X-ray of a slap: the seven macho elements around Will Smith and Chris Rock

It was first the joke and then the slap, but also the reaction of the stalls, the return to the stage to collect the statuette and the argument of the speech, the cheers to that speech, the attitude of the Academy, that of that

at the party after the gala and the trends in social networks that say that there is part of society —not the majority— that not only supports Will Smith's coup against Chris Rock at the Oscars, but also celebrates it.

The joke about Jada Pinkett's illness was overshadowed by violence.

"She lost her mind," say or write those who disagree without going to the bottom.

The "the pot went out of him" is to that smack what the irrepressible desires are to sexual violence, a fallacious argument that has been used, and is used, to explain the act of the aggressor and that only serves to reduce responsibility and remove the focus of the origin of everything that happened on that stage: machismo.

Chris Rock is 57 years old and 38 active.

Smith 53 and 35 working.

That's a lot of red carpets, interviews, awards galas and various situations in which to learn limits, for the first, and in which someone will have tempted your desire to drop a slap, for the second.

But it happened on Sunday night on the stage of the most important film awards, the space that exports the culture that nourishes and shapes society for the most part.

And it wasn't an outburst, on either side.

What is behind those conscious acts?

Many symbols of the patriarchal structure.

Here, an X-ray.

1. The prank

Chris Rock, one of the award presenters at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles—after finishing referring to Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz as “Javier Bardem and his wife”—looked over to Jada Pinkett, married to Will Smith, sitting next to her. her side, and said, “Jada, I love you.

I can't wait to see you in

″.

About the limits of humor have been written from articles to sentences.

With freedom of expression always in the forefront, the question about something that constituted what is known as

the mockery of appearance: why make a joke, again, about the physical appearance of a woman who has not decided shave her head, but she suffers from an autoimmune disease that causes her hair to fall out and that she has made public in recent times to make this problem visible, which affects around 30% of women at some point in their lives, and rises to the 55% when they are over 70 years old.

Was it necessary?

Did Rock want to support Pinkett in any way?

And, if so, could he choose another way to do it?

Did the host think the reference to Demi Moore's character was accurate?

Seen from the surface, Lieutenant O'Neil is a strong, tough woman who has to be strong and tough to be the first in an elite unit of the United States Army;

one step below the surface, she is a woman who achieves the acceptance of the rest when she behaves like them, violent, verbal and physical.

Only when she tells her instructor, Mortensen, "suck my dick," does she enter that phratry.

Rock, who wrote, reviewed and approved that script, decided that humor outweighed Pinkett's disease, that humor.

And they failed to analyze the emotional and psychological impact that alopecia can have.

More information

Opinion I Will Smith, Another Man We Shouldn't Be

Hair, not having it, is an issue that worries anyone, men and women.

But for them, in addition, it is a social imperative begun to build centuries ago by artists, men.

It supposed and supposes health.

Also femininity, identity and beauty.

At some point it was a symbol of wealth, of social status, and sometimes it is still a gender builder.

In the foreword to

, art consultant Emily Lambert-Clements writes, "Still today, it is seen by both men and women as a sign of female sexual identity."

On the phone, Mar Venegas, Full Professor of the Department of Sociology at the University of Granada, points to "the current eroticization that long hair entails."

In a publication almost two decades ago in a scientific journal of pharmacy, the authors wrote: "Regardless of its appearance or structure, a woman's hair plays an essential role in her image and is not in vain considered one of her physical attributes. more important.

Specialists recognize that women assume this problem with the same concern or more, if possible, than men.

It produces lack of self-esteem, insecurity and withdrawal.

2. The reaction

Pinkett never laughed.

Smith yes, he did it first.

It is only later —or so one senses, because there are a few seconds of emptiness in the video—, when he sees her, already upset and focused on by the cameras, when he gets up, walks calmly, goes on stage, and slaps Rock with his hand open.

The presenter blurted out a

Will Smith just gave me a good one”, while the actor returned to his place, straightening his tuxedo vest.

Sitting down again, he yelled, twice: "Keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth!"

Did he do it because he was offended by the joke or because he felt some responsibility for Pinkett's discomfort at having laughed?

Did he slap him for what Rock had said or to make

for his own reaction?

Did it have to do with Pinkett's pain or how he looked on camera laughing at the joke?

Was it just machismo or was it also ego?

Says Amparo Tomé, a Spanish sociologist and researcher specializing in feminism, “in any case, the one who could get up to say something, if he had wanted, was her.

The violence should never have occurred, but to answer, it should have been her word, not his.

Actor Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Dolby.reuters

If Smith hadn't gotten up, Pinkett's face would have been enough to open the debate about the desirability of humor in that specific circumstance, an illness, and the only one on whom that discussion would have fallen would have been the presenter.

But Smith got up.

And about that Octavio Salazar wrote this Monday morning, in this newspaper, an analysis entitled

: "It contains all the elements that allow us to identify a model of masculinity that today remains the main obstacle to building a world without gender inequality and in which violence is no longer legitimized.

A violence that is linked to the idea of ​​power, to the omnipotence in which we men have been socialized and to the assumption that there is no better way to manage conflicts than by resorting to force.

In this way, violence still becomes for many today a mechanism for reaffirming virility and even restoring honor supposedly lost.”

That of an adult woman, 50 years old, whom this aggression not only infantilizes but frames her in a false vulnerability for which she needs protection, also false, that only he can offer her.

"Defenders as if we were superheroes that many continue to consider minors," Salazar added in that article.

