Will Smith Uncensored at the Oscars....

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

https://youtu.be/kQZRo9gBiIU

[Joe Guy]

I saw that earlier. The sound is better on this clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd9qrDtXq0E - at least on my computer.

I can't help but wonder how Jim Carrey would have responded at the moment if he had been slapped by Will Smith.

[BoSoxGal]

Yeah the sync of video/sound in mine isn’t great, but I didn’t want all the interruptions and narrated blah blah - I just wanted the interview and that’s the only YT video I could find with just that.

[Gob]

[Gob]

One of the three hosts for this year’s ceremony, Amy Schumer, has said she is still “triggered and traumatised” by the incident, and “waiting for this sickening feeling to go away from what we all witnessed”.

Fuck me pink. Grow a set love...

[Big RR]

The same Amy Schumer who was joking about it and the change it had on the "vibe" in the audience?

https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-ne ... ock-fight/

[BoSoxGal]

Why are those two things assailable and/or incongruent?

She joked about it at the ceremony because like Chris Rock she’s a professional and had to keep the show going, and the performers were trying to cope with the mood in the room and how best to ease it.

As to her other comments - millions of people feel sickened by the whole episode, I’m certain. I feel that way, and I’ve read many many dozens of comments in various forums online where commenters were expressing a similar heartsickness over the event.

It wasn’t a small thing. A much admired black man, a role model to generations of American kids of all ages, violently assaulted a comedian for telling a possibly lame joke that by no reasonable assessment constituted fighting words, in front of tens of millions of people. And got away with it because he’s rich and the Academy is stupid.

Now there is debate all over social media about whether casual violence is acceptable in defense of ego (!!); millions of people feel affirmed in their view that black men are prone to violence and cannot control themselves; millions of people have evidence for their certainty that the criminal justice system isn’t actually skewed against black men at all - just against the poor; and millions of people are affirmed in their disgusting patriarchal view that women are spineless and/or just adornment/property of men and these helpless women need to be protected from words by toxic violent masculinity.

The whole thing is sickening.

[Big RR]

So her comments were scripted/staged? OK. Things like that do happen (indeed, it my well be at least the second time it happened that night).

As for being sickened by it, IMHO, at the worst it just shows what a jerk does--nothing throwing judgment on all black men. And a wealthy celebrity gets away with it, as they always do when the studios/sports teams pull the strings; again nothing to do with what the average black (or nonblack for that matter) experiences.

As for

that women are spineless and/or just adornment/property of men and these helpless women need to be protected from words by toxic violent masculinity

, that's pretty much what his acceptance speech said, isn't it? That he was the great protector? Maybe I'm just jaded, but I really don't care what some "celebrity" does, nor would I encourage anyone to adopt a self-absorbed jerk as a role model. He has made it a career objective to be seen as a tough guy, like he is in many of his roles. There are so many other men (of color and white) worthy of emulating that a jerk like Smith, and if this helps some people recognize that, it should be worthy of celebration, noit seen as something sickening.

[BoSoxGal]

Big RR you are only one person and a fairly extraordinary one in terms of level of education, life experience etc.

I’m not talking about your reaction, I’m talking about wider society. Yes, some people learned Will Smith wasn’t worthy of their esteem - myself included.

But millions of people WILL see it as evidence supporting their bias against black men and black culture. I’ve seen tons of comments online from black people defending Smith’s action and saying critics just don’t understand black culture, where apparently in the view of many, casual violence like bitch slapping someone as Smith did Rock isn’t really violent, and in defense of being ‘dissed’ or one's wife being ‘dissed,’ this is no big deal. I’m honestly sick by how many such comments I’ve seen in the last couple of days on Facebook and other places.

I am beginning to have thoughts in my head that I’m sure would be criticized heavily by my more PC friends, but hey - with so many such folks defending Will Smith’s violence, maybe I can understand a lot better now why there is a tidal wave of violence among young black men in this country. You know like the ones who blow each other’s brains out for looking the wrong way or saying the wrong thing on the street corners of Chicago and NOLA etc? So many mothers crying over those lost sons but apparently casual violence IS a cultural thing according to many black people - or at least the many I’ve seen commenting, anyway, and I assume they’re not alone.

I keep thinking how glad I am that Sidney Poitier passed away recently so he didn’t have to see this.

[BoSoxGal]

I think Kareem Abdul-Jabar got it exactly right, as he usually does:

Will Smith Did a Bad, Bad Thing
Slapping Chris Rock was also a blow to men, women, the entertainment industry, and the Black community.

[Big RR]

BSG--the sad thing is that when Sean Penn was with Madonna and walked around with a chip on his shoulder and severely beat a number of people, no one said it will change people's opinions of whites or how he contributed to a culture of violence. Like Smith, he had his defenders (those guys shouldn't have taken his picture shouldn't have spken to Madonna, should have left him alone), but most people just understood that he was (and remains) a jerk. A talented jerk, mind you, but a jerk who was full of himself.

You may be right that it's different because Smith is black, but if it is, then shame on all of us. Jerks come in all sizes, genders, and colors.

[BoSoxGal]

BSG--the sad thing is that when Sean Penn was with Madonna and walked around with a chip on his shoulder and severely beat a number of people, no one said it will change people's opinions of whites or how he contributed to a culture of violence. Like Smith, he had his defenders (those guys shouldn't have taken his picture shouldn't have spken to Madonna, should have left him alone), but most people just understood that he was (and remains) a jerk. A talented jerk, mind you, but a jerk who was full of himself.

