Academy Awards (Oscars 2022)

you're generalizing that all men are like you, we're not that's my issue you shouldn't be speaking for all men or most men, for that you would need to know everyone and you don't. Some men look awful bald because of head shape ect. Anyway we're off topic so we'll agree to disagree

Of course he made contact lol

Are you for real, Rock has said he knew nothing about her condition and even if he did Smith was crazy wrong.

All the false tears after the acceptance speech and then not a bother a while later celebrating. Did anyone see was Rock ok? It was disgusting and Smith should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

He should be dealt out a severe punishment.

This view for me nails it.

The room was probably pro Smith as they probably hate comedians ripping the piss out of them. Like I see Jim carrey going mad at the crowd fro clapping for Smitb but I'm sure he would react in a bad way if someone made a joke right in front of him about his sorry affair with that Irish woman who committed suicide. Will Smith was in the wrong but it's not like he went to the Oscars to slap chris rock or have his wife insulted by Rock

Fine, male pattern baldness is a form of alopecia. However, in all common nomenclature, there's a clear distinction between baldness and alopecia.

Jada Pinkett Smith's alopecia is the result of an auto-immune disease. Male pattern baldness is not.

Javier Bardem (4 nominations - 1 win)

Penelope Cruz (4 nominations - 1 win)

Will Smith (3 nominations - 1 win)

Jada Pinkett Smith (0 nominations - 0 wins)

It was a roast joke about competitions between married actors. Chris Rock was roasting Jada Pinkett Smith, someone he knows/knew, about the lack of award recognition in her career as it was Will who is the multi-nominated actor in their specific marriage.

Remember Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes in 2011 did something similar.

“What can I say about our next two presenters? The first is an actor, producer and director whose movies have grossed over $3.5bn at the box office. He’s won two Academy Awards and three Golden Globes for his powerful and varied performances, starring in such films as Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Castaway, Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan. The other... is Tim Allen.”

There are no prizes for guessing who the first presenter is and that's the humor in such a roast. Some people need no introduction. Chris Rock was initially ribbing Bardem and Cruz, a married couple who between them have won Oscars and have been nominated on numerous occasions (4 nominations and one win each). The implied set up being that they can expect more nominations or wins in future considering their mutual talent. Rock was implying that there was an ongoing competition between them to see who can win the most Oscars and that Bardem better hope that Will Smith wins instead of him lest there be marital strife if he takes the lead. It served as a deliberate segue into the target of the roast, the couple next to them who have actual marital strife.

In terms of the Smiths marriage the joke is that no such competition exists as Jada, with a shaved head, would be never be an Oscar botherer and starring in GI Jane 2 type rubbish is more her fare at this point i.e. the kind of movie which would certainly not be winning any Academy Awards and in which the lead character, huzzah, had a shaved head just like Jada. Like Tim Allen, Jada was the butt of the roast joke as she was sitting alongside actors who were venerable Oscar veterans and comparatively speaking she was a nobody in such company. Just like how a relatively successful actor like Tim Allen doesn’t seem that successful at all if you compare him to Tom Hanks. Gervais could have extended the joke by listing Allen’s poorer “GI Jane 2” type films (e.g. Wild Hogs, The Shaggy Dog, The Santa Clause 3 etc.) against the more acclaimed ones he listed for Hanks. Rock effectively declaring that Jada was doesn't measure up was his angle with the joke to my mind.

A variation could have been like this;

“It’s great to see Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz nominated yet again. What is it now Javier? Fourth time? Penelope this is your fourth nomination also I believe? Happy marriage, even stevens. Javier, I know if you win your second Oscar tonight then your wife will only have one if she doesn’t win so for Gods sake you better hope Will Smith wins! It’s third time lucky for you Will isn’t it?…Oh and Jada, I love ya and I can’t wait to see GI Jane 2!”

The whole alopecia spiel is convenient self-serving victim playing considering Will "vessel for his people" Smith and his melodramatic wife are a pair of narcissists clearly incapable of engaging in some self-deprecation. Zero sympathy as Rock was simply joking and they are exactly the kind of deluded people who need roasting.

A win of best actor/actress is much higher honour than supporting actor/actress. So both Bardem and Cruz wins have been supporting. In saying that, I think Bardem would have been a worthy winner in 2011 for Biutiful instead of Colin Firth in Kings Speech.

Yeah, on watching it again, he did say smacked. A smack could refer to either I suppose. Still definitely not a punch though.

This does seem like an inappropriate time to make a bald joke…. Slap worthy

Let’s not descend into misogynoirism, not my words the words of a female empowerment coach.

https://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/living/2022/0329/1289117-what-is-misogynoir-and-how-does-relate-to-jada-pinkett-smith/

I thought Will smith's acceptance speech was the most sincere and genuine of the night. He did the the thing and now he's being condemned by people who know neither honor nor courage.

Ya a genuinely awful speech. Stop with your false blubbering.

If he had said I don't deserve to be here after what I've done, apologised to Rock and everyone else and then got off the stage.

I'm surprised this divided people. I thought Smith was completely in the wrong.

I've seen some really poor takes on this, for example 'why can't a man defend his partner from a verbal assault'? That completely misses the context of where they were. If Smith and his wife were walking down the street and some stranger came up and said 'hey, is your wife going to be in GI Jane 2', I can understand Smith resorting to a slap in that scenario because that would be intimidating and you don't know if it's going to escalate to something more. But that was not the case at the ceremony. Everyone knows a stand-up comic is going to come out and dish out a few gags, and Smith has met Rock in the past and knows what he's about. There was no 'threat' whatsoever except to Smith's fragile ego. You have to be prepared to take a bit of stick. It's like going to a comedy show, sitting in the front row, and then the comic makes some jokes about you or your partner. Does that warrant getting on stage and engaging in assault towards the comic? Of course not.

I was amazed at how many people justified it. I would like to ask those that do, if it were a female comic that made the joke, would Smith have been entitled to give her a smack? If you say no, why are you justifying it towards Rock? Since when is it okay to attack someone as long as you are of the same gender? Try using that defence to a policeman or a judge and see where it lands you.

It was obscene that he was allowed to take his seat and sit through the rest of the show. At the very least, representatives from the academy should have asked him to go backstage as his continued presence was bringing the show into disrepute. It essentially normalised violence in front of an audience of hundreds of millions. Not to mention the wallies in the room giving him a standing ovation when he picked up the best actor award and started waffling on about being a positive vessel.

I don’t think I could have nailed this as clearly and accurately as this.

Similar to what I said earlier when someone said it was a knee jerk reaction. So far from it.