Why Will Smith Should Apologize To Chris Rock

The Oscars are, by definition, a long night. And it’s axiomatic that there are hangovers after a long night out. Then there are those evenings that produce monumental aftershocks and reassessments. Will Smith’s sudden actions on stage shortly before he won the award for Best Actor will ensure that the 2022 Oscars will enter the history books in the latter category.

According to the dueling rules of the 17th and 18th centuries — when dueling sort of had its vogue in Europe and in its North American colonies — an open-handed slap across the face was thought of as the beginning, not the end, of a challenge between gentlemen. During those centuries, and well into the 19th century in the French colonial cities of New Orleans and Mobile, the challenge proceeded toward the wounding and/or death of the disputants, at which point the elusive commodity of “satisfaction” was claimed to have been obtained. Obtained by whom and at what cost was, itself, a matter of dispute. It depended on who was left lying on the ground, and in what state.

The point is that “satisfaction” in the very short term is, apparently, the commodity that Mr. Smith was attempting to obtain by slapping Chris Rock full on, with force, in the middle of Mr. Rock’s hostly emcee duties, which, by every metric of every awards show in history, includes some gentle, and some not-so-gentle, roasting of prominent audience members. In other words, what Rock was doing belongs to the DNA of the event. The reality of the Oscars is, no matter the host, if you’re well-known — and the Smiths are very well-known — you can expect that the presenter and his or her writers will find you. (Ahoy out there, Ricky Gervais! Bit of advice: If Mr. Smith is in your audience, you might want to drop any material you might have developed about Mrs. Smith from the interstitial monologues.)

True, also, is the fact that Rock’s too-swift joke about Jada Pinkett Smith was a bad one. It was bad in several ways, most prominently in that the point of its spear, so to speak, was directed at a lady’s appearance, and of an aspect of her appearance, alopecia, with which that lady has publicly shared difficulties. That’s a no-no — not just today, in woke culture, but forever, in woke or un-woke times, any way you cut it. Second, it wasn’t a successful joke because its a priori requirements — the knowledge of Demi Moore’s costume and make-up for the quite forgettable GI Jane film — is a mighty skinny premise. Rock himself seems to have acknowledged this with his “I-love-you-but…” delivery of the bomb.

But the fact of Smith’s sudden, shocking blow to Mr. Rock having occurred during the Oscars’ broadcast — after all, in front of a global audience of millions — means that satisfaction of any sort (other than the award for Smith’s fine portrayal of the occasionally harsh Richard Williams) is going to be very difficult for Mr. Smith to obtain from this event. Smith seemed to recognize that very large irony as it settled on his shoulders during the lurching, tattered remains of his acceptance speech for the Best Actor award, attempting to excuse himself on loyalty-to-family grounds, and, along the way, explaining his knowledge of the industrial code of learning to accept all barbs and to move on. To his credit, he actually apologized to his fellow actors, and, in a smart bit of self-awareness and possibly self-preservation, to the Academy. Mr. Smith is anything but dumb, which is, in a further irony, why he’s such a good actor. His obvious intelligence, on camera and off, are legion, which is why it’s an especially human predicament that he’s in. It’s also among the many reasons that the audience — and many in the wings — initially thought that the assault was scripted.

Notably, the one person not name checked in Smith’s apology was Mr. Rock. It was unusual, and given the list of people to whom Smith felt moved to apologize, it came off as pointed.

Chris Rock is hardly Agamemnon, but in his momentary rage Will Smith did a fair impersonation of the disastrously impulsive Achilles, and after that moment, the formidable wise man Denzel Washington stepped in to play the father figure who, judging from the mile-wide grin across his face as he walked Mr. Smith offstage, could not contain his amusement at improbability of the dust-up. Offhand, Washington issued the event’s enduringly wise, statesmanly epitaph: In your highest moment, the Devil comes for you.

Arguably, in the moments after the broadcast was derailed, it was Rock who recovered in the most agile manner, welcoming the audience with superb timing after the break to “…the most sensational night in television history.” This was a very, very smart ad lib. It should be studied by comedians, thespians and their directors and producers.

By it Rock meant to accomplish three things, which the statement winningly did. First, one very good way to gain perspective on an event of magnitude is to acknowledge it. It’s a fact that unintentional drama rules on television and especially at the Oscars. Rock gave us that long perspective beautifully, by showing us that he had it. Second, in that one line he acknowledged that the event would be instantly magnified and become what it now is, namely, a thing to be dissected by the chattering classes right around the orb, from Mumbai to London to New York and back out to Hollywood. In other words, he acknowledged the moment’s globality.

Finally and most importantly, this posture, meaning Mr. Rock’s high level of objectivity immediately after the attack, reassured the audience that Mr. Smith’s attack did not unseat Rock or cause him to lose himself, and it reassured everybody that he remained on duty, as host, to steady the ship of the broadcast with his mark in trade, namely, humor. The broadcast did, in fact, lumber up out of the muck and slogged on.

All this leaves Mr. Smith facing a more or less infinite morning after. It won’t be pleasant, but all monumental hangovers do in fact have to be lived through. One good way to do live through this one will be to apologize to Chris Rock in short order.

There are three basic tenets of and for such an apology. First, it’s owed. Smith interrupted a global broadcast with an act of only somewhat explicable — but mainly inexplicable — physical violence. Second: That act left no lasting physical scars, nor was it seemingly intended to — and in an infamously litigious community, Rock has not filed a police complaint — but the attack was ad hominem, and was severely out-of-measure to its “crime,” so to speak, of the ill-formed joke.

Third: An apology to Rock doesn’t mean that Smith has to “bow” to Rock or even, ever, be friends. It simply means that he acknowledges his mistake of exceeding the bounds of acceptable behavior to the man who took the brunt.