Paul Thomas Anderson wins the math, but Wicked won the culture, and my heart belongs to a movie about kicking.
The Golden Globes have always been the drunk uncle of the awards season family reunion. They are loud, occasionally embarrassing, and usually smell faintly of desperate bribery. But this year, the nominations announcement felt less like a celebration of cinema and more like a quarterly earnings call with better lighting. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, or whatever corporate entity has absorbed its soul this week, rolled out its list, and the narrative was set with the precision of a drone strike. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is the chosen juggernaut, leading the pack with a staggering number of nominations that will now serve as oxygen for the Warner Bros. marketing department. It is a tidal wave. It is a decree. It is the industry deciding what “cinema” looks like this year.
Meanwhile, Wicked: For Good—the film that actually managed to get human beings off their couches and into theaters—underperformed relative to the sheer gravitational pull of its cultural footprint. Sure, it got nods, but the industry seems hesitant to fully embrace a movie that features flying monkeys and joy, preferring the somber tones of serious men doing serious things. The list is a chaotic salad of established movie stars, franchise juggernauts, and the requisite sprinkling of “surprise indies” to make sure the voters don’t look completely bought. But let’s be honest about what we are looking at. We are not looking at a list of the “best” films. We are looking at a receipt.
The Political Economy of the Gold Statue
In 2026, a Golden Globe nomination is not a measure of artistic merit. It is a measure of leverage. When a film like One Battle After Another grabs nine nominations, it isn’t just a compliment to Paul Thomas Anderson. It is a disciplined machine of Oscar momentum. It is a signal to the Academy voters, who are currently waking up from their naps in Palm Springs, that this is the horse to bet on. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where “buzz” is manufactured in boardrooms and then sold back to the public as organic excitement.
This is the political economy of the red carpet. The studios and streamers are not spending millions on campaigns because they want a shiny trophy. They are doing it because a Globe win, or even a nomination, creates a downstream revenue event. It allows a streaming service to bump a title to the “Award Winners” carousel, which increases retention, which keeps the stock price stable. It allows a theatrical release to book more screens in January, squeezing out the indie films that actually need the space.
We have reached a point where the awards ecosystem is just another arm of the corporate merger wars. Look at who benefits. The massive conglomerates use these nominations to validate their acquisitions. “See,” they tell their shareholders, “we bought this studio for billions, and now we have a Golden Globe.” It is prestige laundering. They are washing their money through the spin cycle of celebrity approval.
This leaves the mid-budget films and the international entries in a precarious position. They end up as the moral ornamentation for corporate balance sheets. A studio will release ten pieces of intellectual property sludge for every one “prestige” picture, just so they can point to the prestige picture when Congress starts asking questions about monopolies. The arthouse directors are the hood ornaments on a tank.
And let’s talk about the downstream effects. The writers and actors are currently in a perpetual state of bargaining, arguing for better pay based on the success of these films. But the actual revenue streams are hidden in the opaque math of streaming residuals. A Golden Globe win helps a studio executive get a bonus; it rarely helps the gaffer get a raise. The indie cinemas are held hostage by this calendar. They have to clear their screens for the nominees, pushing aside the smaller, weirder, more interesting work that doesn’t have a multimillion-dollar awards consultant behind it.
Imagine a scene at a local multiplex. A streaming executive arrives in a Tesla, dressed like a medieval lord coming to collect tithes. He demands that the theater owner clear Screen 4 for a movie that has been on Netflix for three weeks, simply because it got a nomination. The theater owner, a peasant in this analogy, bows and scrapes, grateful for the crumbs of relevance. This is the state of the industry. We are all serfs on the digital plantation.
The Real Cinema vs. The Content
If we want to talk about actual cinema, we have to look past the frontrunners. We have to look at the films that punch you in the gut. My love for Weapons is well documented. It is a film that refuses to be polite. It is jagged, uncomfortable, and utterly necessary. If the Globes were actually about rewarding the best work, Weapons would be sweeping every category. It captures the terrifying, fragmented reality of modern violence in a way that One Battle After Another—for all its technical mastery—only gestures at.
And then there is If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. First of all, give the person who titled that movie a Pulitzer. But beyond the title, the film is a masterclass in empathy and rage. It is the kind of movie that reminds you why we sit in the dark with strangers. It is messy and human. But does it have a toy tie-in? Does it have a theme park ride? No. So it sits on the periphery, a “surprise” nomination that allows the voters to pat themselves on the back for their eclectic taste while they hand the big trophies to the blockbusters.
We need to take a moment for Wicked. Specifically, for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. To say they were “amazing” is an insult to the English language. They were transcendent. They took a piece of musical theater that could have easily been a hollow CGI fest and filled it with genuine, heart-stopping emotion. Cynthia Erivo doesn’t just sing; she weaponizes her voice. She turns a song into a character arc. And Ariana Grande proved that she is a comedic force of nature, finding layers in Glinda that I didn’t know existed.
