Oscars 2022 Slap Legacy

I teach undergraduate Ethics of Communication and graduate Crisis Communication courses and never experience shortage of real-life cases to discuss with my students on any ethics topic we cover in class. This week, as we started to discuss ethics of mass communication and ethical crisis media strategies, life brought me a special "gift": Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during the 94th Academy Awards ceremony.

In this essay, I didn't want to give more exposure to the picture of the actual slap that already made multiple rounds in global media. Instead, I selected the image of the Academy's Standards of Conduct as it was introduced to its members in 2017. It is quite puzzling that this important document and the claims process that was added to it in 2018 is still not available to the public on the Academy's website and can be accessed only by its members. I thank the Variety magazine for publishing it in full on its website.

The fact that the Academy now has an instituted process for reviewing and punishing its members' unethical behavior allowed me to focus our class discussions on the ethical implications and consequences of the incident rather than on the passions and emotions around it. We did talk about passions and emotions as well, but keeping the discussion focused on the issues of ethics allowed for it to flow without taking sides and consider passions and emotions from different perspectives.

In my Ethics class, I started out by asking students to do some homework and select one of the five perspectives to write a one-paragraph story:

1. Hypothetical entertainment journalist present at the ceremony

2. Will Smith’s publicist

3. Chris Rock’s publicist

4. Jada Pickett Smith’s publicist

5. Academy public relations representative.

I then had them work in groups of 2-3 in class, sharing their individual stories. As a group, they were to come up with one final statement. Then they shared their statements with the entire class and we critiqued them asking three questions: (1) did the statement present a good picture from the assigned person's perspective? (2) did anything need to be added? and (3) what could be changed stylistically and in terms of writing to improve the statement? I am not going to publish the actual statements my students wrote here, but will share some points that they thought important to highlight.

From the hypothetical journalist perspective, it was important to simply report the dry facts, without evaluative statements and judgements. For different perspectives, quotes or soundbites from the event participants, witnesses, and the Academy representatives should be used. We teach them well in our basic media writing class.

Will Smith's publicist would have pointed out that in the moment, Will felt compelled to stand up for his wife. He regrets his impulsiveness and apologizes not only to the Oscars ceremony attendees and producers, which he did in his acceptance speech, but also to Chris Rock. We had the class before Smith issued his apology to Rock and I was impressed with how close my students' statement was to what he actually said. In our class discussion, we also brought up the fact that Smith did laugh at the GI Jane 2 joke at first, albeit that laughter could have been just an act (comedians are at the Oscars to make jokes and even if the jokes are meant as personal jabs, the subjects of those jokes are supposed to be good sports and laugh at them). Once Will saw the effect of the joke on Jada, he decided to stand up for his wife and later regretted the way he did it.

Chris Rock's publicist should have pointed out that Rock is a comedian, and that making jokes about attendees is a part of the comedian presenter's job. My students also suggested that Chris could have genuinely thought it was a good joke, which he insisted upon after he saw Jada's reaction. He could have meant it as a compliment, as if saying, "Jada, I love you, you look like a badass in the good sense of the word and GI Jane 2 is calling for you." Demi Moore looked beautiful in the original GI Jane, where she was bald, buff and the embodiment of determination and grit. As someone who made a documentary on Black women's hair (2009 Good Hair), Rock is not insensitive to the issue of hair loss, especially because Jada was so open about her alopecia and stated before that she did not care what people thought about her look. Nonetheless, since Jada felt offended by his joke, Chris would be ready to apologize to her personally. In the discussion around this hypothetical statement we also mentioned that even though "whataboutism" should not be used in the official statement, it was worth mentioning that making jokes about attendees was a part of the Oscars ritual, has been done many times by other comedians, including in this ceremony when Regina Hall did her "COVID testing" bit.

