The joke is she looks like a man.
(yes, Demi Moore is a woman, but she shaves her head in the movie to fit in with the otherwise all male Navy Seals)
What? If that’s the joke, I missed it. I just assumed it was a shaved head/bald GI Jane crack.
No, it’s not. The joke is her head is reminiscent of Demi Moore in a very famous role and Moore isn’t a man.
That movie wouldn’t make sense at all if Moore was a man or was playing a man. You will note he didn’t compare Pinkett Smith to any of the countless number of famous bald MEN.
There will be a verdict imposed by the Academy upon him.
That judgment will of course be self-serving consistent with the verdict that the general public is passing upon him right now.
Yes a sincere apology can go far in mitigating the severity of sentencing.
This does not have the hallmarks of that. There is no real owning it. There is no sense of repentance. There is no request of forgiveness from Mr. Rock. There is no attempt to repair.
This was an apology that still blames Mr Rock. Not contrition.
Mr Rock was doing what he was hired to do, make fun of the guests. Assuming he knew that Ms Smith shaves her head in response to alopecia ( no reason to think so), assuming he meant the GI Jane joke as hurtful rather than just a dated reference to someone else who rocked the look, insulting the attendees was the performance he was hired to do.
Mr Smith (well his publicist) signed off the “apology” with “I am a work in progress.”
I am hoping he is instead done.
I feel so lame because my reaction was, “They’re doing a sequel to G.I. Jane?”
That is what I was trying to convey.
This is precisely why we have jury trials. You don’t get convicted on being technically “wrong” or whatever. You get to plead your case in front of your peers specifically because context matters (in addition to the weighing of evidence of course). The law says one thing, the application of the law is circumstantial. As flawed as our system is in practice, we should be very glad for this fact.
That’s too big a leap. There’s overlap between two groups but you’re massively overstating it. There are a lot of men, for example, who have been trained that violence against other men is fine but violence against anyone else is not.
This is silly.
Ha! Same reaction here. I thought he was making fun of her for making a lame sequel. His “Can’t wait to see it” comment had a sarcastic tonethat made me think he meant it in an “another sequel nobody asked for” way.
So I’ve had a day to process this and fortunately avoided the discussion in the immediate aftermath. Lots of folks in this thread taking some pretty extreme positions.
Some thoughts.
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It was a truly terrible joke. Amateurish. I find this completely shocking since Chris Rock is one of the best comedians working and typically has very smart and insightful takes on things. He can be crass, but he’s typically crass with a point. In fact, it seemed like Chris walked on stage either completely unprepared or for some reason decided to go off script at the last minute when he saw Jada. Which is a little weird since Jada has looked like this for a fucking decade. I just don’t get it.
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Total speculation here, but I wonder if people are making too many assumptions about the joke. Sure, the short hair is part of it but Jada is also draped in long sleeved forest green dress. I wonder if Chris maybe saw her from the stage and just went off the cuff and actually wasn’t really targeting the hair quite as directly as the Twitter mob is assuming.
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I think some of the people reacting to the alopecia thing might be projecting a little. Jada has been transparent about this condition for a long time (I didn’t know this until today and I bet that’s true for 98% of the viewers) and has been wearing her hair short for as long as I can remember. I find it very hard to believe that this is some raw wound that Rock poured salt into. I think that’s more of an excuse than anything. I also haven’t heard anyone in Smith’s camp making this claim (though I haven’t really looked very hard). Seems like maybe we shouldn’t get outraged on her behalf until he or she actually explains themselves.
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Seems like there’s some ongoing bad blood between Rock and the Smiths. I’m betting there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes here, this might not be some in-the-moment thing that came out of nowhere. Hell, I wouldn’t be shocked if Rock and Jada had some kind of chilly interactions backstage or in the green room in the lead up to this. That’s not to say it was planned, but it could have then the straw that broke the camels back.
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People are making WAY too much out of the fact that Will was laughing at the joke at first. These people are actors sitting right up front (absurdly close in this new format) who know the cameras are on them the whole time. They go into this with a well rehearsed fake laugh which is part of the show. Just like nominees are all going to smile and applaud when they lose an award to another artist even if they are disgusted by it or emotionally crushed. It’s just part of the deal. Smith may or may not have been goaded to this by Jada, but the initial laugh means precisely nothing.
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I think Smith very consciously chose not to punch Chris. He slapped him pretty hard but short armed it a bit. Smith is a big athletic guy, a guy who trained as a boxer for Ali, if he wanted to lay Chris out he would have. This isn’t to say that it’s fake or anything, but just that Smith made a bit of a business decision here. He felt he had to do something but he was not without his senses here. He went about as far as he could go without making it a crisis situation. Maybe as he walked up the stage he was considering what to do, he had just enough time to ratchet it back.
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It’s a utter travesty that the Academy let Smith go on stage and accept that award. Yes it was a tricky situation and it happened fast, but it didn’t happen that fast. They had better than 30 minutes to figure out what to do before his award came up. They also could have paused or slowed down the show. In fact that’s exactly what they should have done. They should have AT LEAST gone to commercial before they let Chris open the fucking Documentary envelope. The right thing to do would have been to ask Will to leave the stage and then to have the host or presenter accept the award on his behalf.
