Uncensored video of Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Oscars

Anyway, I don't see what Will did as a big deal; Rock was punching down with his joke, so Smith punched him down, you know?

So tough but let wifey cheat on him for years

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Bitch slap that barely phased Rock.

Rock 2-0

I've now seen an extended version of the incident (I wasn't watching the broadcast), and that was a long walk to the stage. Plenty of time for him to consider what he was about to do. Crazy. Never really had an opinion about Smith before, he was always just "there" as far as I was concerned, but this is a bad look to say the least.

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Appearance is reality. Even if it was scripted, the "reality" is that he hit him. If that was a bit, then the bit bombed.

I did find it odd that Smith appeared to be suppressing a smirk when he yelled F-bombs from his seat (looked a bit like Duper's Delight), but people act weird in stressed situations. It is very tempting to judge non-verbal behaviors as false, but genuine behavior can often seem false.

It is interesting that the acceptance speech was re-crafted(?) as an apologia for the strike. "I just defend strong and fragile people" yada, yada. He apologized to the Academy, but not to Rock, so it was a non-apology-apology (i.e., the sort of thing one would expect from a narcissist).



At any rate, I don't think that this was a scripted moment.

Staged? The optics of that? For the world to see?

Do we know to a certainty that Rock knew about her having alopecia? If you have sources, feel free to share.

If the Rock did know, was the joke a warrant for violence ("Fighting Words")?

Wanda Sykes recently made fun of LeBron James going bald and presumably his alopecia is just as medical as Jada's (i.e., people go bald - many women wear wigs). Why is it a medical condition when a woman goes bald, but an amusement when a man does?

But, let's say that Rock knew and that making fun of female alopecia amounts to "fighting words." It's not a double-standard or, if it is, it is a righteous one. Do you, as a 53-year-old-grown-assed-man at an event the represents the best of your trade and at which you have been honored in the past and at which you are presently nominated for honors, pick this moment to stride up to a comedian to strike him across the face?

All I know is that if I snuck into an adult movie theater and How The West Was Won was playing, I'd be a little disappointed.

At age 7?

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Jada revealed four years ago that she has alopecia, so Smith didn't really need to apologize to Rock, as I see it.

I don't generally buy the whole "toxic masculinity" thing, but this is a total toxic masculinity thing. Culture of honor nonsense. "Keep my wife's name out of your mouth" - speaking of Jada as a possession (the honor of his wife has been offended). Then there's the rambling acceptance speech where he bangs on about protecting "strong" but "fragile" women.

Interesting to see that when I was sleeping one of the highest-paid actors in America punched some dude I've never heard about before.

tl;dr why he hit him? Initially, I thought Smith's wife cheated on him with the dude, but now it seems Chris Rock just said some joke about her?

Anyway, it's much more important that the actual best film of the year got the Oscar it deserved.

I understand why Smith took offense to what Rock said since he was essentially making fun of his wife's medical condition, but there's a time and place for everything and smacking him in the face on live tv and getting visibly upset was going out of line and he could've handled the situation much better.

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I don't know... the slap still looks fake to me (like two kids play fighting).

And the reactions don't seem natural - there's not a hint of a pause on Chris's part, and even if a slap didn't hurt, a person would still be stunned momentarily just by the element of surprise - and when we get hit in the face it's just reflex to put your hand to your face (a combination of protection in case more is coming and as an act to sooth and inspect the area attacked via touch even if it's not necessarily painful).

Also, both are smirking immediately afterward. Such a brazen attack would need real anger behind it if it was real, yet Smith looks like he's trying not to laugh as he walks away.

A smashing joke.

The jokes are great though...


"Why did he use an open hand? Paper beats Rock."


"Will Smith saw Jada wasn't laughing and had a "What Would Tupac Do?" moment."

Welcome to hyperreality. What's really happening? I don't have a clue. I just know that modern media messaging leaves us in a state of constant state of stimulation, agitation, fear, anger, and confusion. I hear that the "other side" is evil and lying to me, that the stakes are apocalyptic (I am not sure who is at fault, but democracy is definitely at stake - everyone is saying that), that the stakes, therefore, justify the means, and that I am a sucker for believing the left or the right or the establishment line or the conspiracy theory. We have photoshops, Deep Fakes, autotuned singers, robocallers, and phishing attacks. It's amazing we believe anything anymore.

1. It's not what you know, it's what you can prove. What you can prove has use premises acceptable to your hearers. These premises will basically reflect a gated media narrative. Thus, even if you're right about this, you're wrong.
2. Cui bono? Does this really help Will Smith? Does it really help Chris Rock? At most, we can speculate that the stunt was engineered to help flagging ratings of an increasingly irrelevant awards show. The theory "there's no such thing as bad publicity" would be the order of the day. We're getting memes from this, but this also lowers the decorum of the Oscars even more. Would the Academy really want to give itself a black eye for ratings?
3. The simplest explanation, the surface explanation, should have presumption unless and until you have strong evidence to the contrary.
4. It's OK to note that something looks "weird" or even that something is "wrong" without committing to a firm denial of the surface explanation. Your denial will require an explanation and if you really haven't done the math, you will start conjecturing wildly to prove a firm counterclaim. I agree with you that it looks weird, but I am not prepared to accept a burden of proof to establish that it was not a "real" event. I don't know.
5. Accept that weird stuff happens, that sometimes people look unnatural and suspicious in pressure situations. I once had a person speculate to colleagues that I was gay after grabbing my ass in a photocopy room. I didn't really know what was happening or what to do about it in the moment, so I kept my cool and walked away. In his eyes, that was proof I was gay (I guess I was supposed to assault him or scream or something). The only thing I regret about the incident is feeling shame at the thought of being misidentified as gay. Has it occurred to you that this might look fake to you, in part, because this is the first time we have seen these two people in an honest moment that wasn't scripted and produced and polished?