COMMENTARY: Just who does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences think it’s kidding?
After actor Will Smith stepped on stage—on live television—and slapped comedian Chris Rock, Fox News noted the Academy tweeted the following statement: “The Academy does not condone violence of any form.”
Seriously?
This from the industry that gave us “The Wild Bunch,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Braveheart,” “The Last Samurai,” pretty much every John Wayne western, every Clint Eastwood “Dirty Harry” film, and on, and on, and on. All good films, many of them considered classics.
The Smith-Rock incident is the leading Monday headline. Regardless the story angle, the image is some variation of the slap.
The motion picture industry has made billions of dollars portraying violence of every kind, and movie moguls know it. Shootings, stabbings, dismemberments; and someone (other than Rock, maybe) gets their nose out of joint over what happened on stage during the Sunday evening Oscars presentation?
According to Variety, Rock “declined to file a police report” but in the real world, that might not even be necessary since the incident had millions of witnesses and as one can see from social media and every newspaper worth reading, it was caught on camera. Screen snips are all over the place.
Monday morning, virtually every Oscars report includes an illustration of Smith smacking Rock. By comparison to Hollywood movie fare, this was innocuous. Not even any squirting blood.
The New York Post is reporting the possibility that Smith’s Oscar statuette could be revoked.
Hollywood has been selling violence since “The Great Train Robbery” in 1903. Audiences love it when the bad guys get theirs. Who didn’t cheer when Detective John McClane dropped terrorist thief Hans Gruber from that broken window in the Nakatomi Plaza on Christmas Eve? Who couldn’t recite Inspector Harry Callahan’s “Do I feel lucky” speech to the guy he’s just shot with that Model 29 Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum?
The Academy doesn’t’ condone violence of any kind, eh?
What about the first incredibly gripping 20 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan?”
How about that downtown Los Angeles shootout between bank robbers Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore versus cops including Al Pacino, Wes Studi and Mykelti Williamson?
For the Academy to say it doesn’t condone “violence of any form” seems about as hypocritical as Hollywood stars condemning “gun violence.”
Oh, wait….
