King Smith

For the Academy to say it "doesn't condone violence of any form" has me wondering what the difference between "of" and "in" is, and whether it meant in when it wrote of ("of any form" is, oddly enough, favoured by the Guardian and the New Yorker). The Academy has done well by war films; but does this mean its members will no longer participate in the making of them -- because they contain violence? Is a representation of violence not an inciter of violence in this age of triggers? We are told again and again that cycles of violence are upheld by the ongoing glorification of violent acts, like the violence found in Hollywood films, but also in that more interactive form of entertainment that Hollywood is tied into: video games. 

The Academy Awards show is a theatrical production that has its participants playing themselves. Part of playing oneself these days seems to include the right to retain aspects of the character whose portrayal has earned an award nomination. Will Smith's acceptance speech last night -- for his portrayal of father/tennis coach/patriarch Richard Williams -- carried with it an in-character justification for walking through theatre's "fourth wall" earlier in the evening to strike comedian/host Chris Rock for likening Smith's wife Jada Pinkett Smith's "look" (she has alopecia areata) to Demi Moore's portrayal of a U.S. soldier in G.I. Jane (1997), a "joke" lost on those too young to know the reference.

 "Richard Williams," Smith began, "was a fierce defender of his family," and that's clearly what Smith thought he was doing when he struck Rock and, after doing so, shouted not once but two times: "Keep my wife's name out of your fuckin' mouth." For me, this line (especially in its repetition) is far more jarring in its policing than the blow Smith laid on Rock, and I wonder if there is anything like it in the script for the film where Smith played the father of tennis champions Venus and Serena. As for Richard Williams's earlier family, he walked out on them, leaving them destitute. Those in defence of Williams need look no further than the tagline to G.I Jane: "There are two sides to every conflict." Those in defence of Smith would include those who consider one's wife, like one's children, their property.