3. The speech

Shortly after the smack, Smith returned to the stage to collect his best actor statuette for

the

of the lives of tennis players Serena and Venus Williams with his father as the protagonist.

Eva Güimil pointed to that story a few days ago.

"From the edifying story that they want to make us swallow, I only extract one lesson: that Serena and Venus became two of the best tennis players in history not thanks to their father, but despite him," he wrote in

.

For the actor, "Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family."

Thus began the acknowledgments and with that idea he continued for two minutes.

He only apologized to the Academy and the partners, but not to Rock or Pinkett.

And there were those who cheered him and cheered him on.

01:15

Will Smith wins the Oscar for best actor

“I am called in my life to love people and protect people and be a river for my people.

I know that to do what we do, you have to be able to take abuse.

You have to be able to make people say crazy things about you.

In this business you have to be able to make people disrespect you.

And you have to smile, you have to pretend that's okay.

[...] I want to be an ambassador of that kind of love, care and concern.

I want to apologize to the academy.

I want to apologize to all my fellow nominees.

[...] I look like the crazy father, as they said of Richard Williams.

But love makes you do crazy things, ”he said in his speech.

Explaining violence with love and the protection derived from that love is “a nonsense that we have known for a long time that it is,” says Tomé.

It is the argument of the abusers and, when they reach the end, of the male chauvinist murderers, I

.

The latest Injuve report reflects that more than half of the boys between 15 and 19 years old in Spain still believe that they "should" protect their girlfriend.

More information

Special I Put 8-M in your bed (and on your Instagram)

It is the love associated with the control and belonging of the other as material possession, which underlies and sustains toxic relationships.

“Everything that seemed to have been unlearned from the myths of romantic love”, adds the sociologist.

“Care for social life is what water is for physical life, the world cannot function without water, nor can society without care,” she adds.

But as with love, care is not related to, but is opposed to, violence.

4, 5 and 6. The stalls, the Academy and the 'afterparty'

Nobody got up.

No one hinted.

There were faces of surprise, of surprise, there were those who laughed and there were those who made a face of rejection.

But no one in his speech, except for a tepid "peace and love" call later by Anthony Hopkins when he presented Jessica Chastain with the best actress award, condemned what had just happened.

Nor did anything prevent Smith from picking up his statuette as if he hadn't just slapped Rock in front of millions of spectators —and this matters to the extent that culture is a socializing axis, of behavior patterns and referents— nor that he later went to the

that every year organizes

with dances, selfies and smiles.

The Academy, during the first hours, limited itself to publishing a tweet in which it claimed to condemn violence "in all its forms."

Journalists were later asked not to ask about the matter and no one wanted to make any statements, as Luis Pablo Beauregard recounted a few hours ago.

Already Monday in the United States, this Tuesday night in Spain, he has published a statement in which he "condemns" the slap and announces that a "formal investigation" has been opened.

The Academy does not condone violence of any form.

Tonight we are delighted to celebrate our 94th Academy Awards winners, who deserve this moment of recognition from their peers and movie lovers around the world.

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) March 28, 2022

Alluding to romanticize the slap or understand the circumstances, not directly influencing to condemn violence or publicly silence is accepting violence.

Be part of it.

Become accomplices for society, even if they are not for themselves or privately.

In practice it is indifferent, only what is communicated is known.

"After the last few years, the Me Too, what has been worked on," argues Venegas.

"In the end," he says, referring to the Academy, "things don't change as much as we think, and there are certain things that are tradition at the Oscars, such as that there are certain behaviors that are not understood as likely to be condemned."

7. Big Will

Since it happened, Will and Chris or Will Smith are

on Twitter.

But during the morning of this Monday, there has been another

that has gone viral: Grande Will.

Men and women, although mostly men, published in favor of that moment of violence.

“From today on my respect (sic) and solidarity with Will Smith.

RESPECT

Don't expect a hug and congratulations if your wife is made fun of.

The place doesn't matter.

Great Will Smith”, or “Will Smith proving not only that he is a top actor, but also that he is human and reacts to comments in bad taste about his wife.

No matter how famous you are, you are human, and everything has limits, and respect comes first.

Big Will!!”

That social response, explains Venegas, “is a reflection of how strongly the reaction to feminism and the desire to recover a model of masculinity that has been questioned is penetrating.

All this work on the part of public references continues to be overshadowed by chiaroscuro.

There are those who have become aware, but the anti-feminist ideology is also present and we return to that protective man and to weak and defenseless women”.

Weak and defenseless women do not argue, they do not protest, they do not fight —with analysis, data, word and theory— for what belongs to them.

They shut up and assume.

Toxic masculinity, the one that has been recognized mostly in Will Smith, prefers to continue promoting that stereotype because only then can it exist.

“Hopefully, in the best of cases, the example of Will Smith will have pedagogical effects and generate a current of discomfort and criticism among men.

A kind of Me Too in reverse, ”said Salazar in the last paragraph of his article.

If only.

And That's How We Do It

— Jaden (@jaden) March 28, 2022

For the time being, the Dolby stage has stepped back a few years;

and Jaden Smith, one of the actor's sons, posted a brief "And That's How We Do It" on Twitter.

"This is how we do it".

That was how his grandfather, Will Smith's father, did it.

In his memoir, published a few months ago, the actor wrote: “When I was nine years old, I saw my father hit my mother on the head so hard that he collapsed.

I saw her spit blood out of it.

That moment in that room, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am."

This is exactly how violence works: it is learned.

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber