Watching Will Smith slap Chris Rock at the Oscars on Sunday night, the only international comparison that came to mind was of a sporting nature. Back to the final of the Football World Cup at the Berlin stadium in July 2006. I named this famous headbutt sent by Zinedine Zidane, the captain of the France team, to the chest of Italian footballer Marco Materazzi, who had insulted women in his family. We know the rest: expulsion of the icon, debacle of the Blues team which lost the game.
At the time, King Zidane did pretty well with public opinion. Since then, mentalities have evolved in the West. Violence is no longer tolerated as before. And how!
The old codes of honor of protective virility certainly have their beauty. Will Smith therefore flew to the aid of his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers from alopecia, injured by the humorist presenter’s bad taste joke on her bald head. Hence the violent slap on stage, the insults. We understand the rage of the husband, except that some methods have taken a hit of old and a load of shame. What a dangerous model offered to young people by an admired star!
In the old saloons, a sign intimated: Do not shoot the pianist. Should we put one from now on at the door of the Dolby Theater: Do not knock on the comedian, even if he is stupid and malicious?
The global buzz
Everyone who missed the gala caught up on the incident on their phones or computers. This close-up of a slap sent the rest of the ceremony, winners included, into a blur of nothingness. The Oscars, in search of renewal, saw their evening go viral on a planetary scale because of assault.
Seeing later, statuette of the best actor in hand, Will Smith holding a tearful and confused speech mixing justifications with excuses in a pitiful porridge added to the general stupefaction. Especially since his laurel crowned, in King Richard, a role of the father, certainly controlling, but pacifist, refusing to fight back. The audience applauded as if nothing had happened. Big puppet.
Result: the Academy, which stakes its reputation and misleads it, ends up condemning the incident and opening an investigation. However, she said on Wednesday that she immediately asked the actor to leave the ceremony, before being refused. As for Will Smith, he offered his apologies too late to the one he had hit. The Oscars will have skated on the boot on Sunday, paralyzed, overwhelmed. However, in six years, when they will celebrate their centenary (it comes quickly), the image of the slap will mark them again with a hot iron.
To say that the organizers of the ceremony had miraculously recovered a large part of their audience this year, after disaster vintages. To say that they were playing the feminist card by offering the co-hosting of the gala to three women: Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes – who did quite well. To say that African-American artists abounded on stage and in the room, as a guarantee of diversity. The blow was to be given and received by two of their members, one of whom saw red. Still, Chris Rock’s joke was sexist. Because the head of a woman belongs only to her. This community didn’t need all that.
What went down the drain
The episode could at least put the issues of physical violence back in the spotlight, reminding the comedians that this type of joke has gone on long enough. Chris Rock gained unexpected notoriety there, and his tour took off like never before. Ah! the show business ! And many defend Will Smith, who suffered, of course, but… Hep! You have to control yourself.
Let us remember what fell by the wayside: the disastrous evening allowed Denis Villeneuve to collect six statuettes for his formidable Dunes. And to the scenario writer Jane Campion to receive the Oscar of the best direction. Wasn’t toxic masculinity, a more stinging theme than ever, denounced in his subtle western, The Power of the Dog ?
As for the wonderful Drive My Car, by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, winner of the Oscar for best foreign film, didn’t he invite you to overcome shocks by surpassing yourself? Like what the cinema still has important things to say and to show. In particular this: if many men find better outlets than the blows under anger, the old reflexes remain.
All the same, this incursion of the gala into areas of explosive fragility took Hollywood out of its golden bubble. Suddenly, actors, who play so many frustrated humans in explosion, saw the reality of this violence jump in their face, in evening dress. Disarray of the middle to have believed its crowned enclosure by ovationnant Will Smith and its price. Cowardice of the Academy for having first sought to protect itself. And under a slap, so many hidden meanings…