Everyone Involved in the Smith/Rock Oscars Debacle Seriously Fu*ked Up

Besides Denzel, Denzel was great

Elad Simchayoff
5 min readMar 29, 2022
Will Smith slaps Chris Rock at the 94th Acadamy Awards. Photo from social media.

I’m a child of the ’90s, meaning I’m a “Fresh Prince” child. I admire Will Smith. I even liked some of his — how should I put it — less than critically acclaimed movies; OK, OK, I admit. I liked Hancock. Guilty as charged. I just like Will Smith that much.

Being a Will Smith fan, it took me a few moments to properly digest his actions during the 94th Acadamy Awards. My initial response was: What on earth just happen? And as time passed, and as the ceremony continued, I couldn’t stop thinking about how disappointed I was by Smith. While he’s probably the one bearing most of the blame, everyone involved in the ‘slap that was heard around the world’ debacle managed to (to use Smith’s words) completely fu*k everything up so badly.

Chris Rock

I think that everyone could basically agree that the “GI Jane” bit was a very bad joke. It was bad because it wasn’t funny. ‘Ha-ha, here’s a woman with no hair, let's make fun of her’ — Not really sophisticated humor. It was bad because it wasn’t relevant. “GI Jane”, a 25-year-old movie, is that your reference? Really? Mostly, the joke was bad because it was insensitive.

--

--

Elad Simchayoff

I love writing about what I love. Israeli/British. Father, husband, dog person. Support me by joining Medium via this link: https://eladsi.medium.com/membership