The Film Experience

the initial reaction to Rock's joke. Will laughs and Jada clenches her teeth.

The best director Oscar went to a woman for only the third time in history. It went to the only woman who was ever nominated twice. It went to Jane Campion for making a movie about the destructive power of toxic masculinity.

The elephant in the room, given that prize, was Will Smith’s toxic behavior. In case anyone was wondering if the patriarchy is at risk of being overthrown, there’s Smith assaulting someone on stage, in view of millions, and then moments later being applauded for a speech in which he declares he is all about love. He was not stopped, or escorted from the room, and he will face no consequences...

Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

A counter-narrative about ableism has emerged, so let’s do that.

Chris Rock could have avoided making any remarks about Jada Pinkett-Smith’s alopecia, and that would have been gracious and wise. He didn’t do that. He could also have insulted her baldness, and he didn’t do that. He pointed to it in a way that compared her to a famously sexy movie role (GI Jane), but she appeared not to want it pointed to at all, and looked uncomfortable. The joke was tasteless and shouldn’t have happened.

But I am old enough to remember an entire Internet standing up in righteous indignation at the thought that stand-up comics shouldn’t make triggering rape jokes. Free speech! the internet cried. Comedy is meant to challenge, they declaimed, it’s supposed to be uncomfortable.

But all of that goes out the window when a man can posture and peacock his masculinity in “defense” of his wife. And then give a speech about how love and fatherhood mean that God wants him to defend his family. By assaulting a comedian in front of millions of people.

It brings me, strangely, back to The Power of the Dog. We all saw the toxic masculinity in Cumberbatch’s vile and hate-filled Phil, but have we thought about Kodi Smit-McPhee’s Pete? How toxic masculinity taught him that his job as a man is to defend the woman in his life, and where that led him?

Protectiveness can be as toxic as meanness. Will Smith strutted his hour upon the stage, telling the audience that what he did made him a good husband. It wasn’t about Jada, you know, or genuinely helping her, it was about “my wife,” and what kind of masculinity Will Smith gets to perform in front of the world. And the world says, “fuck yeah!”