There were many triumphant moments for women at the 76th Golden Globe Awards, despite very few female writers and directors being represented in film categories. Many winning actresses used their acceptance speeches as an opportunity to champion female creators.
On the television side, Best Actress Rachel Brosnahan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel thanked many women who work behind the camera on her female-centric Amazon series, calling it a “matriarchy” led by series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino.
After winning for her performance in Showtime mini-series Escape at Dannemora, Patricia Arquette listed many women who made the show possible in her acceptance speech, noting the significance of having a female director of photography (Jessica Lee Gagne).
Best Actress in a Supporting Role Regina King vowed to live up to the promises Time’s Up made one year ago to advance not only women in film, but all women in the workplace.
“I am going to use my platform to say right now that in the next two years, everything that I produce…and I am making a vow and it’s going to be tough…to make sure that everything that I produce, that it’s fifty percent women,” King said while accepting her award for If Beale Street Could Talk.
Executive producer Octavia Spencer was lauded by Green Book director Peter Farrelly when the film won Best Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical, saying the movie would not have been what it was without her contribution.
But perhaps the greatest win for women in film came near the end of the evening when Glenn Close won Best Actress in a Motion Picture for her performance in The Wife (now expanding to 150+ screens nationwide). The film is written by Jane Anderson, based on the novel by Meg Wolitzer, and took 14 years to make – probably because it’s called The Wife, Close joked.
She called attention to how women like her character are often silenced or cast aside, including her own mother: “I’m thinking of my mom who really sublimated herself to my father her whole life. In her 80s she said to me, ‘I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.’ And it was so not right. And I feel like what I’ve learned from this whole experience is, women, we’re nurturers, that’s what’s expected of us,” Close said in her rousing speech. “We have our children, we have our husbands if we’re lucky enough, and our partners. But we have to find personal fulfillment. We have to follow our dreams. We have to say, ‘I can do that, and I should be allowed to do that.’
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has only ever nominated five women for Best Director. But despite its bleak statistics in recognizing the work of female filmmakers, Golden Globes attendees and winners provided moments of hope and light for overlooked women working behind the camera.
© Georgiana E. Presecky (1/7/18) FF2 Media
Photos Courtesy of BBC and The Hollywood Reporter
Featured Photo: King pledges to make her future productions 50 percent female.
Middle Photo: Close with her Golden Globe Award for The Wife
Bottom Photo: Carol Burnett accepts the first Carol Burnett Award for television achievement on an inspiring night for women in television.
