Even if Will Smith had remained in his seat, the Oscars ceremony would have been a historic train wreck, tnyfrontrow writes—“a calamity foretold by the frenzied efforts of the Academy to rescue it from itself in advance.”
Desperate to keep the broadcast short, the producers shunted eight categories of awards to the hour before the broadcast—and yet the ceremony ran three hours and forty minutes. Grasping for a larger viewership after last year’s precipitous decline, the producers added two fan-centered segments that stopped the proceedings in their tracks.
The strain was present from the start. Despite the welcome presence of Venus and Serena Williams to open the show, the outdoor performance of “Be Alive,” by Beyoncé and a crowd of dancers and musicians, and an agile, comedic triple monologue by Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes, the first award, for Best Supporting Actress—it went to Ariana DeBose, for “”—wasn’t given out until eight-twenty-five.
Then Rock made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s close-cropped hair, saying that she looked ready to be in “G.I. Jane 2,” and, though Smith initially laughed at the dated quip, she didn’t—she looked exasperated. Pinkett Smithof having alopecia, and her short haircut is an effort to contend with the condition. What happened at their table near the stage is unclear; but, as the camera remained on Rock, Smith entered the frame, approached Rock, smacked him, turned, and walked off.
Smith was widely figured to win the Oscar for Best Actor, for his performance as Richard Williams, in “,” and win he did: in his speech, he doubled down on his aggression, speaking of the “abuse” and “disrespecting” that goes with celebrity, describing his role as a “protector” in life and in the movie, excusing himself on the grounds that “art imitates life” and that “love will make you do crazy things,” and apologizing to the Academy and his “fellow-nominees” but, conspicuously, not to Rock.
The ceremony was an event of paradox. Politics were out front: the hosts spoke of “a frightening display of how toxic masculinity turns into cruelty towards women and children” and jokingly cited
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