![]() ![]() It goes without saying that violence has no place at the Academy Awards. But Smith’s response was disproportionate, especially in the context of an awards show where jokes about movie stars in attendance are a normal part of the script. For sure, it was insensitive of Rock to make Pinkett Smith’s alopecia the butt of a joke. It was a moment of toxic masculinity that detracted from a historic night for women filmmakers, notably CODA’s Sian Heder and The Power of the Dog’s Jane Campion. The slap heard around the world will be analyzed a thousand ways. Perhaps seeing his wife being insulted at the moment he reached the pinnacle of his achievements was a knock he felt he simply couldn’t abide. ![]() “I’d conflated being successful with being loved and being happy,” he writes. His straight-edge, upbeat persona was not just the key to his early accomplishments in hip-hop, TV, and movies but also a defense mechanism. His was a childhood scarred by violence and a complicated relationship with an abusive father. Smith writes in his memoir that his perfectionist obsession with success is born of insecurity. ![]() Victory at the Dolby Theatre seemed assured. He won the BAFTA, the Golden Globe, and the Screen Actors’ Guild Award in the run-up to last night. He was the early frontrunner, and his strategically timed memoir, Will, published in late 2021, only compounded his momentum. His career-best performance in King Richard as the father of Venus and Serena Williams was Oscar nip, a portrait of shambling masculinity touched with pathos and humor. But it was also just part of a general chaos that marred a ceremony nearly undone by poor direction. In an evening of crummy contrivance, it made for genuinely outrageous television. Will Smith’s onstage assault on presenter Chris Rock, apparently in defense of his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, will go down in history as one of the Oscars’ most shocking moments. ![]()
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