So did anyone watch the Oscars??

[shadowkat]

Did you watch the Oscars last night? I did, and it was really boring until Chris Rock came on, and then it got weird.

Depending on where you happened to live and which ABC affiliate was televising it - you saw various takes. In NYC we got the whole thing more or less, except it was muted when they started to curse each other out. Mother got nothing after the slap, her screen froze. And some folks just got a delay or a blank screen, while Japan and Australia got it all - live and in living color.

What happened, in case you are living under a rock, have no access to a television set or social media, didn't watch the Oscars...don't have to work with other folks in an office...basically a hermit in the hills somewhere (in which case can I join you?).

Chris Rock (a Black American stand-up comedian who hails from West PA and NYC, and specializes in insult humor) got up and once again, made fun of Jada Picket-Smith, who has been his go-to for jokes the last ten years now at the Oscars and elsewhere. Last night he made a fly-by joke..."Oh, Jada, you look lovely, sporting the GI Jane look for that next movie huh, love you as always." Or something to that effect.

Everyone laughed, but Jada, who visibly cringed, rolled her eyes, and looked upset - on the verge of tears. She had shaved her head due to an autoimmune illness that was causing her to lose her hair. Her husband, Will Smith laughed and then looked over, exchanged a few words with his wife, got up, and smacked Chris Rock.

Rock trying to make light of it: "So Will Smith just came up and smacked the shit out of me. Dude, it was just a joke about Jada and GI Jane - honestly, I like Jada -"

Smith: "Get my wife's name out of your fucking ass mouth!"

Rock: "Okay - I won't say Jada -"

Smith: Get my wife's name out of your fucking mouth!"

Rock: Okay, okay...I won't say her name any longer. Well, this evening just suddenly got really interesting. Presenting the award for...

At the break, Denzel Washington and Tyler Perry approached Smith and talked to him, they also sat with Jada, and Benedict Cumbatch talked to him and hugged him.

That's the summary of what basically happened.

We chatted about the Oscars at work today, since most of my co-workers also saw them - and most of my co-workers are either Caribbean or African-American heritage. Their reactions were split. Most felt that Smith was out of line, and T stated that her estimation of him had gone down considerably - she felt it was immature. AA stated that his favorite comedian is Chris Rock.

Also, knowing Rock's brand of comedy - he's an insult comedian, which as T pointed out is the popular brand of comedy in the US. It's used a lot at the Oscars. Everyone from Don Rickles to Johnny Carson to Bob Hope to Joan Rivers to Chris Rock has used it. Amy Schuamer's brand is more self-deprecating comedy, but both Wanda Sykes and Regina were utilizing jokes that were insult comedy.

I'm admittedly biased, since I don't like insult comedy. It makes me cringe. And outside of Schuamer's two jokes - one about the Spiderman outfit and the other about the seat savers, I didn't think the jokes were funny.

As I told my co-workers and folks on FB and Twitter - I don't think we're in a position to judge. We don't have all the information and we don't know what was going on behind the scenes. What I do know - makes me think that Jada had had it with Rock making her the brunt of his jokes, and everyone laughing. And made her husband, Will Smith, aware of it. She was there to support him - and he'd initially laughed at the joke. She got upset - and he reacted. Rock was out of line - and shouldn't have made the joke which was in poor taste. (Although he does that - a lot.) I don't like a lot of stand-up comedy - because it tends to be cruel by nature. (If you've never seen it - I strongly recommend Hannah Gadfrey's Nannette which kind of rips stand-up comedy a new one.)

Also, he didn't hit him that hard. He's fine. There wasn't a bruise.

At any rate, Will was obviously upset and regretted what he did - because he did a tearful apology with his acceptance speech for Best Actor. How much of it was real, and how much was acted, isn't clear.

