Award Show Disasters

Award shows and their hosts' focus has drifted over the years from simple lighthearted jokes about movies or actors to the aggressive attempt at ripping down or trashing various movies or stars in an attempt at crude humor.

I’m sure most of the population remembers the Chris Rock Oscar incident when he hosted the Oscars and decided to comment on Jada Smith’s appearance. Will Smith then proceeded to get up on the stage and strike Chris Rock across the face on live television. Afterwards, there were lots of opinions flying around. Should Smith be banned from the next award shows? Should he be disqualified from any Oscar awards, or should he be fined? People were debating online about whether or not his outburst was warranted. 

Unfortunately, this was not the last interesting host hired for an awards show. At this year's Golden Globes, a comedian named Jo Koy was brought in to host. To say he bombed would be an understatement. Not only were his jokes falling flat with the audience, some of his quips were downright offensive. It was obvious from his “jokes” that he hadn’t bothered to watch Barbie, yet decided to make demeaning comments about the film.

While some of his failures can be attributed to the fact that he got the job ten days beforehand, which he mentioned in his monologue, he also emphatically stated he didn’t write most of the jokes. All the ones people liked were his and the others the audience didn’t like were not his material. and he may not have had total say over what jokes he had to tell; however, it is not appropriate to go up there and claim that the only funny content was his. If he believed he wouldn’t be able to do a good job hosting, then he shouldn’t have agreed to do it in the first place. There must have been other people who could have either quickly thrown something together or had a better writing team come up with more humorous jokes.

As for how they should remedy this problem, it is quite difficult to determine how this situation can be avoided; however, small steps can be taken to avoid this problem. Firstly, keeping jokes away from taboo topics to make sure the host is accurately prepared and comfortable enough to deliver the jokes well is a great place to start. People who try too hard to use rude humor just come across as mean, so one of the most important distinctions should definitely be having a good writer or writing team.