On the Internet, I came across an article titled, "The Worst Oscars Ever." (Ah-hem...) It turned out the date on it was March 1, 2010.
--------------------- 2022 Oscars ceremony:
Hold my beer...
I didn't watch the Academy Awards this year.
(For a while in the 1980s i sometimes watched it (had it on while doing other things) and in the '90s to early 2000s I made it an Appointment-Watch. Then I stopped -- had other things to do.)
The Will Smith - Chris Rock story was un-missable the rest of the week. That was weird. My first thought was that the "slap" was staged. ... 'Was it supposed to be -- entertainment??' I wondered. But -- nnno -- not with all that yelling afterwards, from his seat. Dude was flipping out.
And that type of attention-seeking: there are people on You Tube, facebook, etc., who would do something like that for attention, but not the Academy. Dignity and propriety are part of the vibe, there. Part of the tradition.
The incident has a series of "moving parts" that left various impressions with various people.
A sample Reader comment on a Washington Post article:
"Rock's joke was in poor taste, even mean spirited, but the blockbuster-sized arrogance it took to hijack an event like the Oscars was Trump-level narcissism."
I didn't think Chris Rock's joke was mean-spirited -- some people heard it as him making fun of Jada Pinkett Smith's appearance. I thought it was a very light "roast" as they call it when you tease someone a little bit. He said maybe she will be the next GI Jane in the remake.
It's a call-back to the late nineties when Demi Moore starred in G.I. Jane and shaved her head for the part. And still looked beautiful.
What he said was not an insult, it was a compliment, wrapped in very light joking.
A lot of people seem to have jumped to the conclusion that Jada would be hurt by what he said, but she has been on social media talking about hair loss and saying she was fine with it, saying she was going to rock the bald look. And if she had been embarrassed by not having hair, she surely has enough money to purchase the finest wig ever made and she could have worn that. She chose to work the look as it was.
Several people have commented that Mr. and Mrs. Will Smith were seated near the front, and the people in that location are usually "roasted" by the host in the monologue, and so they should have expected it and been good sports.
Another moving part to the story is, when Chris Rock made the joke, prefacing it with "I love ya!" -- Will Smith was laughing, but then he looked at Jada and she rolled her eyes and looked displeased. That was when he stopped laughing, got up, & headed for the stage.
(When people point out that part on the Internet, some Comments come in saying, 'You're misogynistic! Blaming the woman for the man's actions!' However, it does not look that way to me -- we can see it in the film footage: he laughs, checks out her facial expression, stops laughing, and gets up to go hit somebody.
Watching the sequence reveals a dynamic between husband and wife.)
Then Will Smith wins the Oscar for Best Actor and gives a speech, and then people are tired of that before it begins -- LOL. Some commenters were like, "He interrupts a ceremony by going onstage and assaulting the host, who is doing his job, and then they give him a standing ovation!!"
And it does look kind of bad -- or inappropriate, or wrong...and yet, the winners were decided before that incident took place. The audience always applauds for the person who wins Best Actor. So that was normal. Except it wasn't, because it was rendered abnormal by the hitting-upside-the-head which had occurred impromptu, before he was given his award. After that, it did kind of seem like that whole auditorium was clapping and cheering the perpetrator of an attempted "beat-down."
They were just trying to go on with the evening and do what they were there to do.
The Academy was not prepared for that type of incident. After Smith hit him, Chris Rock looked over to the left, and the right -- but No, no one was coming to address the situation. He was up there by himself. (Where was Security? Hello.)
But you know -- Security is not magic. No one could have been prepared for an unprecedented act like that. And if you were prepared for it and you said anything, people would say you're paranoid with conspiracy theories, lol.
At some point afterwards, Will and Jada's son tweeted helpfully,
"And That's How We Do It"
(If Chandler Bing were here he might way, "Could they make more of a mess?)
During a somewhat chaotic acceptance speech, Will Smith mentioned Denzel Washington had advised him, "At your highest moment, be careful. That's when the devil comes for you."
Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar wrote that Smith's speech "seemed more like that of a cult leader." He added, "You don't defend or protect the family with your fists, and no, the devil doesn't take advantage of key moments to do his work. The devil, in fact, doesn't exist. This was a fundamentalist speech that we should neither hear nor see."
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My view of the dynamics behind this incident (which I do realize no one asked for) --
I wonder if Mrs. Smith isn't a problematic narcissist, constantly manipulating situations and her husband and -- whatever...
I don't even go looking for this information, but it has filtered into my awareness that Jada has a show called "Red Table Talk" where there is a lot of discussing personal stuff and she kind of makes the case for herself being "the villain" -- unwittingly, perhaps, as she brings her husband in to listen while she talks about herself having an affair with a musician who is a friend of their son...?! (Yikes.)
NMI. No More Information, please.
There are relationships where one person makes the other person feel like nothing they do is right, or good enough, and the other person may play into that attitude / narrative, and just constantly turn themselves upside down and inside out, trying to finally please the other person.
I wonder if maybe their relationship is like that.
(I find that I have all these ideas and theories, and I don't even ever think about the Pinkett Smiths, or whatever. Information and thoughts are free-floating.)
-30-
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