Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Oscars
I didn’t catch the Oscar’s last night. It’s not really my cup of tea, to be honest, but several people have requested my thoughts about last night’s incident with Will Smith and Chris Rock.
When I first watched the incident in the video above, the slap or punch or hit sounded so loud, yet I didn’t see Chris Rock respond in kind to such a hard hit. It made me wonder for a second: Is this real? Or a staged event? Did you question it, too?
But afterwards, seeing Smith say, “Keep my wife’s name out of our f–ing mouth,” and the concurrent response of angry words he said, and the tension in his face clearly supports this is not staged, but real.
Will Smith even walks away after the slap with a smug smirk on his face. He is proud about what he did, which makes me nauseated, to be honest.
I find Smith’s actions to be completely unacceptable on any level. He was like a 2-year old child having a temper tantrum at a formal event! He resorted to physical aggression to (a) communicate and (b) intimidate, (c) humiliate and (d) bully Chris Rock.
This is not a correction–drawing a respectable boundary, if he felt violated as an adult. This is abusive. If Smith had an issue, he could have maturely addressed his grievance afterwards whether in private or in public. There are mature ways of doing things.
Where is society going? It seems we are going backwards!
When I see people who act like Smith and see they can and will do this in public without regret, I shutter to think what they are like behind closed doors where they feel freer to be cruel. When you can’t control a temper in public, there are often many other things you can’t control either, and its scary. This gives me great pause in trusting someone after witnessing this!
Smith also did not give a sincere apology, but instead he continued his “victim stance”–even blaming Rock for being the abuser. Smith said, “I know, to do what we do, you gotta be able to take abuse,” Smith also said in his speech. “You gotta be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business, you gotta be able to have people disrespecting you and you gotta smile and pretend like that’s OK.”
He also said, “At your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you”
He is a “victim”, which is another sad situation. Neither he nor Jada have to be a victim if someone insults them. That’s toxic behavior.
As for Chris Rock, if his comment was meant to attack Jada’s alopecia, it was not an appropriate joke, but I have to give it to Chris Rock. He didn’t resort to more escalation after being physically attacked! That took maturity to do that. And I thought it was common to roast people at the Oscars. Am I wrong? I am not an expert on Oscar history, my apologies, if I am wrong.
Frankly, as a society, we should not accept people acting like Smith did. It’s totally unacceptable on every level. There is no excuse for it. Period.
Lastly, there are multiple reports of Nicole Kidman reacting during all of this. Some say it was due to the slap, and other say the moment was captured before. But either way, they captured a great expression on her face. Do you know what it is?