The echoes of The Slap still ring through the online halls and in people’s minds.
You know what I mean by “The Slap” right? I’m sure most of you do, anyway. It’s probably gonna be many years before too many people forget what it was and who is attached to it.
But, for those of you who have forgotten, or didn’t hear about it somehow when it happened, Will Smith slapped Oscars host Chris Rock on stage, live, in 2022 after Rock made a snide and not-very-kind joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, being bald (because of her struggle with alopecia).
Now, mocking any woman about her hair when it’s not by her choice—whether an autoimmune disorder in Jada’s case or chemotherapy in other cases or whatever—is already not cool in a society where people expect women to have hair and where women often are very self-conscious about their baldness. Especially not cool to do to a Black woman, as hair can have even more personal and deep connotations—as Chris knew very well, having done a documentary called Good Hair in 2009. Chris was out of line for doing it, and probably did it out of spite because the scuttlebutt is that he was trying to hit on Jada in years past (probably because he assumed “open marriage” meant Jada wanted to sleep with anyone and everyone). He got rejected and from various insider accounts was kinda bitter about it. It was all very incel-like.
And so, while I’m surprised Will smacked Chris in front of millions upon millions of Oscar-watchers, I’m not shocked and I’m not mad actually. Frankly, Chris is lucky Will only sent a disrespectful slap and not a full-on punch.
So why am I bringing this up again? Well, I didn’t start it. People online did as the movie Bad Boys 4 began to near release—a movie co-starring Will Smith with Martin Lawrence. You see, several Will Smith movie projects got canceled or delayed after he slapped Chris. Plenty of people were complaining about his return to work when they discovered Bad Boys 4 was coming out. I saw people wishing openly for its failure and bemoaning that Will Smith was out of the penalty box.
In the past few days, I’ve seen more voices complaining because in a month or so of anticipated blockbusters disappointing at the box office, Bad Boys 4 had a $105-million global opening weekend, which given its budget is a good sign it might actually be a decent success in theaters.
I’m not mad. What bothers me though is how many people still want Will Smith canceled and punished.
People, get real. Louis CK was a years-long misogynist and molester of female comedians and his cancellation sure didn’t last long. Yes, some people still complain about that but not that strenuously from what I’ve seen in the past year or two. J.K. Rowling is an active transphobe who publicly supports and riles up other transphobes and people say we need to separate the art from the artist because her books mean so much to so many people. Alec Baldwin shot someone to death on-set—albeit not on purpose but because of carelessness—and plenty of people who side with his politics urge us not to judge him too harshly. The list could go on of people who have been canceled or should have been long ago who never got canceled or bounced right back without much fuss. The vast majority of them white.
That’s what it comes down to, and it’s not just that Will Smith is Black. No, it’s not simple racism of people who don’t like Black people. It’s racism of people who claim not to be racist but are mad, and overtly racist people who didn’t dislike Will Smith even though he was Black.
It’s because Will was “one of the good ones.”
White people felt betrayed because this Black man they thought was a “good one”—which means he fit nicely into their limited definitions of what is normal and right and proper in American society for behavior even though he was Black—broke ranks from what they expected of him and acted like…well, like a human.
White people who’ve done harm to whole entire populations or to dozens of women or who have ended lives can bounce back or get grace but a Black man who merely slapped one person for disrespecting his wife is supposed to be canceled for years or forever?
Screw that.
I’m not saying what Will Smith did was right but the calls for his punishment and exile from performing are way out of line with his actions. Do you recall some of the hoops people jumped through back then to revile Will Smith? People actually posted that he could have killed Chris Rock with that slap because what if he had stumbled and hit his head just right. OK, well, Will could have suddenly sneezed loudly and startled Chris to cause the same implausible and improbable scenario. People had to create outrageous hypothetical scenarios just to turn Will Smith into a villain for a rash act of very limited violence. A lot of them still haven’t let it go, and they probably would have if he had been white, because boy are there a lot of white performers who beat their spouses in years past and y’all blinked and stopped caring. But some of you hold on to Will Smith’s “villainy” because he didn’t behave like a good Black man and because he ruined the sanctity of your Academy Award broadcast. Go cry about it. Here’s to the success of Bad Boys 4 and here’s to Will getting back on track. Go rediscover the real villains you forgot about or forgave and stop making The Slap out to be more than what it was—a bad snap decision that ultimately didn’t do any actual significant harm to any people.
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Image by Ari Spada via Unsplash
