The Oscars slap was an unscripted moment at the most scripted event of the year

There isn’t exactly a playbook for how to react when the Best Actor nominee and eventual winner slaps one of the Oscar presenters in the face. Even the Academy seems to be struggling, writes Clémence Michallon

The slap: Will Smith hits Chris Rock (AFP via Getty)

I almost didn’t watch the Oscars this year. It’s not that I specifically planned to avoid the ceremony but I had family in town, we went out to dinner and by the time I came home, only a few trophies were left to dish out. So I did what any reasonable person would have done: I switched on the TV and checked Twitter to see what I had missed.

And that’s how I learned about the slap.

In case you missed it: towards the end of the ceremony, Will Smith stepped onto the Oscars stage and walked up to Chris Rock, who was presenting the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Rock had just made a poor taste joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, making fun of her closely cropped hair. (She suffers from alopecia, a condition that causes hair loss.) Smith slapped Rock in the face, then returned to his seat, from which he instructed the comedian to “keep my wife’s name out of your f****** mouth”.) Literal minutes later, Smith won the Oscar for Best Actor and gave an acceptance speech.

From the get-go, everyone had an opinion about it. And far be it from me to blame the people who expressed one, because there was a lot to unpack there! I myself hovered somewhere between shock and bewilderment. Joe Biden, by way of his communications director Kate Bedingfield, has so far given the incident the “I don’t know her” treatment, which I don’t dislike.

I turned, as more people should in moments of confusion, to Roxane Gay, who said in a discussion for The New York Times: “I was shocked when it happened. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life, and I hope to never see anything like it again, but I understand it. I understand it all around. I felt bad for Chris Rock because that was such a shocking moment. I felt bad for Jada Pinkett Smith having to deal with the fallout of all of this. I felt bad for Will Smith, who sort of just – there will always be an asterisk now on his Oscar win. I just think there’s plenty of empathy to go around and, all things considered, I just – I can’t, given everything going on in the world, I just cannot bring myself to be outraged by this.”

The slap and its aftermath made for an unplanned, unscripted, weird and uncomfortable moment – a loud record scratch in a ceremony that has traditionally been planned, scripted, predictable and cushy. I think that’s why so many of us struggled to figure out what to make of it. The whole thing was just so unexpected and weird.

The Academy seems to be hesitating too: it took no immediate action during the ceremony, and Smith collected his Oscar and delivered his acceptance speech as normal. It then tweeted after the ceremony: “The Academy does not condone violence of any form.” And now, according to Variety, it has vowed to “make a determination on appropriate action for Mr Smith”.

There isn’t exactly a playbook for how to react when the Best Actor nominee and eventual winner slaps one of the Oscar presenters in the face. This is a challenge for the Academy, and I hope it meets it with fairness. I will say this: I certainly don’t think Will Smith should lose his Oscar, and I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that he should.

Let the man keep his Oscar. Figure out some approximation of a resolution. And then, let’s all collectively move on.

Yours,

Clémence Michallon

Senior people writer