Will Smith Slaps Chris Rock At The Oscars | Reaction And Initial Thoughts

Ok so being British I’m normally asleep when the academy awards happen. Normally they’re pretty boring and by the numbers and you can snooze through most of them and just check Twitter the next day to see who got what. Waking up this morning I couldn’t believe what I saw and as I’m sure many of you know, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock during the Oscars after he made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.

Feels like I’m in some weird timeline where one of the nicest guys in Hollywood snapped and almost every movie YouTuber at this point is scrambling to put something together like Will Smith’s publicist.

It’s the slap heard around the world.

So what the hell happened?

Well during the ceremony Chris Rock cracked a joke about Jada and Will got up on stage, hit him and then repeatedly told him to keep his wife’s name out his f**king mouth.

WTF Did We Just See?

So yeah, just absolutely unbelievable, I’m in shock about it. This is getting meme’d to hell with many comparing it to the reason Will was sent to Bel Air in the first place and they’re also saying this is gonna be the last Oscars ever. I definitely think it’ll be the most memorable one and it’s difficult to think if there’ll ever be a time where this isn’t talked about every time the show is on.

Now comedians over the decades have always cracked jokes at the Oscars and these are normally taken in the spirit that they’re given.

Where Rocks kinda walks the line a bit is that Jada has alopecia and thus a bald joke is kinda making fun of a disease rather than it being something ego related. Now I don’t think Chris was aware of that but he’s not really said anything otherwise

You can actually catch Will laughing at it before he goes on stage and this is definitely why Chris was chuckling before he came up to him.

Now Will Smith actually went on to win Best Actor for his role in King Richard but this entire situation has completely overshadowed the whole thing.

Here’s his speech

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You’ve got people cheering him on for standing up for his wife some saying he went too far and everyone is weighing in on what happened.

There are even reports that he might have to hand his Oscar back because he’s violated the academy rules and though Rock isn’t pressing charges it’s a very bad look.

Now I kinda went through a mix of emotions when watching the clip and after the shock, I was actually stunned to the point I didn’t know where I came down on it.

After thinking about it and seeing all the reactions I think this is a really bad look and that It’ll probably loom over Smith’s career for a long long time.

Career Ender?

And that’s pretty much where I come down on it too. I think standup comedy has its own context and that when you go after people for jokes they make during it that you’re stepping outside of the medium and taking it to somewhere that it shouldn’t go.

Again, standup is a medium and with that comes the notion that everything said in it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Will even laughed at the joke initially and then probably as he took a second to think about it he got heated.

It’s a bad look to me and though his wife was made fun of during the awards, assaulting Rock publicly for the world to see was the wrong way to go about it. I think that the matter should have been handled privately, away from the cameras because it’s really soured the entire thing and completely overshadowed the whole event.

I think Smith is basically a man who’s been at breaking point for a long time and often the person who makes the cup spillover gets the full repercussions of it when Rock was just making what he thought was a funny joke.

Jada and Will have been bagged on for quite a while over the whole entanglement that was made public last year and their dirty laundry has been aired for the whole world.

Just feels like Smith broke and I’m sure in retrospect that he feels he shouldn’t have lost his temper like that as he’s apologised for doing it.

It could also lead to his Oscar having to be given back as he’s broken their code of conduct and yeah. All that hard work can be whisked away in a second if you do something like this.

Now, this is gonna be really highly debated and for every meme, tweet and reaction you see there’s an equal and opposite one saying something different.

Just tonnes of people all weighing in which I think kinda supports my thoughts that it should have been dealt with privately. Hell, I even don’t really make videos like this but it’s such a big thing that’s rocked the movie community I had to talk about it.

Unintentional pun aside I think that the negative discourse that’s arisen from this shows that it was a negative act and for every person saying you’re supposed to defend your wife like that you’ve then got others bringing up the entanglement and it’s just messy.

It’s really messy.

I was even gonna do a thumbnail with a yellow arrow and circle in it as a joke but I’m trying to keep it respectful as yeah, this is a sensitive subject and I think everyone’s initial first reactions might change as the day goes on.

It really sets a bad example and kinda shows Chris Rock takes a punch better than Will Smith takes a joke. It’s really messed up and obviously, everyone is gonna have their opinions on whether they think it’s acceptable or not.

I know dislikes have been disabled but hit the thumbs up button if you agree it was wrong and hit the thumbs down if you think Smith was right.

There’s no way to really see this stuff anymore unfortunately but if dislikes don’t mean anything then likes probably don’t either.

But hey, ho that’s Youtube.