rosemadderlake
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Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.
Oprah Winfrey’s speech was galvanizing and important, forward-looking and inclusive: the kind we used to hear from the person running the country.
-It shouldn’t have worked. Award shows are stage-managed, prettified, self-justifying, emotionally incoherent affairs at which, occasionally, something meaningful or surprising happens. The Golden Globes are the wackiest of the bunch, mostly because everyone gets to drink. And the red carpet is where the pageantry is at its most superficial. Yet last night it was the launch pad for a decisive feminist takeover that lasted until the final envelope was opened. Women, collectively and defiantly, ruled.
-As the evening wore on, the tone threatened to falter, with feminist rallying cries wedged alongside Aziz Ansari’s shout-out to Italian food. Were the Golden Globes really up to this?
-And then came Oprah. No one on earth is better equipped to modulate tone in a tricky television situation than Winfrey, who was there to receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. The DeMille speech is fast becoming a kind of alternative State of the Union address. Last year, Meryl Streep gave a full-throated (despite her laryngitis) rebuke to the newly elected President. This year, Winfrey seemed to grab hold of every live wire of rage, sadness, hope, and uncertainty dangling around the room and channel them into a truly breathtaking oration. As the first black woman to receive the honor, she spoke of watching Sidney Poitier claim his historic 1964 Oscar for Best Actor; of the power of the press “to navigate these complicated times”; of Recy Taylor, a black woman raped by six white men in Jim Crow Alabama, who died just over a week ago. “She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men,” Winfrey said. “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.” Then she repeated, in that ringing inflection that makes you feel like you might get a new car, “Their time is up!”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/c...obes-oprah-leads-a-decisive-feminist-takeover
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^Some excerpts ^ from The New Yorker's take on last night's Golden Globes.
Oprah Winfrey’s speech was galvanizing and important, forward-looking and inclusive: the kind we used to hear from the person running the country.
-It shouldn’t have worked. Award shows are stage-managed, prettified, self-justifying, emotionally incoherent affairs at which, occasionally, something meaningful or surprising happens. The Golden Globes are the wackiest of the bunch, mostly because everyone gets to drink. And the red carpet is where the pageantry is at its most superficial. Yet last night it was the launch pad for a decisive feminist takeover that lasted until the final envelope was opened. Women, collectively and defiantly, ruled.
-As the evening wore on, the tone threatened to falter, with feminist rallying cries wedged alongside Aziz Ansari’s shout-out to Italian food. Were the Golden Globes really up to this?
-And then came Oprah. No one on earth is better equipped to modulate tone in a tricky television situation than Winfrey, who was there to receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. The DeMille speech is fast becoming a kind of alternative State of the Union address. Last year, Meryl Streep gave a full-throated (despite her laryngitis) rebuke to the newly elected President. This year, Winfrey seemed to grab hold of every live wire of rage, sadness, hope, and uncertainty dangling around the room and channel them into a truly breathtaking oration. As the first black woman to receive the honor, she spoke of watching Sidney Poitier claim his historic 1964 Oscar for Best Actor; of the power of the press “to navigate these complicated times”; of Recy Taylor, a black woman raped by six white men in Jim Crow Alabama, who died just over a week ago. “She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men,” Winfrey said. “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.” Then she repeated, in that ringing inflection that makes you feel like you might get a new car, “Their time is up!”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/c...obes-oprah-leads-a-decisive-feminist-takeover
---
^Some excerpts ^ from The New Yorker's take on last night's Golden Globes.