![]() I found myself afraid for Smith, who seemed, as he spoke, somehow even more unbalanced than he’d looked squaring up against Rock. You know how they rush those speeches along. Or: Was the Devil, that notorious hater of standup comedy, the one who’d made him slap Rock? Or are worldwide renown and fantastic wealth and total impunity a kind of demon, turning former teen stars such as the guy who wrote “Parents Just Don’t Understand” into public cheap-shot artists? That analogy wasn’t as clear as the one making Smith, along with Williams, a mighty protector, but there wasn’t much time to clarify. Washington, he said, had advised him during the commercial: “At your highest moment, be careful. He kept on like that, self-pitying and spiritualizing. So, you understand, he only slapped Rock-he slapped Chris Rock!-because he’s such a big man, such a rushing, white-water river of protection for the women in his life. Many commenters pointed out that Pinkett Smith wears her hair low because she suffers from alopecia. Nothing inordinately personal, and much better than the “G.I. I wasn’t invited.” Funny joke, I thought at the time and still think. In 2016, when he hosted the Oscars, Rock had made fun of Pinkett Smith’s boycott of the production because of its lack of diversity: “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. The Internet did its most useful thing: churn up context. Smith and Pinkett Smith were still in their seats when the cameras started rolling again, wearing plastic smiles, determined to put forward the best acting jobs either had pulled off in quite some time. What was everybody supposed to do? Just move on? ![]() Everybody in the room at the Oscars expected Smith to win the award for Best Actor, for his portrayal of Richard Williams-father of Venus and Serena-in “ King Richard.” Videos started popping up on Twitter of Smith being comforted by Perry and Denzel Washington during commercial breaks. Maybe somebody needs to kick up a reboot with Rock in place of the kid and Smith as the out-of-control adult, drunk on fame and eccentricity and, perhaps, on the ghost of proximity to his lifelong dream. ![]() Maybe you remember the existence of a short-lived 2015 NBC drama called “The Slap.” I never watched it, but what I gathered from the trailer, which became a joke in my household, was this: a kid gets slapped at a back-yard party, and shit starts spinning out of control. Packer was the producer, but this passage (cartoonish confrontation Perry’s long, rubbery face contextless gospel jubilance) felt like something out of one of Perry’s endlessly iterated “Madea” soap-films. The next few moments swooped forward in an ecstatic blur: Ahmir (Questlove) Thompson won the Best Documentary award, for his heartening film “ Summer of Soul,” then, suddenly, the director-producer-actor Tyler Perry was onstage, followed closely by a lively gospel choir, to present the in-memoriam video montage. His tie was slightly askew, and his eyes glittered a bit. Rock fumbled through his introduction of the category and the recitation of the nominees. Somehow he managed to flick off a line I’ll never forget-“Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me!”-before Smith, back at his seat, clearly still full of adrenaline, started to shout, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!” The producers at ABC first froze the screen, then tried to mute the worst of Smith’s cursing, but his lips were eminently readable. But Rock, whose job was to present the award for Best Documentary, was clearly frazzled. The emergent Black producer Will Packer was helming the show and, well, perhaps he’d decided, at Rock’s urging, to go big and get weird. Watching it, I first thought that the slap was fake, part of some daring, gonzo comedic bit, maybe playing on white expectations of hair-trigger Black violence. But, perhaps goaded by his wife’s annoyance-or maybe, like me, slow to recall the plot of a quasi-feminist military drama from the turn of the century-he got up, sauntered, with a strange, unpredictable swagger, up the short lane to the spot where Rock stood, and administered the blow. At first, her husband seemed to just laugh. Jane.” (Some of the absurdity of this episode, at least for me, came from the fact that the violence was already done by the time I could pull the dated reference out of the murk of my mind.) Pinkett Smith rolled her eyes and shook her head. Rock had made a silly joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, comparing her buzzed head to Demi Moore’s in the twenty-five-year-old movie “G.I. But my mind-and maybe yours?-is still stuck at the moment toward the end of the show, when Will Smith stormed the stage and gave my favorite comedian, Chris Rock, a quick, curt, mind-blowing slap across the face. The Oscars are over and, as I write this, the gilded after-parties have presumably started gliding into gear.
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