It’s been fascinating to watch the fallout from Sunday night’s Oscars’ ceremony. These celebrity spats are always helpful because it gets us mere mortals to consider what they mean to society and where they resonate on our moral scale.
I’ll admit, my own emotions bounced around a bit at first. I saw the footage of Will Smith assaulting (slap feels like we are minimising) Chris Rock on stage and I was appalled. Then I discovered the context of the (rather crass) joke and was appalled by that too. There was a fleeting second where I thought, ‘wow there is a guy defending his wife’s honour’ because, aren’t us girls always brought up with this ridiculous myth of the white knight coming to save us? It’s implanted in our fairy tales. But then I stopped myself. The key for me was in Smith’s outburst afterwards: “Keep My Wife’s Name Out Your Fucking Mouth.” Ah, there we have it: my wife. Not Jada. My possession. Chris Rock’s ‘roasting’ of Jada had not offended her as much as her husband’s ego…