The Academy did not think it appropriate to feature Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaking about Ukraine’s fight to defend democracy. Instead it featured a fight between Will Smith and Chris Rock to defend Smith’s “open” marriage.
At Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony, Will Smith shocked the room by approaching the stage and slapping presenter Chris Rock in the face after the comedian made a joke about Smith’s wife, actor Jada Pinkett Smith.
Rock was on the Oscar stage to present the award for best documentary. He began by making a few jokes about members of the show’s audience, including Pinkett Smith—referring to her as ‘G.I. Jane’ due to her closely cropped hair. (Pinkett Smith has spoken in the past about her battle with alopecia.) Shortly after Rock made the joke, Smith walked to the stage and slapped the comedian across the face. He then returned to his seat and shouted, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.”
(Vanity Fair, March 27, 2022)
Okay, so the joke was in bad taste. Except that Ricky Gervais and other comedians have made jokes that were far more distasteful. And I have yet to see Rock even acknowledge knowing about Pinkett Smith’s battle with alopecia. Still, the other victims (and their loved ones) who were targeted by these comedic barbs all had the good humor and good sense to sit there and take it.
Meanwhile, reports are that Rock declined exhortations to press criminal charges. If so, I applaud him for taking the high road. And by the way, talk about keeping one’s composure, Rock demonstrated that in spades. Not to mention that the way he took that slap like a champ made Smith look like a chump.
As for Smith, though, talk about over(re)acting. Frankly, I suspect that slap had more to do with “Big Willie” trying in vain to demonstrate his manhood than protecting his wife…
In fact, the standing ovation Smith’s fellow actors gave him just moments after this incident reinforced the self-absorption and tone-deafness that led to the Academy snubbing Zelensky. It hardly mattered that, in doing so, they were validating his selfish, Neanderthal act.
After all, he slapped coveted attention away from the crowning achievement in the careers of so many others in that room. Reading reviews, for example, you’d never know that Apple upset the Hollywood studio applecart (and pioneering Netflix) when its film CODA become the first from a streaming service to win Best Picture.
I gather the Academy issued orders for its members to pretend that slap never happened. Ha! You can bet it was the talk of white Hollywood.
Alas, I’m all too mindful that many whites will see this ghetto farce as the inevitable result of efforts in recent years to affirmatively integrate the Academy and its Oscars show. Because the fateful irony cannot be lost on anyone that this show was the first one produced by an all-Black production team, and featured the most diverse cast of presenters, performers and winners in history.
So, from #OscarsSoWhite (which, ironically, featured Will and Jada calling for Blacks to boycott the Oscars) to #OscarsThereGoesTheNeighborhood…? Way to make our people proud, Will …
But to top it off, instead of the contrition he affected on stage, pictures abound of Smith “gettin’ jiggy wit it” at post-Oscar parties as if he were, well, King Richard himself. If the Academy has any integrity left, it would never invite him back again.
Smith said, with teary eyes, that bounding up on stage and slapping Rock was a case of life imitating art. He insinuated that he was channeling the character he played, which had just earned him an Oscar, Venus and Serena’s father Richard Williams.
Except that he defamed Williams – who promptly issued a statement condemning Smith and insisting he never did and would never do anything like that.
But Smith was not entirely wrong. It’s just that, instead of Richard Williams, he was unwittingly referring to that uncouth, street thug he played on the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” 30 years ago. And sadly this slap heard around the world suggests that, although Smith has grown a lot as an actor since then, he has grown little as a man.
In any event, Sean Penn was only half right when he said the Academy’s failure to pay homage to Ukraine’s fight would be the most obscene night in the history of Hollywood. I look forward to the public smelting of his Oscars.
That said, if you read my blog commentary on last year’s telecast, “The Oscars: A Sleepy Event,” April 26, 2021, or listened to my podcast episode, “Dissing the Grammys (and Other Award Shows),” May 20, 2021, you know I thought this show had little socially redeeming value to offer in the first place. How it played out only proved me right.
That’s a wrap!
Related commentaries:
The Oscars… “Dissing the Grammys… #OscarsSoWhite…