The fact that Wicked is being treated as the “pop” entry, the dessert to the “serious meal” of the drama categories, is a travesty. It is a bias against the feminine, against the musical, against joy itself. The industry loves to reward suffering. It loves to reward men brooding in period costumes. It is suspicious of spectacle that makes people happy. But Wicked kept the lights on in Hollywood this year. It paid the bills. It deserves more than a patronizing pat on the head.
The Categories of Convenience
The category fraud this year is particularly egregious. We have lead actors campaigning as supporting actors because they don’t want to compete against the heavyweights. We have dramas pretending to be comedies because the drama field is too crowded. It is a shell game. It is taxonomy bending to corporate strategy.
Notice the rise of the “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement” award. This is the participation trophy of capitalism. It is the industry saying, “We know this movie isn’t ‘good’ in the traditional sense, but it made a billion dollars, so here is a shiny object.” It allows them to invite the stars of the superhero movies to the party without having to pretend they are in the same league as the method actors. It is a segregation of success.
And look at the international categories. We are seeing more international films, which is good, but they are often siloed. They are kept in the “Foreign Language” box, rarely allowed to break out into the main Best Picture race. It is a way of acknowledging the world without actually ceding power to it.
The Ritual of Fake Surprise
Now we pivot to the cultural critique. We are about to be inundated with press releases and Instagram posts from nominees claiming they are “shocked” and “humbled.” Let’s be real. They are not shocked. They have been running a campaign for six months. They have shaken hands, kissed babies, and eaten rubber chicken at a hundred luncheons. They have hired consultants to shape their narrative. They have done the Hollywood Reporter roundtables. The only thing shocking is that they can still feign surprise without cracking a smile.
We will also see the sanctimonious op-eds decrying “awards fatigue.” The same publications that run twenty-four-hour coverage of the race will publish think pieces about how the race is ruining cinema. It is a perfect circle of hypocrisy. The culture sneers at the awards season while devoting a full financial year to building it. We love to hate it, but we refuse to look away.
The representation narrative is another layer of performance. The Globes have made incremental progress in racial and gender diversity among the nominees. This is good. But let’s not mistake PR theater for structural change. The people nominating the films might be slightly more diverse, but the people greenlighting the films? The people financing them? The lobbyists? That room still looks very much the same. We are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and celebrating that the new chairs are more inclusive.
The idea that an awards ceremony is a moral curator of culture is laughable. The real curators are hedge funds. They are private equity firms. They are the handful of billionaire owners who decide what gets made and what gets buried for a tax write-off. The Golden Globes are just the window dressing for the shop.
The Moral Engine
So, what are the Golden Globes? Are they a civic ritual? A commercial product? Or a public relations carnival?
They are a carnival. They are a way for the industry to rewrite its own myth. They are a night where Hollywood gets to pretend that it is a meritocracy, that talent rises to the top, that art matters more than commerce. It is a beautiful lie.
Imagine a parable about a town. This town has a wonderful library. But the town council decides to auction off the library to the highest bidder. The books are sold by the pound. The shelves are dismantled. And then, once the library is empty, the town holds a festival to celebrate the “Best Book Cover.” They give awards to the shiniest jackets, the boldest fonts. Everyone claps. Everyone drinks. And nobody mentions that there are no books left to read.
That is the Golden Globes. We are celebrating the covers while the library is being liquidated.
We need to pay attention to what happens after the nominations drop. Watch what the studios do. Watch who gets the money. Watch who loses screens. Watch which films vanish from the streaming libraries because they didn’t get a nomination and are no longer useful to the algorithm.
The awards reveal more about power than they do about taste. One Battle After Another is a powerful film, yes. But it is also a powerful asset. Weapons is a powerful film, but it is a risky asset. Wicked is a powerful film, but it is a commercial asset.
The critics and the audiences pretend that this is about quality. We argue about performances and scripts. But the real story, the story that isn’t being told on the red carpet, is about who owns the culture.
So, let’s enjoy the show. Let’s root for Cynthia and Ariana. Let’s hope If I Had Legs I’d Kick You gets a moment in the sun. But let’s not fool ourselves. The statues are hollow. The carpet is red to hide the blood. And the only thing golden about the Globes is the parachute for the executives who engineered the whole charade.
Receipt Time
The invoice for this season of self-congratulation is coming due. We are paying for it with higher subscription fees. We are paying for it with a homogenized culture. We are paying for it with the loss of the mid-budget film, the risky indie, the movie that doesn’t fit into a quadrant. The Golden Globes are a party for the people who are selling off our imagination, piece by piece. So raise a glass, if you can afford it. But check your wallet when you leave.