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

When it comes to the annual Academy Awards, the millions-strong viewing audience arguably arrive at their screens in anticipation of much more than a celebration of the talents and skills on display in the film.

There’s the glitz and glamour of the red carpet, the pomp on display in whichever fancy setting is hosting the event, and a very good chance of a “memorable moment” – long speeches, short speeches, political protests, streakers, allusions to incest, unexpected falls, unplanned (arguably, non-consensual) kisses, failing lights.

The 2022 Academy Awards, as we now likely all know, was the scene for its own astonishing memorable moment, with the much-celebrated actor Will Smith striding on to the stage and slapping Chris Rock hard across the face, an apparent rebuke for an ill-judged and poor-taste joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith, Will Smith’s wife.

Upon returning to his seat, Smith can be heard shouting loudly: “Get my wife’s name out of your f---ing mouth.”

Like many others, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing, and the Twitterstorm was all go – the incident quickly racking up millions of reactions, commentary and shares.

The minute or so of astonishing television was given further fuel when, just a few minutes later, Smith was announced as winner of the 2022 Best Actor category for his performance in King Richard. Receiving his award, and shedding some tears, he addressed his need to protect his family and others, suggesting he wants to “be an ambassador of that kind of love and care and concern”, and stated that: “Love will make you do crazy things.”

What to make of it all?

As likely the case for many, especially for fellow victim-survivors of, and witnesses to, men’s violence, I found the whole thing surreal, but also viscerally troubling and somewhat sickening.

I felt stirred by the sting of humiliation of being slapped hard across the face in public, both physical and emotional; it’s a sensation I know well.

Focusing a little more on Smith’s face as he shouts expletives to Rock on the stage, I see that the peculiar cocktail of somehow unnameable, but definitely recognisable, emotions that often mark the face of an aggressor – it’s not just ire, it’s the leftovers of their own perceived humiliation mixed with pride damaged and seemingly restored.

Getting past those initial reactions, it quickly became clear that what we had seen was the outcome of a clash of several overlapping component parts of what Raewyn Connell has famously called hegemonic masculinity – the form of masculinity that is culturally endorsed and one that upholds and demonstrates men’s dominance over women, and indeed of some men over others. And of course, it’s the actions of both Rock and Smith that are significant in telling us something about such problems.

Smith’s reaction comes from the same pool of practices all bound up with hegemonic masculinity. Note in the footage that, in the moment of the joke, Smith is at first nodding along and laughing.

Many social media commenters were quick to denounce Rock’s aim to get a quick laugh at the expense of Pinkett-Smith’s medical condition, alopecia.

Others were quick to note that this breaches the moral code of good comedy by “punching down” through making light of, and even attacking, someone on the grounds of their ill-health.

There are debates in and around comedy about the true source of what it is to “punch down”, if poking fun at a fellow celebrity is actually only punching sideways, and even if punching down is a moral violation at all.

However, what we observe in Rock’s behaviour is the outcome of a broader endorsement, baked into patriarchal norms, where men comment on women’s bodies with relative impunity.

What Happens Next? Podcast looks at masculinity, and how its negative forms can be as damaging to men as women.

A fuller intersectional analysis, one that enables a consideration of the complex relationship between the importance of hair, identity practices, and the oppressive and marginalising standards of beauty in Westernised cultures, reveals Rock’s jibe at the expense of woman of colour (especially an African-American woman) to have been crueller still. Even if – a big if – done somewhat unwittingly, Rock’s behaviour perpetuates and is emblematic of significantly problematic hierarchies of race and gender.

The ritual humiliation of women by men is one part of this. But Smith’s reaction comes from the same pool of practices all bound up with hegemonic masculinity. Note in the footage that, in the moment of the joke, Smith is at first nodding along and laughing.

In his acceptance speech, he noted that people in “the business” are expected to take abuse, though what he extols here is actually part of the expectations of masculinity to be the brunt of a joke.

Turning to Pinkett-Smith and seeing her anguish, Smith quickly invokes another endorsed practice of hegemonic masculinity – the requirement to be a protector of women.

This is a significant problem, tying together harmful ideas that legitimise both men’s authority and seeming ownership of their wives, and the idea that men can and should enact violence to protect “their” women. Indeed, that they must, for, according to the problematic logics of hegemonic masculinity, what kind of man would Smith be if he let his wife’s humiliation go unpunished?

There is immense social pressure to act in this way. Indeed, the endorsement of such views is visible in the social media commentary that followed the incredible scenes, with many stating Smith was not only justified, but to be admired.

Many others, of course, did call out the physical violence. But the point is that the split opinions illuminate that this behaviour is culturally endorsed and even desirable to some – and can even be dressed up as reflecting an act of love, as in Smith’s own words above.

A danger to men and women

Adhering to the socially sanctioned idea that men must meet violence with a greater display of violence is part of the same set of attitudes that proves a danger to men themselves, in terms of inadvertent self-harm. These logics also prove fatal to women and children, and to gender-diverse people.

The majority of men who kill their partners claim to do so out of love. To be clear, this is not to say that Smith is a threat to his children and wife, but simply that the same logics are used for defending violence in the name of love.

The unsavoury incident at the Oscars, and the actions of both Smith and Rock, is another timely reminder that we need to invest in and promote forms of masculinity that are premised on democratic gender relations that centre on empathy and care.