The 94th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, March 27 was marked by Will Smith’s violent slap in the face of comedian Chris Rock, who made a joke about his wife’s haircut. Will Smith’s friend, actor Denzel Washington, gave him some wise advice…

Last Sunday’s Oscars ceremony was interrupted by Will Smith’s violent interference with comedian Chris Rock. Actor Will Smith slapped Chris Rock hard in the face because he joked about cutting his wife Jada Pinkett’s hair.

Mrs. Pinkett suffered from alopecia, Mr. Rock asked if she planned to act in the movie GI Jane 2 (the first episode of the film was played by actress Demi Moore, who had to shave her hair when she joined the army).

But few viewers watched what happened after this violent scene. Will Smith was mentored and supported by actors Bradley Cooper, Tyler Perry and Denzel Washington.

In his speech after accepting the award for Best Actor for his film The Williams Method , Will Smith broke down in tears and apologized. And it was then that he recounted the powerful words of Denzel Washington:

As Denzel Washington told me a few minutes ago, when you’re at the top is when you’re in the most danger, that’s when the Devil gets a hold of you.

He reiterated: “I know that I do my job, I have to endure jokes, rumors, lies. When I’m an actor, I have to be able to handle it if someone doesn’t respect me.” He then apologized to Chris Rock and all guests present.

This isn’t the first time Denzel Washington has given faith-filled advice. The son of an evangelical pastor and a devout Christian, he said in a 2017 interview, “pray for young people.” “I pray for your generation, (those born in the 2000s). You must share your faith without fear, without shame, the younger generation knows how to do this.”

Poor or angry Will Smith

Will Smith’s slap at the Oscars is an opportunity for us to understand more about gender stereotypes and the imbalance in the right to protect honor.

Source: Minh Hong for Vietcetera

Over the past few days, it seems like we’ve all been talking about how Will Smith slapped Chis Rock hard during the Oscars, one of the biggest events in the world of entertainment, in front of hundreds of people. guests, in front of the TV screen with hundreds of thousands of eyes watching.

Two female warriors: Jane and Jada
It all started with a joke from Chris. He compared the bald head of Jada – Smith’s wife – with the bald head of the main actor in “GI Jane”.

In this movie, Demi Moore plays the first girl in the history of special forces training. She shaved her head and overcame countless difficulties and challenges and discrimination on the battlefield, despite the fact that many commanding officers deliberately did not want her to succeed.

Not only did Jane overcome women’s physical limitations to stand on equal footing with her male teammates, she wasn’t even eliminated like most of the other male contestants. She survived until the end of the grueling training session and completed a dangerous rescue mission.

Source: Variety

For Jada Pinkett-Smith, since 2018, she has suffered from a hair loss disease called alopecia. This disease occurs in more than 140 million people around the world. Only recently did she have the courage to publicly share about this.

As a singer and actor, appearance is extremely important. So when she saw her hair gradually falling out in patches, Jada and her family went through difficult days, “my whole body trembled in fear” – as she confided.

In July 2021, Jada was strong enough to post a photo of herself with a bald head on Instagram. She no longer hides from her illness but finds a way to accept it as a part of life. At the Critics Choice Awards event, she even proudly wore a sparkling diamond bracelet on her naked head.

When someone else’s hurt is made fun of

Both of the above women, Jane and Jada, are resilient warriors in their fierce battles. They are strong, proud, and refuse to back down. Perhaps that’s why some people think that Chris Rock “honored” Jada by comparing her to Jane and jokingly said: “Jada, I love you so much. I look forward to watching GI Jane part 2.”

However, the comparison becomes lame when we look deeper into the cause of a hairless head. Jane voluntarily shaved her head, willingly sacrificing her feminine characteristics so she could live comfortably in the battle to prove herself.

Meanwhile, Jada is the victim of an illness she never wanted. Her femininity was mercilessly taken away by illness. The fact that Jada accepts, openly, appreciates, and even honors her bald head does not mean that her bald head has become a normal part of life to the point of being joked about.

In other words, what Jane “gave up” was what Jada “lost”. Jane has a choice and knows the price she must pay. Jada had no choice, no right to bid. She could only watch as her femininity was taken away from her by illness.

Source: The New York Times

Therefore, bringing others out to make jokes is an act full of uncertainty. We can pretend to have a limp to tease a friend who stumbles, but it would be rude and insensitive to tease someone with a broken or paralyzed leg. That’s why my boyfriend mischievously said that he wanted to see those people who were laughing so loudly apologize (of course he was only joking, and we explained that I fell off my skateboard).

