There was a time when we thought no one would ever care about the Oscars.
Ratings had done a beautiful swan dive into a tropical lake of irrelevance. People complained about how the movies they actually cared about (starts with Spider, ends with Man) weren’t nominated. The Academy and producers had made several decisions that angered longtime viewers of the show, like excising crucial categories because they didn’t have famous people involved. A tear-jerking movie, the plot of which I can’t recount because it makes me weep inconsolably when I do—and yet was somehow dubbed an Oscar “villain”—won many awards.
But then the most famous man in the world got out of his seat, walked onto the stage, slapped a beloved comedian, and continued to shout at him from his chair.
Again, remember when we thought no one would care about the Oscars?
It’s a tragic thing, in multiple ways.
It doesn’t matter that, for the first time, a streaming service (Apple TV+), won Best Picture at the Academy Awards for CODA, a seismic event in terms of how the industry thinks about how film is consumed. It doesn’t matter that it’s not Netflix that broke the barrier, despite its rich investment in filmmakers, like Jane Campion’s presumed favorite, The Power of the Dog. It doesn’t matter that it was possibly the most targeted and consequential night when it comes to Hollywood addressing—and moreover, representing—LGBT issues.
It was the biggest night in entertainment in my lifetime. Because of all of that. And also because Will Smith slapped Chris Rock and then won an Oscar.
The question is: Were the Oscars good or bad? After what happened, I don’t know if you could possibly say one way or the other.
First, there is the explanation that has to be done. Sunday was the Academy Awards. Many people, this writer included, thought they were going to be unwatchable. There were categories moved to pre-shows, presenters hired that made no sense, and all indications that the people involved in producing the biggest night in movies actually did not like movies at all.
What they forgot, in all of their controversial producing, was that you just can’t produce good TV.
Chris Rock made a horrendous, unforgivable joke about Jada Pinkett Smith and then her husband, now-Academy Award winner Will, slapped him in the goddamn face.
I guess the Oscars were good?
I don’t know how famous you have to be that, when a comedian makes a really bad joke (to just define our take: so terribly bad) about your wife, you ignore the many television cameras that are filming the most hallowed night of Hollywood television, interrupt a live broadcast by walking on stage, slap somebody, and then from your seat scream, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.”
There is, apparently, an exact level of famous you have to be to do that, and that is Will Smith-level famous.
Will Smith did something that the Oscars have reliably tried, but in their insecurity about ratings and buzz, very nearly thwarted itself from doing: creating a moment. It shouldn’t seem like rocket science, but apparently it is: When you put the world’s most beautiful and famous people in a room together and just set up a camera, you capture the weirdest, most beautifully out-of-touch shit.
That can be a very positive thing. I don’t love that Jessica Chastain tied her speech back to Tammy Faye Bakker, whose legacy is… complicated. But I am grateful that she devoted so much of her time onstage to talking about the rights of women and LGBT people that are at stake. Only when you are that famous would you presume to have the megaphone for that. (Again, thank God she did!)
It can also be a horrible thing.
Let’s be clear: An assault happened. At first, every aunt, college roommate, and person I have ever met asked me if Will Smith getting angry at Chris Rock was a bit. While I’m flattered that anyone thought I had inside information, I can say definitively, at this point, it was not.
We’re so programmed to being programmed that none of us knew how to deal with it.
In that moment and in his speech, Will Smith revealed himself to be a very famous person rendered very human. I do not condone his assault, but I understand the ethos. (Imagine any of these words ever being used in relation to the Academy Awards before.)
But again, I am trying to imagine just how famous and privileged you must be to—at the goddamn Academy Awards!—get out of your seat, slap someone, sit back down and heckle, and then win the Oscar.
It’s not that it’s great TV. It’s the kind of TV we still don’t know how to process.
As mentioned before, there were substantial changes made to tonight’s ceremony in order to make it a show that anyone would care about, prior to the Will Smith of it all. The giant, taunting question was: How do you make people care about the Oscars who don’t care about the Oscars? You would think that’s a question a child would laugh at for being unanswerable. But the Academy braved it. They tried. Their response: Find Tony Hawk.
God bless the producers for making the unnecessary presenter moment of Hawk, Kelly Slater, and Shaun White as bad as pundits predicted it would be. And also, drag the producers for the concept. Of all humans, Hollywood or otherwise in the world, these were the three brought on to introduce a tribute to James Bond.
The ridiculous thing is that, besides all of that drama, the show was actually… going well? Amy Schumer’s opening monologue killed. It also had the Ricky Gervais-esque, Hollywood-skewering energy that people didn’t expect. (Who knew she’d go so hard on Being the Ricardos?) And Regina Hall proved why Regina Hall should be everywhere, in everything, in everyone’s mind.
There was so much desperation that, on any Will Smith Didn’t Slap Chris Rock night, we’d be talking about it.
There’s been so much talk about how the Academy is chasing viewers who wouldn’t ordinarily tune into the show. I guess the mythological person they’ve been after is someone very excited to see Beyoncé dressed as a tennis ball? That’s what opened the show. (And Bey didn’t even win! I still don’t understand the politics/legality of inviting Beyoncé to an awards show and then not giving it to her.)
In any case, was this year’s Oscars good? I’m better at the other question. Was it bad? No, absolutely not. That I’m so obsessed with the awards and can’t answer either way? Well, that: That’s a slap in the face.