I felt he deserved the win for King Richard, he was unrecognizable in the role. Also, they shouldn't take it away from him - how many Oscars does Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Mel Gibson, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and various others of that ilk have? Plus the Oscars aren't for humanitarian achievement in the arts, they are about what performances or films members of the academy of motion arts and sciences deem to be the best.

But at the end of the day...this quote I picked up from Twitter resonates..

My opinion is that it isn’t always needed. Yet, for some reason that doesn’t always keep me from voicing it.

A co-worker was upset that we were talking about this instead of more important things. That it was 1% problem. To which, I stated, yes, but, this is more fun to talk about. The Ukraine is depressing, homeless situation, all our problems, the pandemic, etc - it's depressing and we can't do anything about it. Why not take a break from it - and talk about this?

We can go back to talking about the Ukraine tomorrow - no, actually, you can, I prefer to continue to ignore it as much as I can - living in NYC, surrounded by Russian and Ukrainian immigrants.

***

The Oscars themselves...

Well, I only saw four of the five animated films. I'd not have given it to Encanto. Encanto was okay, but I liked Raya and the Last Dragon, along with Flee far better. (I think I'm the wrong demographic for Encanto, Luca, and Mitchell's vs. the Machines - in that I'm over 50 with no children.)

Of the best picture nominees, which I saw all but four of, saw: Don't Look Now, West Side Story, Dune, Power of the Dog, Coda, King Richard...did not see Licorice Pizza, Drive My Car (tried, got bored), Nightmare Alley and Belfast. (Geeze there were a lot of Best Picture nominees).

I'd have picked Power of the Dog. It still plays with my head. Coda is, well two movies. One is a nice run-of-the-mill feel good movie, the other is a compelling story about a family of death fishermen struggling to make their way in the world doing what the love. I wanted to watch the second movie, the first one kept getting in the way. So in my opinion, Coda is a deeply flawed film. I think it will be forgotten in ten years like Children of a Lesser God, and Power of the Dog will be taught in film schools.

Dune got a lot of awards - I wouldn't have given Dune either best score or cinematography - that I'd have given to Power of the Dog. I found Dune to be a bit on the dark and ponderous side.

No quibbles with the acting awards. I've not seen The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which was a huge upset, both Kristen Stewart and Olivia Coleman were shortlisted to win. Another huge upset was Coda - people thought Power of the Dog.

I do have quibbles with documentary feature. I'd have given it to Flee, or I'd have given animated to Flee. Maybe even Foreign film, since I got bored during Drive My Car.


I was not at all surprised when Billie English and Finneas won for Time to Kill. After I heard the entry - I knew it would win. It was haunting and the only song I remembered. All the James Bond songs tend to - mainly because Bond theme songs are usually excellent. That and Disney. I talked to mother about this...

Mother: But the guy who sang the Spanish song from Encanto was hot.
ME: What did you think of the song?
Mother: I didn't really care that much about it - he was just really attractive.
Me: So you want to give the award to the guy who sang the song, because he was hot?
Mother: Well...no...but...



See? All of this is so subjective. You really can't compare them. They are kind of fun though in a way. I wonder if there will ever come a time in which we don't need or want awards shows, and people just make art for the fun of it? With no need for validation, awards, or accolades - just to share something they made or created with others.

Perhaps when this happens...life will be easier for all of us?

One can hope, right?

Comments

[spiffikins]

On the Oscar thing - I didn't watch them, but I did hear about and watched the clip.

I think one of my friends on FB said it best - "everyone involved behaved awfully"

I really, really dislike Chris Rock - I don't find him funny, and will turn the channel if he comes on tv. But - that being said - he is a one-trick pony and you *know* what you will get, if you hire him to do stand up/host a show - he will insult people. That's his thing and nobody should be surprised when he makes digs at people in the audience.

There were a couple of discussions on FB today where the person posting was 100% supportive of Will Smith - their logic being that nobody ever stands up for black women - and so Will Smith should be praised for defending his wife. That person also created a narrative where the shot of Will laughing at the joke - was (at least in their mind) - that he was laughing at the fact that he knew he was about to slap Rock silly for what he had said and not laughing at the joke.

