this morning is probably Meryl Streep’s amazing, Trump-inspired, empathy-encouraging speech after receiving the Cecile B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award.
But before Streep took the stage, Viola Davis, who won Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for her performance in “Fences,” gave an inspiring introduction that brought Streep to tears. “You make me proud to be an artist,” Davis said. “You make me feel that what I have in me — my body, my face, my age — is enough.” Give it a watch:
@violadavis gives the introduction for this year's Cecil B. DeMille Award recipient, Meryl Streep. #GoldenGlobes https://t.co/LafpKlwsDh
When Streep took the stage, she was both gracious and incredibly eloquent in her take down of current events, and despite claiming that she needed to read her speech, merely glanced at it once and went full steam ahead. Streep, whose career, as we know, spans decades and has garnered multiple awards, didn’t mention the man by name, but didn’t hold back in referencing his deplorable words and actions during her speech. We’ve reprinted the transcription (courtesy of Vanity Fair) below, and you can watch the speech in its entirety just below that.
“Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all. You’ll have to forgive me. I lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this week. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year, so I have to read. Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said: You, and all of us in this room, really belong to the most vilified segment of American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners, and the press.
But who are we? What is Hollywood, anyway? It’s just a bunch of different places. I was born and raised and educated in the public schools of New Jersey, Viola was born in a sharecroppers cabin in South Carolina, came up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Amy Adams was born in Vicenzia, Italy, and Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and was raised . . . in Ireland, I do believe, and she’s here nominated — for playing a small-town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.
So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if you kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing else to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.
They gave me three seconds to say this, so: An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us, and let you feel what that feels like, and there were many, many, many powerful performances that did exactly that: breathtaking, compassionate work. But there was one performances this year that stunned me; it sank its hooks in my heart, not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job — it made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.
It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter — someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie; it was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. O.K., go on with it.
O.K., this brings me to the press: We need the principled press, to hold power to account, to call them them on the carpet for every outrage; that’s why our founders enshrine the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only asked the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we’re gonna need them going forward, and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.
One more thing. Once, when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something — we were going to work through supper, or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, “Isn’t it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?” Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight.
As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art. Thank you.”
At tonight's #GoldenGlobes we honor Hollywood legend Meryl Streep with the prestigious Cecil B. Demille Award. https://t.co/dxpeCDNXY6
A number of other noteworthy feminist moments took place last night as well. Tracee Ellis Ross, daughter of music legend Diana Ross, became the first black woman to win for actress in a comedy series since Debbie Allen in 1983. In her speech, Ross said, “This is for all of the women of color and colorful people whose stories, ideas and thoughts are not always considered worthy and valid and important. I want you to know that I see you and we see you.”
And Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy goes to @TraceeEllisRoss! #GoldenGlobes https://t.co/NjJCmLjX61
Director Susanne Bier’s AMC miniseries “The Night Manager” won several acting awards last night, including Best Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture for TV for Tom Hiddleston, Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Motion Picture for TV for Olivia Coleman, and Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or Motion Picture for TV for Hugh Laurie. It was also nominated for Best Miniseries or TV Film. The Globes only have one directing category (Best Director, Motion Picture), so it’s a shame that Bier couldn’t be granted an award for her work. Thankfully, she won Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special back at the Emmy Awards.
Claire Foy won Best Actress in a TV series (Drama) award for playing the Queen in Netflix’s big-budget hit “The Crown.” In her acceptance speech she paid tribute to the woman on the throne, who has been recently ill, saying, “I really, really, really wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for some extraordinary women, and I’m going to thank them. One of them is Queen Elizabeth II. She has been at the center of the world for the past 63 years, and I think the world could do with a few more women at the center of it, if you ask me. And finally, another extraordinary woman in the making, my girl. I love you, you’re the future, and oh, you’re just brilliant.”
And before the show even got started, there was a nice feminist moment on the red carpet. “Westworld” star Evan Rachel Wood opted to forego wearing a gown to the event and instead wore a custom suit. As she told Ryan Seacrest, “This is my third nomination and I’ve been to the Globes six times, and I’ve worn a dress every time,” she said. “And I love dresses, I’m not trying to protest dresses, but I wanted to make sure that young girls and women knew they aren’t a requirement. And that you don’t have to wear one if you don’t want to, and to just be yourself because your worth is more than that. So this year I said I’m going as an homage to Marlene Dietrich and Victor Victoria, and David Bowie because it’s his birthday.” And she looked amazing.
Can we all agree that Evan Rachel Wood is far and away the best dressed at the #GoldenGlobes this year?
