Last night, Ricky Gervais hosted the 2011 Golden Globes. As an always-blunt British transplant who generally dissociates himself from the Hollywood crowd, Gervais was in a position to really let the A-listers have it. Luckily for all of us at home, he didn't hold back. He created uncomfortable moment after uncomfortable moment as he roasted stars right before they came out to present.
But while I was giggling on my friend's couch, some of the Hollywood elite was not having it. Robert Downey Jr said on stage, "Aside from the fact that it's been hugely mean-spirited with mildly sinister undertones, I'd say the vibe of the show has been pretty good so far, wouldn't you?"
And who could forget Steve Carell's stiff-arming after Gervais introduced him as the "ungrateful Steven Carell" for leaving his role on The Office?
(Photo from The Daily Mail.)
Even the Los Angeles Times noted that "a visible contingent in the glitzy crowd was palpably discomfited by the British comic's full-frontal joke assault, which set a corrosive tone for this year's ceremony".
There's something to be said about Hollywood being a community of insecure narcissists who can't take a joke (and yes, there are some that can). But something about Downey Jr's line about mean-spiritedness and sinister or corrosive undertones keeps coming back to me. It makes me think of the general wave of optimism that we've been riding (Obama campaign, Pepsi Refresh, Coke's Open Happiness, for example) since the recession. Perhaps given that mindset, people will react more strongly to anything contrary or "mean-spirited." Maybe Hollywood was expecting a positive, feel-good show and were "palpably discomfited" when they got something else.
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