Will Smith/Chris Rock Oscars - where do you stand?

[Jaggerdagger]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-60898250

I'm a bit on the fence at the moment but shocked from watching this - wondered what others think?

YABU Will Smith had every right to wallop Chris. His wife was clearly deeply insulted. He deserved it.
YANBU Chris was just reading from a script and didn't deserve such a public assault.

Calling Chris out for offending his wife is fine, resorting to physical violence is not.

Your Qs are silly: the joke was shit, the violence was shit.

Violence isn't OK. There are better ways to deal with things.

It was a pretty low moment for all concerned.

Oooo I was just going to start a thread on this ...

I think he absolutely shouldn't have assaulted CR. You can't just walk around smacking people 🤷‍♀️

That said if you watch the clip Will is still laughing until you see his wife isn't ( and understandably so ) then he was pretty reactive and just got up and assaulted Chris Rock.

Now it's my understanding that people get roasted at the Oscars, after all no one hit Ricky Gervais did they when he made all those Peadophile jibes even though it quite clearly applied to someone/quite a few people there?

Jada boycotted the Oscars a few years ago on protest at Will not being nominated and CR made a joke about that too.

You can't go around hitting people, you just can't!

Toxic masculinity at its worst.
Before that punch Chris Rock looked like the arse-bike as that ‘joke’ landed like a lead balloon.
But now? Will Smith walked on stage and assaulted someone ‘defending’ his wife. What. A.man. Eh?
Forget that she didn’t need ‘defending’.

He should have called him out on it without the violence.

@Sockpile

Calling Chris out for offending his wife is fine, resorting to physical violence is not.

Thanks. I agree - I felt instant empathy for his wife when her face clearly fell and I can understand why Will felt angry, but to actually walk up on stage and whack the guy was totally unacceptable, especially as the words were probably not his own. If that is the case, what a terrible mistake on the part of the production team.

I hate this type of bullying banter. Good for Will, I say. Violence is crap, but so is joking to a woman's face in front of the whole world about a devastating medical condition that affects her appearance.

The violence was shocking. Smith could have just shouted (without swearing).

It all could have been very different. Smith saw a lot of violence in his life. It will have been very triggering for him to react this way. It’s sad all round. A highly charged event. I don’t think he’ll get cancelled but there will be a lot of apologies for a while. And rightly so, you can’t just go punch someone.

If anyone had hit someone on stage at a venue they would have been thrown out. Will Smith got to stay. Violence is not acceptable (and smith seemed to be finding the joke funny until he saw his wife didnt)

They’re both complete arseholes.

How hard is it not be a rude fuckwit about someone?

How hard is it not to punch someone?

I'm with will on this one..Chris rock was far to personal in his pathetic put down .

Absolutely crap ‘joke’ about a horrible condition. So I absolutely agree with Will Smith for calling Chris Rock out for it. The punch was a step too far though.

Sorry I should have made it clear: When I say that I'm on the fence, I didn't mean about the violence, but rather whether to blame Chris about the joke about the wife. I think the slap/punch is unforgivable and I can imagine Will is very embarrassed right now!

I stand with Jada.

Chris and Will were both unreasonable.

It looked fake to me.

I've never seen Will Smith look less compared. He looks like someone that's not fully coping with life right now, this may have been the wrong thing at the wrong time.

It doesn't make what he did okay (it's never okay), but honestly neither is it okay to joke about someone's highly personal and very upsetting misfortunes.

I'm not going to vote. I think this is 'grey' rather than 'black and white'.

Less composed, not compared.

That said if you watch the clip Will is still laughing until you see his wife isn't ( and understandably so ) then he was pretty reactive and just got up and assaulted Chris Rock.

Agreed. The joke was so shit anyway, it would have spoken for itself. A quiet word with Chris afterwards would have been totally understandable.

@catless

It looked fake to me.

I thought that initially, but not when I saw Will's speech.

Will Smith laughed at first, then saw her reaction-
I think Mr big Man’s ego was hurt and it actually had little To do with his wife.
What’s pissing me off is I’d quite like to watch some of the actual highlights of the Oscars, not a re-run of a man punching another man in anger.

They're both wankers.

* That said if you watch the clip Will is still laughing until you see his wife isn't ( and understandably so ) then he was pretty reactive and just got up and assaulted Chris Rock.*

^This.

I haven't voted because they're both dickheads