Jada Picket Smith's publicist would probably take Will's side and describe how she found the joke offensive and the whole incident unfortunate but her husband's reaction understandable. In our discussion, we also pointed out that her reaction to the joke could have been misinterpreted by many, including her husband and the larger audiences. Given that she was open about her hair condition and had stated earlier on the Red Carpet she did not really care about what people thought about her being bald, Jada's rolling her eyes and raising her hands could have been just the sign of annoyance and disappointment she felt at the moment, especially with her prior history with Rock. She could have been simply irritated, "Here we go again, I was just talking about it, but what could you expect from Chris?" Of course, after Will's reaction and the entire altercation it would be difficult for Jada to admit this if it were really the case as it would fuel new rumors about their marriage. In this case, she has to stand up for her man standing up for her. (UPD: Jada's perspective for the first time after the incident was formulated during her Red Table Talk on June 1, 2022, reported by Instyle magazine here here).

Finally, from the Academy public relations office perspective, my students came up with the statement that was very close to what the Academy actually issued, again before the actual statement was made, emphasizing that Oscars was a safe place for celebrating achievement in film, violence at the ceremony was unacceptable and promising that the Academy would review the case and weigh its options for actions. We also discussed the range of options available to the Academy based on its new Standards of Conduct, from suspending Smith's membership for a year and not inviting him to Oscars 2023 (which he himself indicated in his Best Actor acceptance speech would be a severe punishment for him) to permanent expulsion and stripping him of the Oscar. On the last option, my students agreed that it would be an excessive and inappropriate punishment as the Oscar is awarded for achievement in film, not bad behavior at the ceremony.

As a summary of the discussion, we again made a clear differentiation between the legal and ethical issues of the case: while Will Smith's behavior was both illegal and unethical, the Academy could only investigate and act upon the ethical violation. The organization's leadership must have been relieved that Chris Rock decided not to press charges against both Smith and the Academy, even though he had the legal right to do so. Now it was up to the Academy to decide what would be the appropriate punishment for Smith that would indicate that its new Standards of Conduct are not a toothless set of rules on paper.

In my graduate Crisis Communication course, we tackled the issue from the perspective of an organization (the Academy) in a crisis (public reaction to the organization's inadequate response and poor handling of the incident during the ceremony) and debated whether it should punish Smith and if yes, what would be the most appropriate punishment and if no, how would we justify the decision to the public. The general consensus was that the Academy must punish Will by suspending him for a year and come out with a forceful statement condemning his behavior.

In the debate Q&A session, in addition to many points highlighted above, we also brought in the feminist perspective articulated on social media: Why do men still feel compelled to protect "their" women, treat them as their objects of ownership and not let them stand up for themselves, especially when they are as strong and accomplished as Jada? To this, we countered that given the history of public bashing Smith consistently receives for tolerating his "cheating wife" behavior, he could have been driven by even more toxic masculinity: Standing up for himself, rather than for his wife. Meaning that he theatrically slapped Rock to look like a "real man" in the public eye, which obviously backfired. We also hypothesized about what would have happened if the same joke was made by someone like Ricky Gervais, thus giving it a racial dimension and making the crisis a lot harder to handle for the Academy, whose key stakeholders are both the general public (diverse moviegoers all over the world) and the Academy members and filmmakers.

Just for the heck of it, we mulled on the idea of comedian presenters pre-testing their jokes on a segment of the target audiences (actors) or the Academy opting out of selecting comedians as the ceremony hosts and award presenters altogether. Life cannot be only about laughs, and as audiences we should not expect to be endlessly entertained. This award ceremony could have been remembered for the moments of human warmth and empathy such as the tribute to Betty White by Jamie Lee Curtis and Lady Gaga's gentle and respectful co-presenting with Liza Minnelli, and for the CODA's deservedly sweeping so many awards. Instead, the whole world was talking about Will Smith for the entire three days, even forgetting about a real war still happening in Europe.

Update: We have discussed with my students whether the Academy's decision to ban Will Smith from Oscars for 10 years was fair and appropriate. Most of them agreed that this punishment is too harsh and should have been 1-2 years. I agree.