Thus, each person around us is likely a warrior with struggles and wounds that we are unaware of. That’s why bodyshaming is so deeply hurtful. Behind the SAME “defects” are DIFFERENT pains.

Even if the pain is the same, each person has a different pain threshold. For some people, a little fat teasing is okay, but for others, being made fun of about their fatness is no different from drowning them in black mud right after they struggled to save themselves from drowning. For them, that joke is not funny but is a form of mental violence.

It seems that Chris Rock did not know that Jada was sick. His story shows the challenges in the profession of comedians. They have to carefully research the characters they want to joke about.

They have to be extremely skillful and smart so that their jokes don’t go beyond the limit, so that the person being teased can’t get angry, or even get very angry but still laugh. “Comedians” differ from “clowns” in their professional ability to see that fragile line.

When women’s honor was reclaimed by men through violence, and it continues to be so

Honor is a form of measurement of human value. That’s why, since ancient times, we have always sought to protect and redeem lost honor, sometimes at very high prices, even with our own lives.

A typical example is duels, where violence is pushed to the extreme with the death of one of the two opponents. Honor is so important that we are willing to pay the price of our lives to have that honor restored.

Historically, those who had the right and obligation to defend honor through dueling were almost always men. In many cultures, women restore honor by killing themselves, while men restore honor by killing others.

Based on a true story, the movie “The Last Duel” – describes a rape case that occurred in the 14th century among the French aristocracy. When he learned that his wife was murdered by a farmer, When the owner named Le Gris harmed him, the knight Carrouges challenged him to a duel.

The contest became such a hot topic that the French royal family had to arrange a schedule so that the king (who could not hide his excitement) could directly attend. watch the match.

On the day of the event, Marguerite stepped onto a high platform set up in the middle of the arena. She looked down, where her husband ceremonially bowed his head, asking to restore his wife’s honor.

Outwardly proud but trembling inside, Marguerite had just been told by her husband that her life depended on the outcome of the contest. If her husband loses and dies at the hands of his opponent, Marguerite naturally becomes a slanderer.

Her feet were already cuffed. She will be stripped of her clothes, and the high platform where she stands will immediately be set on fire and become a funeral pyre.

Would Jada want her honor restored by such a method? Source Variety

In Marguerite’s story, her honor and life depend on her husband’s strength in the competition arena.

In ancient times, women were the property of their husbands. When a woman loses her honor, that pain is the husband’s pain. Their honor is the husband’s honor and must be protected by the husband.

When Marguerite tearfully told her husband about being raped, the knight Carrouges cried out indignantly: “Why does he humiliate ME?”

Fortunately, in civilized society, women can completely protect their honor. And honor does not have to be redeemed through violence.

Jada most likely feels proud to have a husband who is willing to risk everything to deal with the person who makes her sad. Many women support Smith because they want their men to prove their love by being willing to fight with others.

Although women are more equal and stronger, that does not prevent some people from still wanting men to “practice religion” for them.

This sounds reasonable at first glance. But the discourse of “violence in the name of love” is always a double-edged sword.

When violence is no longer a SOLUTION but becomes a TOOL for communication, the person receiving it can be both the person we want to humiliate and it can be ourselves. If the knife is used as a working tool, we must be careful to avoid cutting our fingers.

We may be unlucky and become caught in the intersection between street violence and domestic violence. That’s why Irish poet Brendan Behan once said: “When two men fight over women, they just want to fight, not necessarily want the woman.”

Finally, we can also infer the opposite and ask the question, witnessing her husband’s behavior, would Jada want her honor to be restored by such a method? If given the chance to do it again, how would she choose to react instead of using violence? If she became an active element in this story, instead of a silent character standing between two men “dueling” on her behalf, would she have a better solution?

Gender stereotype “men are protectors”

It must be affirmed that Will Smith protecting and defending his wife is completely legitimate. That is what we have a responsibility to show to the loved ones in our lives. What is worth mentioning here is to what extent and HOW to defend and protect.

In most cases, violence is only acceptable in SELF-DEFENSE. That’s why the Oscar organization announced, and most celebrities commenting on this story, affirmed that Will Smith was wrong to use violence. He himself also apologized to Chris Rock for his unrestrained actions and said that he was extremely embarrassed.

In his Oscar acceptance speech right after the slap, Smith said that the father character he plays (the father of two top tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams) is a “protector”. my family fiercely.” It’s easy to see that he used this image to explain his actions. He is just a husband and father trying to protect the honor of his loved ones.

