This awards season, let’s hope the speeches are full of joy, not politics

The danger is that these overwrought and emotional speeches we saw last year are beginning to lose their impact

When Olivia Colman got up on stage to accept her Golden Globe for her performance in The Favourite last Sunday, it was a breath of fresh air. Much has been written about her speech that night already – from her fond address to Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz as her “bitches” to her genuine delight at getting to eat as much as she liked while filming and flying on a private jet to the set. But what struck me most about it, apart from her honesty, was just how refreshingly lighthearted it was.

Her speech struck a totally different note to 2018. Last year’s awards season, following on from the start of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, was more highly charged than usual – and rightly so.

Oprah set the precedent at the Golden Globes – traditionally the season’s opening gig – when she accepted the Cecil B DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. As the first black woman to receive the award, her speech was both poignant and heartfelt. She spoke of how inspiring Sidney Poitier’s 1982 win was and the dawn of a “new day” that the recent Harvey Weinstein revelations had brought. So rousing and passionate was her 10-minute address that it actually caused something of a Twitter meltdown, with thousands of people petitioning for her to run for president in 2020. Since then we’ve seen numerous emotional moments, teary declarations of empowerment and plenty of political posturing.

Now, as we head into the 2019 awards season, I’m not suggesting that any of these people should be silenced – or, indeed, that their emotions aren’t valid – but the danger we face now is that these moments are beginning to lose their impact.

We’ve now reached a point where overly wrought speeches are deemed the norm and the awards ceremony stage is seen as the platform on which to weep. Because of this, we’re coming to a place of emotional saturation and fatigue, where all of the words start to blend into one and all the tear-choked voices begin to sound the same.

And therein lies the real issue – not what’s being said but how it’s being said. The importance of the message is often getting lost in the delivery. Oprah’s speech was impactful because, despite clearly feeling very emotional, she maintained her composure. Frances McDormand’s brief mention of the term “inclusion rider” in her 2018 Oscar acceptance speech proved highly effective because it wasn’t over-egged. Natalie Portman’s dig at the “all-male” Golden Globe Best Director nominees got a huge response because it was off-the-cuff and delivered with an air of nonchalance.

The reason these are the only speeches I can really remember from last year’s awards is that their power was in their simplicity.

Part of the fun of following awards season is that it brings us a little bit closer to the seemingly glamorous world of A-list celebrity. Of course we care what they have to say but, let’s be honest, we’re really drinking in the sparkly glamour of it all; savouring the glimpse we get into a ridiculously glossy lifestyle. What made Olivia Colman’s speech so interesting was that she was honest about some of the insane perks that being famous brings – it was entertaining without being boastful and didn’t try to command the audience what to feel.

While I have no doubt that this season will bring even more viral incidents and watershed moments, I hope this time the artists delivering them will play by the rules they follow in their work: that it’s better to leave the audience to feel the emotional power of their words, rather than demonstrating it dramatically themselves. Less is often actually more.