No, Prime Minister, not good enough: Scott Morrison’s tone-deaf response to Will Smith’s Oscars’ slap

Three days after “the slap that was heard around the world”, we might feel we’ve heard or read all we need about Will Smith taking to the stage at the Oscars to physically strike Chris Rock in response to a deeply offensive joke aimed at Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

But the words of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, responding to a radio show host's questions about the unsavoury incident, draw our much-needed attention again to the potential implications of this kind of behaviour, and the words of endorsement that follow.

[The PM's] empathy displayed to Will Smith’s plight is a far cry from that extended to Brittany Higgins when she first came forward with her story of sexual assault in Parliament House last year.

As we’ve seen this week, opinions are divided.

Broadly, there’s those steadfast in their view that violence is never the answer (a position that Smith himself maintains in his apology on Instagram), and then those who – for different reasons – suggest that Rock deserved his physical chastisement.

The latter camp is broadly divided into those whose arguments rest on the poignancy of the need for an unprecedented push back against a cruel culture that is so often hostile to black women, and then those who more simply defend Will Smith’s actions as a rational, desirable and even praise-worthy retribution in the name of love.

Sadly, our Prime Minister’s words fall right into the latter category:

RADIO HOST: “You’d be watching that thinking: ‘I’d love to do that’… you’d never do it in Parliament.” 
MORRISON: “I’m also fiercely defensive of anyone who would say anything about Jenny, too, so I can understand it [with a laugh]... but as I think, as everybody understands, that’s not how you roll.”

The content and casual nature of these remarks is concerning.

The “not how you roll” was insufficient in reducing what was otherwise a tacit endorsement of deeply ingrained patriarchal notions of male ownership over women, and the associated demands to be “protector“ and “warrior” that are bound up with socially-sanctioned masculine norms in our society.

The message and the masculine norms the PM endorsed are deeply harmful. They embody and perpetuate what Raewyn Connell coined as hegemonic masculinity – the culturally-esteemed and most influential form of masculinity in a society, epitomised by a need for men to be physically tough, emotionally stoic, self-sufficient, and dominant over girls, women and other men.

Read more: Academy Awards drama: Chris Rock and Will Smith expose all that’s wrong with masculinity today

A clear endorsement of such principles of masculine practice from the man currently occupying the highest office of power in the country stabilises unequal gender relations and reminds other men that enacting violence – especially in the name of love, as per the above comments – is somehow legitimate and necessary.

This is a massive problem

In an eloquent and powerful series of tweets not long after the PM’s comments, Grace Tame said:

“Show sympathy for acts of violence using love as the excuse, sure that’s a great message from a prime minister … Messages like this are dangerous. They reinforce a stark imbalance of power.”

It’s worth reminding ourselves of those stark imbalances to which Grace Tame is alluding. The PM’s remarks risk being a dog whistle, fuelling and cultivating a culture that is complicit in the death of six women in the second half of March – a total of 14 women killed by men in what is the 13th week of 2022 – at the hands of men known to them.

This might at first seem like a big leap in logic. But consider this: The most recent National Community Attitudes Survey shows 13% of young men in Australia believe that domestic violence can be excused if it's the result of a person temporarily losing control due to anger, while almost a quarter of young men aged 16-24 surveyed agree it can be excused if it’s followed by genuine regret.

Both scenarios are supportive of gender-based violence, and both played out at the Oscars. And, as others have pointed out, both are supportive of the claim by men who kill their partners, that it was done out of love.

Relatedly, evidence from Australia shows that two-thirds of men reported that they had been told from a young age how a “real man” should behave, and similar proportions strongly agree that “society expects men to act strong”, and that “men should fight back when physically pushed”. These things are intimately tied together.

In offering an understanding of Will Smith’s actions, by hinting at how he’d do the same for his wife, we are reminded again of the PM’s capacity to consider women’s feelings and experiences only after considering what it would be like for “his” women.

Indeed, the empathy displayed to Will Smith’s plight is a far cry from that extended to Brittany Higgins when she first came forward with her story of sexual assault in Parliament House last year.

Read more: Fixing Australia’s toxic parliamentary workplace: What we can learn from reform in the United Kingdom

Rather than upholding hegemonic masculine norms, the PM might have offered genuine empathy for women and all victims of violence by presenting the case for, and trying to normalise, a politics of civility.

Read more: The Oscars’ slap raises important moral questions about civility and incivility

In our view, violence for any reason is not justified. Not as an “act of love”, not in response to an insult, nor in adherence to the socially sanctioned justification that violence be met with a greater show of violence.

Sanctioning these attitudes and accompanying behaviours reinforces the rhetoric that sustains gender inequality, and men’s use of violence and aggression against women, children, other men, and even themselves.