I don't know where that person came up with that theory - but man were they angry when anyone questioned this narrative they had come up with?

Personally, I think it went down just as it seemed - Will laughed, then Jada said something or he saw that she was *really* upset - and overreacted - poorly.

Do I believe his tear-filled apologies? Well, I'm a cynic, and he's an actor :D

[shadowkat]

As I told a friend on FB who had a similar theory? We really have no clue - all we can do is speculate. I don't know what Jada said to Smith prior to his slap. Just that I saw him look at her, and lean over and she said something. Then he got up and smacked him. And I know Rock was using her as the brunt of his jokes for a very long time - and they'd asked him to stop more than once. And that Smith did apologize on social media last night.

But that's it. (shrugs). I think he was wrong to slap him of course. But so did he. I'm just not clear on why he did and what led to it. There's a lot of information that I'm not privy to and never will be.

[spiffikins]

Exactly - nobody but Will and Jada know what they communicated between the two of them and nobody but Will knows exactly what he was thinking (or not thinking?) when he did it.

I just have to roll my eyes at people on FB turning this into some huge statement for support of ~cause~ - putting their own interpretations into it and spinning it to support whatever they want it to support.

[shadowkat]

It's kind of split on social media at the moment. Although, apparently Rock knew about Jada's condition and more than likely she told her husband that he was targeting her yet again, and wondered if it would ever stop. (Rock had made her the brunt of his jokes repeatedly - often targeting her over everyone else. I don't know why.)

[spiffikins]

Definitely if Rock had been asked previously to lay off - and if he did know about her condition - that makes him even more of an asshole.

Still - I don't agree with Smith's response - there are better ways to make your point.

[shadowkat]

I agree...yet, I'm of two minds on this? I honestly don't know what I would have done in his shoes. I'm not sure any of us do? I mean - it was an emotional response, not a calculated one. I don't care what folks say - I honestly think this was an emotional in the moment response to a bullying.

Standup Comics can be bullies (if you've not seen it? I highly recommend Hannah Gadsby's Nannette - where she spells this out in a stand up comedy routine that skewers stand up comedians). And a slap isn't the same as a punch. He wasn't injured. And it wasn't that bad of a slap - it didn't look from my angle. I rewound it. It was also fast. I thought for a while that it was staged.

Apparently Rock had been told of Jada's condition while he was interviewing her for a documentary on Black Hair. So...that's even worse. I'm thinking she may have told Will that - when he leaned over and she spoke to him. I also think she kicked her husband under the table.

So, Rock kind of was asking for it.

[atpo_onm]

Also, he didn't hit him that hard.

I tuned in after that, in fact shortly before Will Smith did his acceptance speech for King Richard, so only heard about it yesterday-- it even made the news on the PBS Newshour!

Without knowing, as you said, all the details, I have no problem with what Will did. Indeed, it was a slap, not a punch. It was a warning, not an attempt to do injury. One of the things with insult comedy is that you never attack someone who can't insult you back in kind. It's sort of a, "Yeah, you're a dick, but so am I" thing (with guys, anyway), and is meant in fun, an acknowledgement that we're all human beings, and on some level we're all screwed up. YMMV.

But here... Rock joked about Smith's wife, and about something that she felt vulnerable about. And-- did it in front of millions of people.

And you correctly point out that...

Also, they shouldn't take it away from him - how many Oscars does Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Mel Gibson, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and various others of that ilk have?

Exactly.

*******

I agree on Billie Eilish's song for No Time To Die. It was stunning.

So, your top picks would be King Richard and Power of the Dog? I'll keep it in mind for when the DVDs become available.

[shadowkat]

Smith did publicaly apologize on social media yesterday and stated he shouldn't have slapped him. (He shouldn't have - there were other ways to handle it, better ways.) But it was also out of character for Smith, and I'm thinking there's a lot we don't know. For example - what did Jada say to Will to make him go up and do it? And why was Rock constantly making Jada the brunt of his jokes?

**

Yes, of the movies that I've seen? King Richard and Power of the Dog were the most interesting in the Best Picture category. Also recommend Flee, Dune (for the visuals mostly), and CODA for the father's performance, which was amazing.

[cactuswatcher]

Maybe insult humor has gone a bit too far. About the time I was in grad school celebrity roasts (with a charity in the background) were very popular. One of my roommates in college just loved them, so I saw a couple. Most of it was pretty bland caricature or generic jokes, but some of it sounded very personal, more personal than it should have been. Maybe in those days it was all run past the person to be roasted, but maybe not. At least at the roasts the "guest of honor" got to make jokes at the expense of the others at the end of the evening.

If I'd be asked to sit on a jury for Smith assaulting Rock, I'd probably vote not guilty, even though it was not a great thing he did. Making fun of a suffering woman is pretty low, so I can't say I care for either man's behavior.

[shadowkat]

I felt the same.

I think insult humor has gone too far. Trump utilized in The Apprentice and ran with it - winning the Presidency as a result. And Simon Cowell also ran with it and made American Idol a huge success. It's behind 98% of the reality series, and center of many sitcoms. Roseanne is pretty much insult humor as is The Connors, Seinfield, Everybody Love's Raymond, so many.
And more than one stand-up comedian uses it.

The better comedians don't rely on it at all. And the smarter better comedies don't tend to rely on it quite as much. But most comedy comes from a place of pain, and makes fun of pain.
But there are degrees or limits and lines that shouldn't be crossed.

I find it difficult to harshly judge Smith for this - because I'd have wanted to smack Chris Rock. So I'd find him innocent, even if I don't agree with how he handled it.

[iddewes]

It has been on Facebook a lot.
Someone I follow posted a quote from Terry Pratchett in relation to the joke, which I agree with: Satire is meant to ridicule power. If you are laughing at people who are hurting, it's not satire, it's bullying.

Of course I do not think Smith handled it the right way, he should have spoken to Chris Rock afterwards, really. But I think it was just a visceral thing. Alopecia is very distressing, and especially for women, because let's face it, if you see a bald man you barely notice it, but a bald woman, you will immediately think there is a health problem. So he has probably seen just how distressed she has been by it, and this seemed like a low blow, especially as apparently Chris Rock KNEW she had alopecia and wasn't just doing a funky haircut.

[shadowkat]

I love the quote - I posted the quote on Twitter and FB, although I don't really have a following on either. (Nor do I want one - both are nutty marketing platforms).

I was talking to mother about it - and she said most likely what happened was Jada leaned over and told Will: "He's doing it again. And everyone's laughing again. At my expense. Will this never end.." or something to that effect. I'd have wanted to smack him too. I honestly think most people would - if he'd done that to someone they loved or to them.

I didn't know Rock knew she had it and told the joke anyhow. That's just mean.

[iddewes]

I was told that he interviewed her for his Black Hair documentary and she told him then.

[shadowkat]

I did not know that. That puts a completely different spin on it. I agree with the folks on Twitter who said Rock was asking to be slapped - he was. My god. He did that joke after interviewing her for a documentary and knowing full well what she was going through? Ugh.

[yourlibrarian]

On the subject of the Oscars, I felt that they only went halfway to solving their problems with the runtime and the incident just highlighted what they really need to do, which is not make it live. They need to run it about half an hour to an hour behind, depending on what the editors need to do.

I had assumed that the awards they gave before they went live would simply be announced, the way they often have with technical awards at the separate show. But in fact they just cut out the tedious parts -- they still ran clips for all the nominees, then cut to the winner doing part of (or all of) their speech.

And frankly I think they should do that for all the awards. Because the thing I haven't heard about yet is how incredibly inconsiderate Smith was in hogging all that time with his acceptance speech. It was clear near the end that what he'd wanted to say had petered out and he was just dallying.

And right now what is obvious is that if you're up for a very popular award such as Best Director or Best Actor, they will let you run on without cutting you off. Give everyone a minute to respond and then move on. If someone runs on for 4 or 5 minutes, they get one minute of their speech broadcast and that's it.

Plus they need to cut out all those montages, the musical performances and the gimmicky sketches. Give 30 seconds of each nominated song and that's it. Have an opening monologue and maybe a few jokes for the host to do in later intros and also cut out all the tired banter among presenters. They can absolutely cut the run time and avoid the show being derailed by other stuff.

[shadowkat]

They actually did do it that way in the 1930s and 20s before they started telecasting the awards. In the good old days of lore, folks just went to a fancy party, got gussied up, fans lined up outside took photos, and got the fashion show. But it wasn't televised. And the news reported after the fact who won. It was boring. But short.

IF they did that now, no one would watch. Might as well stop telecasting it - like they did a few years with the Daytime Emmy's. They just had people show up, pick up an award, give a nice speech, and go home. It wasn't televised - because why bother, no one would care.

You're forgetting why the Entertainment Awards shows are telecast.

1. Advertise all the films nominated - sell the films to folks so that they will go see them. The Oscars has made a lot of little known films wildly popular. CODA will get a lot more viewings, and Apple TV more subscribers because of clips shown from it. Same with Time to Kill - Billy English sold the song and the movie. Same with Encanto. The point is to sell those films.
2. Advertise the songs, and give singers/song-writers/dancers a chance to perform them and sell them, so people will buy them.
3. Showcase various fashion designers - it's a fashion show
4. Entertain the viewers so they will stick around and see the clips of films, etc and want to see them.

Think of entertainment awards shows as a means to market and sell and promote products - in this case film.

The point is to entertain people, and sell them something in process. No one cares about speeches and awards.

[svgurl]

For once, we didn't watch the Oscars and then all of a sudden, found out what happened when social media blew up. I'm with you on not liking insult humor- it's just not very funny to me and comedians who get off on being controversial and then try to claim that the "woke crowds" are silencing them are even more annoying, but that's another topic all together. I don't pay much attention to Chris Rock, but I definitely remember disliking Joan Rivers back in the day.

There's plenty of ways to make fun of someone without attacking something they cannot control. I am of two minds, because I can't say that Rock didn't deserve it but at the same time, I don't like what it did for Will Smith. And of course they shouldn't take away his Oscar. That would be absolutely ridiculous.

A co-worker was upset that we were talking about this instead of more important things.
I really don't get this attitude. People can talk about serious, life changing topics all the time.

[shadowkat]

I completely agree with you on all of the above.

I am of two minds, because I can't say that Rock didn't deserve it but at the same time, I don't like what it did for Will Smith. And of course they shouldn't take away his Oscar. That would be absolutely ridiculous.

I'm also of two minds about it. [Honestly, I wanted to smack Chris Rock. There's a reason I don't do comedy clubs any longer, or watch Stand-up. ] But, it was the wrong thing to do - and it unfortunately hurt Will Smith - who deserved and earned that award, and had worked hard for it. I'm hoping it blows over soon for his sake.

[kaisa]

Bullying happens because the observers do not publicly state their disapproval. This was the only efficient way to stop the bully. It is not humor to make rude fun of someone's illness, that's simply bullying.

All throughout the history bullies have justified their actions with 'oh, that was just a joke, don't you have a sense of humor?', and that is a really bad excuse. Bullying is not humor, and if you can't tell the difference between the two, you are a bad comedian.

This makes Will Smith a hero, not just an actor.

[shadowkat]

Except he did laugh at the joke, and only when his wife pointed it out to him - did he take action. So, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call him a hero, but I do agree Rock was asking for it. I wanted to smack him.