Chris Rock’s joke initially made Smith laugh. However, seeing his wife’s discomfort, he went up on stage to beat Chris. That slap was probably not because he thought it was too much of a joke in the first place, but because his WIFE thought it was too much. It’s also possible that that slap was partly because he felt he was wrong to laugh.

It’s legitimate that Smith feels obligated to protect his wife, but the solution he chooses in anger is an expression of toxic masculinity.

Instead of using different methods such as joking back to death, sarcasm, criticism, maybe even cursing back, calling for a boycott, or even more extreme, going on stage to take advantage of that opportunity to spread awareness about his wife’s illness and asked Chris to apologize… he chose a solution that would come back to DAMAGE him.

Source: The New York Times

Masculinities such as “violence” or “strongness” can become toxic when they harm the man himself. For Will Smith, as the veteran Denzel Washington said, that harm took the form of a “devil” that came at the “golden moment” of Smith’s life. That “devil” made his night of victory have moments that looked like defeat.

His glory with the prestigious Oscar statue was overshadowed. Not many people talk about his talent, but people only talk about his actions being a little or a lot wrong. Oscar established an official investigation committee. You may be ostracized. His speech was also seen as an excuse for using violence in the name of love.

Even the real-life father figure Richard Williams, whose name he mentioned to explain his actions, also spoke out against it. In his apology to Chris Rock, Will Smith had to admit that “love has no place for violence”.

Try to judge further, from a psychological perspective, both Will Smith and his wife may also be victims of mental health instability. He and his wife must have endured a lot with Jada’s illness and their relationship being joked about in the press over the years.

Especially when Chris Rock is not doing this for the first time. In 2016, Jada did not attend the Oscars to protest the lack of black faces on the nomination list. Chris at that time joked that Jada didn’t come because she wasn’t invited, that her boycotting the Oscars was like him boycotting singer Rihanna’s underwear, it was irrelevant, because hey, “who invited? ”.

It’s very possible that those pressures caused Smith to violently pop the switch right in front of hundreds of thousands of watching eyes. We should not forget that men are inherently pressured not to express their emotions or show weakness. That oppression and oppression makes many men look like jerks.

All of these things contribute to the bleak picture of men’s mental health, contributing to becoming a big reason why the suicide rate of men is always 2-4 times higher than that of women in almost every country. nation in the world.

Why are there still people supporting Will Smith?

Instead of Smith, let’s open a broader perspective, beyond the gender lens, by getting acquainted with Cyrell.

Cyrell appeared in season 4 of the Australian reality TV show “Marriage at first sight”. She is famous for her outspokenness, hot-temperedness, fierceness, determination, willingness to win and lose, and willingness to fight to the end. Therefore, her nickname is Cyclone Cyrell, which means “stormy” Cyrell.

An Australian article at that time ran the following headline: “It’s hard to be Cyrell’s husband, but she’s the friend we all secretly long for.”

That “longing” is probably because no matter who we are, male or female, we are always people who long to be loved and protected. Maybe we don’t want to be Cyrell at all, but we want to have by our side a Cyrell who never abandons his friends, and is willing to show off at those who hurt us.

If you support Will Smith, ask yourself, put in his position and circumstances, in front of the eyes of millions of viewers, do we really want to do that? | Source: Unsplash

Maybe, Cyrell is the image that there are times when we wish we could just say “transform” and become. So that in that moment, we can overcome the seemingly cramped limits of civilized values, so that we can ignore our bravery and listen to our instincts, so that we can rush forward to follow the call of God. in the wilderness, letting go of the frustration of being bullied, freely scratching and biting the dead man to release his anger.

If that’s true, then the question is, are we sure we will never bodysham someone? If we accidentally bodyshame, will we accept that we will be beaten to make the other person angry? If not, then am I just wanting Cyrell to avenge the memories he once suffered? And Smith’s slap actually says more about our own “bald head” than his wife’s?

It’s also possible that Cyrell is an image that we once had. We are “visited by the devil” and called by name. In the chaos, we used violence as a communication tool, in the name of love, we did stupid things, even to the people we love. Cyrell makes part of that sin seem justified, even if only a weak justification.

Therefore, to know what we really think about Will Smith’s slap, we should not ask “is he right or wrong”. The safety of an observer, standing outside of judgment, does not necessarily speak to the fundamental values ​​of each of us.

If you support Will Smith, ask yourself, putting yourself in his position and situation, in front of the eyes of millions of viewers, do you really WANT to do that?