Student Opinion – Chris Rock Did Not Deserve To Be Assaulted By Will Smith

Once a year, the biggest movie stars in the world gather together at a hoopla to give out awards for their work and bring attention to the ills of society. Last week, the same thing happened, except the best picture award was not the highlight of the event. Instead, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock on live television in front of the entire world grabbed the headlines.

As Chris Rock accurately described seconds after, “That was the greatest night in the history of television.”

Society was sent into a frenzy of debates on gender, race and the subjectivity of comedy. While people can debate the microscopic social theory of the slap, I’m not sold that society can learn some deep lesson from this. Rather, it seems more like a “wow, that was crazy” moment where everyone in the conversation debates who should have done what and moves on.

By the way, Chris Rock took that hit like an absolute champ. He got accosted without expecting it in front of millions of people and recovered with a quick joke before moving on to the next category.

His original joke referring to Jada Pinkett’s bald head may have gone a little too far for normal standards, but it was nowhere close to constituting literal assault. Ricky Gervais would have said something much worse if he were hosting. Rock made a joke about Will Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head because of her hair loss condition called alopecia.

Sure, joking about a woman’s hair condition isn’t cool, but it’s the Oscars. It’s almost a requirement for hosts to make over-the-line jabs at the pretentiously dressed celebrities.

Besides, a relatively mild joke doesn’t give anyone the go-ahead to assault someone in the name of defending a spouse. There is no legal argument that allows assaulting someone for saying something mean.

To give Will Smith some fairness, the “just take the joke, dude” schtick is sometimes applied too broadly. If the condition was something Jada Pinkett Smith was self-conscious about, Will Smith would have had the right to be upset at the joke in defense of his wife.

It is okay to be upset, but Smith committed assault. After he initially laughed at the joke, what on earth was he thinking?

Everybody loves Will Smith. He has starred in beloved movies and had a great reputation. Now, for overreacting to a joke by way of misdemeanor, he has thrown that “nice guy” reputation down the drain.

In keeping with the theme that reality is stranger than fiction, Smith won the Oscar for best actor for his role in “King Richard” minutes after the slap. Smith proceeded to give an ironic speech about being an ambassador for love and a shining light, giving a pseudo-apology. The acceptance speech was pretty tone-deaf despite his attempt at recognizing the timeliness of the event.

On the one hand, I feel bad for criticizing Smith. After all, he sang “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It,” starred in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” and cameoed in the cringey YouTube Rewind in 2018. But he committed assault because of a lame joke, and any justification for it is far from adequate.

Thankfully, Smith has recently come to his senses, resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and releasing a much better apology in a statement. He called his actions “shocking, painful, and inexcusable,” which is a fair assessment.

Besides the previously collapsing Oscar ratings, there’s no real winner in this situation; Chris Rock is just the lesser loser. Nobody should be hailed as a hero, and Will Smith’s publicist will need a raise after all this.

Browder is an opinion writer.