Smith rained on his own parade
EVERYONE in the world now has a view about Will Smith giving Chris Rock an almighty slap in the chops right in the middle of the Oscars. Here, for what it’s worth, is mine. I think it’s one hell of a shame. Will Smith managed to overshadow his own finest hour. His richly deserved Best Actor award for a superlatively complex and nuanced performance as Venus and Serena Williams’ flawed and visionary father in King Richard will now forever be coupled with the sound of his hand smacking Rock’s cheek.
Let’s keep the incident in perspective. Rock is fine. He’s not pressing charges and the ceremony wasn’t even temporarily derailed. The true damage done is to Will Smith by Will Smith himself, and self-inflicted injuries are the toughest to endure.
Who knows what would cause a man of Smith’s stature and temperament to snap on so public and momentous a night? Could the well-documented tensions in his muchdiscussed “open” marriage have left him with – he may have imagined – no choice but to avenge a joke at the expense of his wife Jada’s alopecia?
Had he felt cuckolded by public opinion to the point where he felt he had no alternative but to spring into revenge mode? Indeed, is his famous geniality a stretch, constantly at odds with his hard-knocks childhood in Philadelphia?
DID he suddenly revert to his prefame personality? Perhaps Smith has a self-destruct button somewhere in his psyche that he was unable to resist pushing on a day that was scheduled to be the golden zenith of his whole life.
Frankly we’ll never know what made Will do it – I suspect he doesn’t know himself. Rock’s joke was mild – at worst a four out of 10 on the Oscars scale. Rock had taken a pop at the Smiths a few years earlier – maybe resentment festered?
But what we all know is that violence is always an appalling option. Unless your life is being threatened, don’t even contemplate whacking the other guy. That should apply whether you’re in a lowly pub car park or at a glamorous awards ceremony, wearing a tux, with hundreds of millions glued to the screen.
Poor Will. He has rained on his own parade. He’s still Best Actor but can’t be feeling much like best person.As I said, it’s a shame, chiefly for Will and his family. Let’s leave it at that.