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The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in the film industry. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious and significant awards in the entertainment industry worldwide. Every year millions of people around the world tune in to see who will be awarded the highest honors. The award show has come under fire time and time again for its’ lack of diversity, its’ support of abusers, and other issues. Despite these issues the Academy persists and every year there is always a stand out from the show. From Jennifer Lawerence’s fall up the stage, "Adele Dazeem", #OscarsSoWhite, the 2017 Best Picture gaffe, to this years’ slap heard round the world. All these events were widely talked about in their time in both positive and negative ways.
This year at the Academy Awards actor Will Smith slapped presenter Chris Rock after Rock made a comment about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith. The comment made by Rock was a G.I. Jane joke brought on due to Pinkett-Smith’s recently shaved head. Pinkett-Smith has been very vulnerable and public about her struggles with alopecia, her baldness was not a choice. Quite frankly, I was confused upon hearing this joke. In 2009 Chris Rock released a documentary titled Good Hair that set out to explore the importance of hair and self-esteem in the Black community. Rock is fully aware of the role that a Black woman’s hair plays in the cultural landscape of the Black community but still decided to make this joke. Further, Pinkett-Smith’s struggles with alopecia have been broadcasted to the world, one would think that Rock would take this disease more seriously and have the knowledge to not make such an insensitive joke. However, that is not what this blog is about. I can talk about the insensitivity of the “joke” and the incongruence of Chris Rock’s statement with his actions in Good Hair all day but that is not why I am writing. I am writing this blog in response to the many comments and statements I have seen regarding this altercation.
After the actions at the Oscars, the Academy released a statement that said, “The Academy does not condone violence of any form. Tonight, we are delighted to celebrate our 94th Academy Award winners, who deserve this moment of recognition from their peers and movie lovers around the world.” However, the Oscars’ have condoned different forms of violence in the past. The Academy has long showered racists and alleged pedophiles with a litany of awards, so I find it very hard to believe that an adult man slapping another adult man for making a joke about his wife’s autoimmune disorder is the single most heinous thing that has ever happened at the Oscars. The Oscars has stood silent in the face of racism and sexual misconduct. This heavy moral posturing fails to consider racism and in Pinkett-Smith’s case, misogynoir and ableism, as violence.
Many have called this “the Oscar’s ugliest moment”, these individuals must fail to remember the 1973 Oscar’s ceremony. In 1973, Marlon Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor, instead of accepting his award, Brando sent Native American actor Sacheen Littlefeather to the stage to reject the award. Littlefinger simply asked that Indigenous people not be dehumanized in film, however, she was met with violence as she was mocked by Clint Eastwood and almost physically assaulted by John Wayne, who was being held back from the stage by six security personnel. Time and time again, women of color are consistently met with violence simply for existing. The true violence in this incident is the misogynoir that Black women face every day. People making casual jokes about Black women’s hair in a society where women are valued for their proximity to a Eurocentric feminine standard is also violence. So, why is it that Smith’s behavior has been labeled as toxic masculinity but not Chris Rock’s pattern of belittling Jada-Pinkett Smith and Black women as a whole? This question is rhetorical, and I imagine we know the answer. Misogynoir.
While I have many more things to say, I will keep this short. Carceral feminism and white America do not care about the well-being of Black women or Black people. These institutions condone the violence that they cannot see immediately, and it affects people far less resourced than Chris Rock. This country and this American government were founded and have been upheld by pure violence on behalf of white individuals. If the most violent act white America ever committed was slapping someone who offended their partner, millions of Black, Indigenous, POC, disabled, and poor people would still be alive today. This is not white America's incident to comment on.
Leah Hazelwood is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2022. She is studying political science. global public health, and race and gender studies at the University of Louisville.