Not many, if any, heard the sound of the slap Will Smith landed on the 94th Academy Awards’ host Chris Rock — however, its reverberations were, and still are, hard to dismiss, maybe even un-feel.

The slap, which some publications are calling the ‘Will Smith Incident’, didn’t just land on Rock; it totalled what was, by that time, one of the many less-than-mediocre Oscar broadcasts in the last decade.

But then again, we predicted as much in Icon’s previous issue (The Oscar Bet), where we ran our annual Oscar predictions. Acing 18 out of 20 categories doesn’t feel like a triumph, given the circumstances.

The Oscars have steadily regressed into a dud of a show. The glitz, pizzaz, anticipation and cultural significance of, perhaps, the most-watched award show in the world has been commandeered by a series of botched attempts to breathe new life into an old show.

The Oscars have steadily regressed into a dud of a show. The ‘Will Smith Incident’ only underscored this sad fact

The first controversial decision was to shave broadcast time by giving away awards in the technical and short form category before the show’s airtime. While truncated cuts of these awards and acceptance speeches were broadcast, the practice itself saved all but 15 minutes of time from speeches, and to and fro walks to the podium.

The second controversial decision was sticking to the broadcast’s stance of supporting both the new woke culture and the ideals of the old establishment.

Also, lest I forget, there were the Twitter-polled Oscar wins for two of Zack Snyder’s scenes. One was for a scene from Justice League, the other from a scene from the Army of the Dead; both films were right at home with most of the unworthy nominations of the year.

Are the Oscars really so easy to disburse, one thinks at this moment.

It’s quite sad, really. In fact, the ordeal reeks of bad comedy.

Speaking of which, the ideas of the gags were crude, vulgar and offensive, and the hosts didn’t know what to do most of the time.

In one gag, Amy Shumer (one of the three female hosts, the other two were Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall) joked about the very important job of seat-fillers. In her sorry bid at comedy, Shumer yanked actress Kristen Dunst out of her chair then sat on it, facing her husband, actor Jesse Plemons. The aghast and cold reaction Shumer got from Plemons made the compere lose her confidence, and she jumped straight to the category.

Regina Hall, an actress of good self-esteem (or so I thought) had it worse with her ‘horny’ bit. In one of the most painstakingly offensive moments of the night, Hall groped Josh Brolin and Jason Mamoa during her stint on testing Covid-19 precautions on hot actors. Talk about letting things slide in service of female empowerment; if a man did even a fraction of the same joke, both the industry and the press would’ve been up in arms.

It is a strange world we’re living in.

While Smith had the audacity to give in to raw emotion and inflict violence during an international broadcast, he was given the podium for over five minutes to explain his actions. The entitlement and leeway a celebrity actor gets is unsettling and unfair.

Although sincere in his tears, Smith justified his act of violence as the channeling of his character’s emotions from King Richard. Smith called himself a protector of his on-screen wife Aunjanue Ellis, and the two actresses who played Serena and Venus Williams’ young selves in the movie, Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton.

But what did they need protection from anyway? And wasn’t Richard, the real-life character Smith played in the movie, represented as a Gandhi-esque pacifist who gets struck down a lot in the story?

That’s a strange reversal of character — one the Academy and its board of governors didn’t take lightly.

A full-inquiry on Smith immediately went underway per reports in the trade. By the time you read this feature in print (or on the internet), the Academy might have already reprimanded Smith, perhaps by revoking his membership (Oscars are never taken away; even disgraced industry mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was shunned and ridiculed by the industry over his lecherous and lewd actions, gets to keep his). For Smith, it was a bad way to overshadow one’s win of the most-coveted honour in filmdom.

A retort in kind would’ve been enough, since the joke itself wasn’t as bad.

The disgraceful, debacle of a show only reaffirms the evolutionary trajectory of the Hollywood industry as a whole. Its fallibilities were always a topic of discussion. However, with the 94th Oscars, everything is out in the open. Can’t wait to see what newfangled audacities the 95th Academy Awards brings next year.

Update: Will Smith has officially apologized to Chris Rock and the Academy via an Instagram post. The Academy, however, has yet to announce the verdict of their board meeting. The story is an ongoing development.

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 3rd, 2022