After Will Smith went up on stage and slapped Chris Rock for joking about his wife, “Behind the scenes at the Oscars, there were serious discussions about removing Mr. Smith from the theater,” two “industry officials with knowledge of the situation” told the New York Times. But Smith’s expected Best Actor win for King Richard, which indeed came to pass within an hour, left officials uncertain how to proceed. This would have been like ejecting the star quarterback from the Super Bowl for bad behavior just before the final drive. And nothing like it had ever happened before.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apparently had no code of conduct until after the series of allegations against Harvey Weinstein led to his ejection from that body in 2017. At the time, Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski were still members. After the code of conduct went into effect, Cosby and Polanski were expelled also, even though Polanski had won an Oscar just 15 years earlier, long after the sexual attack that led to his permanently fleeing California justice and moving to Europe, and received a standing ovation from most of the audience at the 2003 Oscars.
The Academy has launched an investigation into the Smith slap, and could suspend or eject the actor, but the interesting thing about the code of conduct is that it was evidently written with sexual harassment in mind and it doesn’t obviously apply to nonsexual violence. The code warns against “physical contact that is uninvited and, in the situation, inappropriate and unwelcome, or coercive sexual attention.” Also, “intimidation, stalking, abusive or threatening behavior, or bullying” are forbidden. Rock has, according to police, declined to press charges against Smith, although he has time to change his mind, and could also conceivably file a civil claim. Sean Combs told the New York Post that Smith and Rock had put the matter behind them after the ceremony. Smith was spotted gleefully dancing the night away at a party. My guess is nothing happens to him, though I’m surprised that he has yet to publicly apologize to Rock.
