THE SLAP FLAP

Does Will Smith Have A‘Roid Rage’ Problem?

After allegedly using steroids to bulk up for ‘Ali,’ the actor has never seemed quite the same.

Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash

After watching Will Smith’s unmanly attack on Chris Rock at one of the best Oscar shows in years, many of us are asking WHY.

Why does a man with an estimated net worth of $350 million walk onto a stage and slap a man worth $100 million in the middle of a live telecast shown around the world?

How did the former Fresh Prince lose his cool to this extent?

We are told Smith was defending his wife’s honor. That Chris Rock’s insensitive joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair loss was in poor taste. That it’s always a bad idea to cast aspersions on a black woman’s hair.

The lady doth protest too much…

In his ‘apology’ upon receiving the Best Actor award, Smith suggested tearfully that maybe he was channeling the character he played in King Richard. He said that love makes you do crazy things. But none of this seemed quite right given his unnecessary reaction to Rock’s ill-conceived joke.

Smith also suggested that his behavior might have been a case of art imitating life. But of course, he got that wrong, too.

First art imitates life. Then life imitates art. That’s how it usually works. And that’s what we witnessed at the Oscars. But even if Smith had not yet separated from his onscreen character — a very real and dangerous difficulty for actors — the art/life imitation thing doesn’t ring quite true, either.

So What Was Going On At The Level Of The Real?

Moments before the infamous slap, Chris Rock alluded to Denzel Washington’s Oscar-nominated performance in Macbeth. But under the circumstances, a line from a different Shakespeare play would seem to be more relevant.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

That line from Hamlet usually refers to protestations of love and fidelity that are too excessive to be believed. In other words, it’s about a lie, a coverup.

Anyone understanding that would have to ask, what’s this defense of Smith’s wife really about? Why make so public a show of his purported love?

Fidelity Issues?

Only Will Smith and his wife know what’s really going on in their relationship. Despite years of public commentary about their supposedly open marriage, Smith recently told Gayle King that there’s never been infidelity in their marriage.

Something about that denial smacks of Aaron Rodgers’s definition of immunized.

If your privately held definition of fidelity is broad enough to mean “faithful to your idea of fidelity” or “faithful to what the husband and wife have agreed to,” then Smith did not lie to Gayle King.

Was his over-the-top display as the chivalrous husband an effort to reclaim a wife he may have been worried about losing to an interloper like rapper August Alsina, as Cosmopolitan suggests?

If So, The Gesture Was As Ill-conceived As Chris Rock’s Joke

The incident was not only an embarrassment, it replaced in the public consciousness all the wonderful things about the 94th Academy Awards. Everything was going so well.

It was the first mostly full audience since the pandemic. The diverse list of nominees reflected today’s changing America. Held during Women’s History Month, it boasted three female hosts, who delivered stellar performances. The show had a Black producer. There were several historic wins.

Overshadowed

Not only was Smith’s behavior a terrible personal failing by an international role model before a live audience, but it also overshadowed the uplifting tone set by Beyonce’s opening song from King Richard and the show’s introduction by Venus and Serena Williams.

A hoodlum in a tuxedo

That tone was about the pride, spirit, and transcendence of marginalized people. You couldn’t look at how beautiful the Williams sisters were and not think of how far they have come. What they have endured. How they persisted. What their very lives mean to little girls everywhere.

Their message was, “Don’t believe you can’t succeed just because you live in a ghetto. Look at us.”

And then Will Smith gets up and acts like a hoodlum in a tuxedo, reducing the whole thing to a stereotype.

Socially And Morally Unacceptable

It was as if all those earlier inspiring moments meant nothing and “straight outta Compton” meant something crude and rough, ugly and uncivilized — the very perceptions people who live in marginalized communities are fighting to overcome.

A happy man does not lose it like that. But a man on steroids might

But here’s the thing: Smith’s distasteful display wasn’t straight outta Compton. It was straight outta Gatsby.

Fitzgerald’s great novel reminds us that the things we take for success in America are not at all what they seem to be. The crown is hollow, the prizes glittering. And they don’t mean a thing. Nowhere is Gatsby’s truth more evident than in Hollywood.

Will Smith has millions, but a contented man does not strike another man on worldwide TV. Or anywhere. His big house, beautiful wife, and shining new Oscar have not made him a man of substance. Have not made him happy. A happy man does not lose it like that.

But A Man On Steroids Might

In 2016, Paul Rodriguez, Smith’s co-star in Ali, the biopic about the great boxer, said the actor behaved like an A-hole during filming and might have been on steroids. Rodriguez said he had no proof of this, but he did wonder how Smith managed to add an extra 35 pounds of muscle for the role.

Roid rage — an outburst of anger, violence, and loss of impulse control.

At the 2020 Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais suggested there was wide use of steroids in Hollywood. There’s no acting anymore, Gervais said. “They just go to the gym twice a day and take steroids.” He didn’t mention Smith by name, but his remarks weren’t the first time steroid use has been discussed in connection with Hollywood.

Does Will Smith Use Steroids?

I have no idea. But if he did, that might explain his aggressive behavior at this year’s Oscars. Steroid abuse has been linked to high blood pressure, emotional problems, and increased aggression, including the very real phenomenon known as roid rage — an outburst of anger, violence, and loss of impulse control.

Isn’t that what the whole world witnessed during the Academy Awards this year?

Didn’t the whole world also witness an assault by one Black man against another Black man? Giving fodder to racists who will see the moment as a microcosm of black-on-black crime?

Fortunately, Chris Rock did not do anything that could have escalated the incident to another level? But this public act of violence also raised the thorny issue of internalized racism. Would Smith have assaulted a white comedian?

Shameful

The whole thing was a shame on so many levels. I’ve written a lot about how wrong it is to expect one Black person to represent the entire race. But the Oscars have often been held up as a platform for Black achievement before the rest of the world.

When I reviewed footage of Sidney Poitier’s historic Oscar win — and his lifetime achievement award following his death earlier this year — I was filled with pride and couldn’t help writing about what that great actor meant to me.

Two Will Smiths

Sadly, I can’t say that about Will Smith, though I have often admired him for his own accomplishments. As one commentator said, there are now two Will Smiths — the one before and the one after that slap.

Although the Academy has condemned his behavior as a violation of its code of conduct and opened a full inquiry, his future will not depend on whether he’s allowed to keep his Oscar. It will depend on whether he remains bankable.

Will Smith was paid an estimated $40 million for King Richard, so much that he even shared some of his earnings with the rest of the crew.

Forgiveness

His future bankability will depend on whether audiences forgive him for the way he dishonored himself, Chris Rock, the other nominees, and the achievements of everyone who worked so hard to make this year’s Oscars a success.

Audiences are fickle and may eventually overlook the slap. But Will Smith will have to go a long way to overcome his own dark shadow after this year’s disaster. If steroids do account for his behavior, I hope he gets help.

But even if steroid use is not the issue, this year’s winner for King Richard might be able to redeem himself by playing another king. He’s still too young, perhaps, for King Lear, but it might prove therapeutic for him to recite one of that play’s greatest lines:

“They told me I was everything. ’Tis a lie.”

Being a king does not make you “ague-proof, ” as Shakespeare put it. It does not grant immunity. It does not give you the right to do whatever you want and get away with it. It’s only when you realize that you are nothing that you have an opportunity to become a truly great man.

Let’s hope King Richard — unlike King Lear — will learn that lesson before it’s too late.

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