Funnyman Ricky Gervais kicked off the 2020 Golden Globes with a bang.
His real and raw opening monologue included a range of personal jokes as well as a range of insightful statements.
This post explains and brings light to 4 of Gervais’s insightful statements from his opening monologue.
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1 — “So, I mean, Kevin Hart was fired from the Oscars for some offensive tweets, hello?”
—Main point = Racism.
— Gervais has been hired 5 times to host the Golden Globes despite being consistently offensive. In the same Hollywood realm lies the Oscars where they fired Kevin Hart from hosting for having offensive tweets…Later in Gervais’s opening monologue he says “The Hollywood Foreign Press are all very very racist.”
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2 — “Let’s have a laugh at your expense. Remember, they’re just jokes. We’re all gonna die soon and there’s no sequel, so, yea, remember that.”
—Main point = Laugh.
—Gervais understands the importance of jokes in a hypocritical world where we’re all going to die(Memento Mori). He knows to not take himself or others too seriously, because life is short. Gervais uses comedy to lighten the weight of the world, because it sure is heavy…
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3 — “Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama…A superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. So, well you say you’re woke but the companies you work for, I mean, unbelievable: Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?”
—Main point = Hypocrisy.
—Gervais sheds light on a cornerstone of capitalism and the hypocrisy of capitalistic companies actors are working for. He begins by calling out Apple for creating a TV drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, but that they run sweatshops in China…Which, yes, is complete hypocrisy. Then he relates this hypocrisy to actors who are working for these companies and that they would probably work with an ISIS streaming service if one was created. The message Gervais displays here goes even deeper, but let’s move on.
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4 — “So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.”
—Main point = Thoughtlessness.
—Gervais brings to completion one of his main messages: There are awful things in this world we are all oblivious to, or we choose to be oblivious to, and only a few that are made public and worked upon.
He wants us all to wake up and be honest about the reality of the world and our part in it. That actors who are working for capitalistic companies with sweatshops are playing a role in maintaining those sweatshops. That the winners of the evening are likely to make a political speech, but that political speeches are narrow, biased, and leave out billions of other problems in the world.
Yes, there are issues needing resolution and there always will be, but Gervais encourages people to really think, to see the world objectively(What’s normal for the Spider is Chaos for the Fly), and rather than make a political speech one time about making the world better, act in your day to day life toward making the world a little less worse.
Gervais hopes we all recognize the chaos of this world and still laugh, have fun, and enjoy it while it lasts. To work toward a better world but to not take it all too seriously.
How did you interpret Gervais’s speech?
With Ken Thompson 