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As an extension of the above, Smith getting up on stage and playing the victim here was slimy in the extreme. It’s a damn shame for the Williams family and it’s a damn shame for the other people involved in that movie. I find it weird that people are calling the speech eloquent or somehow poignant. It was a rambling confused mess. Yes he was emotional, he was just in a physical altercation and had spent 30 minutes on stage in front of the world stewing about something that might have seriously bad consequences for his career. Certainly had bad consequences for the show and every other star that was nominated or awarded. His emotion is not an apology, nor is it an explanation. In fact, his speech was a lower moment for the Academy than the slap was.
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For what it’s worth, you can put me in the camp that agrees sometimes someone does deserve to get smacked for their words. Yes, there’s a slippery slope argument here. Who gets to decide what insult warrants a a smack and what doesn’t. That said, I’m not sure that I want to live in a world where assholes get to say anything they want with no fear of repercussions. In fact if you look at Twitter for 10 seconds (or Fox News) we’re already seeing what kind of a miserable society that can be.
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In light of what I said above…this situation is different. Rock is a comedian and roasts are a time honored (and terrible) traditional part of awards shows. This is part of the contract that every celeb who wants to play in this sandbox agrees to. You’re a famous actor participating in an awards show that will boost your career, your bankability and is all about increasing your recognition to the masses. The price you pay for that is that you have to take some ribbing in the process. It’s of course stupid and this joke was pathetic in many ways, but this is the way it’s been for as long as I can remember. You smile at the jokes, you applaud the other nominees and winners, you generally act like Hollywood is a big happy family. That’s the job, Smith was out of line in every possible way here. If Rock’s joke was so far out of line let your publicist deal with it in the press over the next several days. This isn’t a bar.
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Lastly, this Oscars was fucking awful. The smack is going to put some lipstick on that pig. The ratings will be good. People will talk about it for weeks. People will forget about what a disgrace the rest of the show was. I’ve seen high school musicals better staged and conceived. Everyone should be fired and never work again.
There is absolutely no one who wanted to make that call without 10-layers of cover-their-ass under them. No way 30 minutes is enough. Hell, the Academy is still trying to decide what response should be taken.
They are a risk-averse bunch. No one is sticking their neck out on this one.
I know why it happened, but I’m taking issue with the argument that it couldn’t have been prevented. The Oscar’s event has a director, Glenn Wiess. He has the authority to step in an fix things like this, in fact that’s pretty much his whole job on the night of. This clown was also responsible for the Moonlight fiasco 5 years ago.
I’d like to see the contract involved for those appearing on the show. I would think attacking people is pretty easy to sort out.
One bullet I forgot from the above brain dump:
- I can’t believe the number of people on Twitter who posted bold headline tweets that Smith punched Rock. These weren’t just randos on some message board either.
These were big-name news organizations. Like, I know it happened quick, but it should have been blatantly obvious to anyone who actually watched (and heard) it live that it was a slap. Hell, some of these exaggerated headlines even included a clear (and now famous) screen grab of Smith’s open hand. You’d think that these big Entertainment News organizations would have had people in the building who would know this. Anything for clicks I guess.
Will Smith was acting so unhinged that I have to think this is a desperate unplanned stunt for any kind of publicity or his wife has been perpetually browbeating him for not being manly enough to sucker punch people who gently rib on her and then shout profanity bombs on major award shows.
I’m surprised it’s that easy to walk up to a host at the Oscars and smack them in the face. Security anyone? And now I think Rock has to sue. Otherwise he’s sending out a message that it’s OK to dog him in the mouth. Not a great look.
I’m willing to give security a pass on that. It’s Will Smith so I’m sure they thought it was a bit and not, “He’s going to hit the host in the mouth.” What I don’t give them a pass on is them letting him stay after the fact. He should have been removed as a safety concern and if he refused, LAPD is outside the door so have them run him off as a trespass.
Yeah, I get that too.
But dogging him in the mouth while he’s working? Chris doesn’t slap the cocks out of Will Smith’s mouth when he’s working!
Speaking of that, I wonder what would have happened if after the incident Rock made an August Alsina reference.
I find it disappointing how many people are white-knighting Will & Jada across the internet.
Honestly, They’re rich. Famous. Good-looking. Successful. And apparently the worst thing that ever happened to her is that she has bad hair and works in an industry where nearly everyone wears fabulous, expensive wigs. As for Will, HE. HAS. HAD. ENOUGH. OF. YOU. and tries to slap the shit out of a smaller man on live TV, who was only doing what everyone expects of him. If either had an ounce of sense, after a period of getting used to the idea(she’s known about this since 2018), they should be counting their blessings alopecia is the worst of their problems - but apparently, sense is in short supply in that family. That explains THEIR behavior, but what about everyone else?
These incidents always serve to confirm my baser suspicions about humanity.