The Slap: The Center Has Not Held


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The key issue about The Slap right now is while it happened in the national “community square,” there’s simply no way to have any unified conventional wisdom about what it means.

The Slap.

Take Zoe Kravitz and Black Twitter.

It is only because The Slap happened in an event of the “center” that I even attempt to comprehend what is going on with Ms. Kravitz. She’s black and yet Black Twitter is not having it when it comes to her criticism of Will Smith’s behavior at The Oscars.

I honestly don’t understand why this is.

And it probably isn’t my place to have any opinion on it in the first place. I have no skin in that game, as they say. It will be interesting to see if Ms. Kravitz’ acting career suffers any long-term damage from Black Twitter’s rage against her the last few hours.

This points to a broader situation, which is Smith is probably going to get away with what he did for the same reason we can never have any form of gun control, no matter how many children die — by the time we get around to being “allowed” to do something, the momentum for action has dissipated.

Such is life in post-accountability America.

When It Comes To ‘The Slap,’ All I Want Is Some Accountability



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though The Academy is taking the, “let’s slow walk any attempt at accountability and hope people forget” approach to holding Will Smith accountable for The Slap. At the moment, I think there’s a fair chance they may get away with it. Even though The Slap has entered the general zeitgeist, it’s fading down to a simmer really fast.

And, what’s more, America is so divided that the usual suspects of racism and identity politics are getting involved, making it even more difficult to come to some consensus as to what should be done.

There is a possibility that by the time The Academy reaches a point where it has to make a decision, whatever they decide will barely be a blip in the public’s consciousness.

What I want is Will Smith to stop being so damn cocky and to show some public remorse. He’s done absolutely nothing to indicate he honestly feels regret for his behavior and, as such, it seems as though our current post-accountability era strikes again.

Trump and his cronies aren’t the only people above the law, it appears.

It’s too late for the thing that should have happened — Smith not be able to enjoy his big night for winning the Oscar — to happen. So, in a sense, there’s a real chance he’ll escape any accountability at all.

He won’t have a Red Table talk with his wife about what happened. And he won’t have any type of cathartic moment with Oprah. The whole thing will fade from the public’s mind and simply be something that comics can reference for a easy joke because it’s something everyone knows enough about to get.

In the end, it seems Chris Rock will be the one to get the last laugh. For the time being, his composure after The Slap has made him something of a martyr for the comic comedy. And may get a Netflix special out of, too. The SNL family is going to have his back and there’s a reasonable chance that it will be SNL that strikes back this weekend. But, as I’ve said before, given how The Tonight Show pulled its punches on happened, even that might be something of a let down.

The Alarming Rise of ‘Slap Truthers’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something that I could have predicted would happen, has happened –a growing number of people (at least on Tik-Tok) seem to think that The Slap was staged or pre-planned.

I find this totally bonkers for a number of reasons, even though I understand where these people are coming from. They think it was all staged because of how it helped the Oscars be relevant again. But that’s only part of the picture. Will Smith doing something so outrageous – especially for his career — is just not something anyone with as much to lose as he does would do willingly.

Or, put another way, sometimes a Slap is just a Slap.

All the quibbling and reconning of The Slap says more about the relationship a lot of people have with celebrity than it does any possibility the event was faked in some way. Rather than accept some shocking event, they process it through the lens of a conspiracy to blunt the blow on what they consider possible. It’s mental comfort food for people with a parasocial relationship to Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and their family.

We all saw what we saw and what happened, happened.

This story isn’t over yet and there’s a chance that things could get pretty dark for Will Smith. The future isn’t set and this incident hasn’t fully worked itself out yet.

Only time will tell.

An Obligatory Think Piece About ‘The Slap’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In an age lacking both accountability, nuance and subtlety, it’s difficult to process the shocking events of the most recent Oscar telecast. We’re so accustomed to Trump being above the law and the absolute Singularity of crassness that is Trumplandia, that it’s almost impossible to figure out the long-term significance of Will Smith smacking the shit out of Chris Rock on live TV.

First, I guess I need to tell you what my personal view on this clusterfuck is. I think Rock’s joke was tone deaf, but nothing that merited getting smacked over. In fact, the worst part of the entire event wasn’t even the smack itself. It was how the Academy kept going with the night as if nothing had happened. I get that it was a live event and for basic logistical reasons they couldn’t do anything, but at least they could have done SOMETHING to tell the audience that they were aware of how surreal everything was that was going on.

Because that didn’t happen, it gave a lot of grist to the hysterical MAGA New Right. From what I can tell from YouTube, there are a fair number of far-Right podcasts spending a lot of time talking about the “hypocrisy” of liberal Hollywood because Smith was able to hit someone and nothing happened to him.

Let’s get something basic out of the way. A lot of the attack on Smith from the Right comes from a thinly desguied form of racist paternalism. They’re on an hair trigger to attack the African American community and because Joe Rogan loves Dave Chappelle, they, by extension, feel they have to take Chris Rock’s side for maximum racist effect.

But this is an example of how we need some sort of nuance about this situation. The key thing is — there were so many other ways Smith could have articulated his anger at the joke without destroying the evening with violence. And, that, I think is the most troubling thing about what happened — why did Smith do it in the first place?

He’s been in the public eye for 30 years and he freaks out just as he’s about to get an Academy Award. What the what? If there’s any kind of mop up of this clusterfuck, that’s the specific question an interviewer — Oprah? — needs to get answered.

That’s what makes the event so shocking. In real terms, nothing Rock did was out of the ordinary. It was Smith’s reaction that was fucking bonkers. And, to date, there still hasn’t been any real accountability.

Nothing has happened to Smith, nothing that might bite, and all he’s done is released a written apology. Being held accountable, at least in my opinion, means you suffer for your actions in a way that reminds you not to do them again.

I’ve been surprised by how quickly all of this has begun to fade. I thought there was a chance that The Slap would hit the zeitgeist in such a way that it might linger longer than one news cycle, but I guess I was wrong.