You may be right that it's different because Smith is black, but if it is, then shame on all of us. Jerks come in all sizes, genders, and colors.

I agree with you but from a pragmatic perspective this IS how it is still, we are a work in progress and far from a color blind society.

I mentioned Sidney Poitier because as you probably know, he specifically said on many occasions that he felt compelled to live above reproach as much as humanly possible so he would be opening doors for his people in the industry.

I don’t know if Will Smith’s a jerk or not - to be honest I don’t follow him closely and have missed much more of his work than what I’ve seen of it - a few of the more major films like Ali, Legend, MIB. I did recently read an article that indicated he was a pretty terrible jerk to some of his cast mates way back on Fresh Prince, so there is that.

I certainly understand myself that he’s just him and doesn’t represent his race, but obviously Sidney knew how much of America thinks and Will either doesn’t or just doesn’t care. With his $350 million it’s not like there is any price for his actions that will really hurt him, and maybe he just doesn’t care how it might hurt other black men.

[Econoline]

From Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook:

If you are already bloody sick of incessant wrangling over The Slap, as I am, reflect that every fifty-response thread you are now encountering about it, every single one where every obvious thing is said twenty times, will now be inserted into every discussion of any work the three people involved do, more or less verbatim to the end of bloody time.

Chris Rock will never make a joke, good or bad, that won't result in a rehash. Will Smith will never make a movie, good or bad, that anyone can offer an opinion on without the issue being brought up and the same points being rehashed again. Even Jada will never appear again without more rehashing.

This shit is here to stay, forever, up to and including the very day they die, and afterward, because when they're fresh meat on mortuary slabs and someone tries to bring up a thing that any one of them were good in, that will not be permitted without more endless wrangling of the Slap and more proud declarations from people declaring their sides. I promise you. This shit is indelible ink.

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Gob]

Slapping Chris Rock was also a blow to men, women, the entertainment industry, and the Black community.

If it's such a feeble thing, let it die, and put us out of our misery.

[liberty]

I finally got around to watching the clip and my initial reaction was that the joke was nothing. Smith commits assault over this. God the ghetto has finally arrived at the Oscars; can anyone with honesty say that Smith’s behavior was not thuggish. This demonstrates real fragility. Blacks complain that white people are fragile, but it appears to me that blacks are at least as fragile, if not more so, especially black women. I mean after all who kills somebody over a perceived disrespect which happens frequently in inner-city black communities.

[BoSoxGal]

I finally got around to watching the clip and my initial reaction was that the joke was nothing. Smith commits assault over this. God the ghetto has finally arrived at the Oscars; can anyone with honesty say that Smith’s behavior was not thuggish. This demonstrates real fragility. Blacks complain that white people are fragile, but it appears to me that blacks are at least as fragile, if not more so, especially black women. I mean after all who kills somebody over a perceived disrespect which happens frequently in inner-city black communities.

I hate that I am in agreement with liberty over something, but I am.

I’ve participated in a number of comments threads on Facebook and elsewhere about this and have had several black people tell me I just don’t understand black culture. I replied that they clearly don’t speak for all black people and black culture is not a monolith - but there does appear to be at least some significant fraction that is wholeheartedly in support of casual violence in defense of one’s ego or one’s woman’s ego and who therefore asserted Smith’s behavior is no big thing.

So I have a newfound appreciation for why so many young men in the black community end up shot dead in the streets by their peers. Men decades younger than Smith, with higher testosterone levels and a loaded handgun tucked in their waistband are too often more likely to shoot than settle for a mere smack across the face.

[Big RR]

I don't know if it's a back thing, or something that stems from poverty. One need only look at the gangster movies going back to show this same sort of demand for respect and flying off the handle at the most incidental slight abounded in the ghettos, and moved forward as the lower class persons (whether Italian, or Irish, or...) moved up in income, but still carried it forward with them. Blacks, and, to an extent, hispanics, are the current persons in that circumstance, and even if they make a lot of money, they still carry it forward with them (maybe convincing themselves they are true to the roots (remember all the stuff with Jennifer Lopez and P Diddy/Puff Daddy? Perhaps to show she was still "Jenny from the Block?"), maybe (for actors and actors, to cultivate their fan base and show they haven't sold out, maybe something else. And just like the other minorities, as they progress economically (if they do) , they will lose that behavior (somehow I wouldn't expect a black doctor or dentist to behave this way).

Not to forget that this sort of behavior is also a bandwagon kids can jump on ot tick off their parents, the same way generations before have.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I've basically been on Rock's side in all this - he made a weak jest (and maybe he, like me, did not know that his target's reason for the buzz cut is that she has alopecia) which did not deserve the reaction it got. Especially because it appears that Smith's first reaction was to laugh.

Lost in the shuffle was that Rock was presenting an award for best documentary and Rock, who may well have been very shaken by the incident, announced that the winner was Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson and "four white guys." The "four white guys" were Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein. So Rock can't count; does not recognize that Patel is maybe not a white guy; and can't be bothered to say the names of the actual winners which is pretty much the point of the whole evening. As I say it's possible that Rock was so shaken he could not think straight: but absent that excuse, that moment was even more disgusting that Smith's assault.