PSYCHOLOGY|CULTURE
Will Will Smith Slapping The Shit Out Of Chris Rock Be A Wake Up Call As To The Lingering Effects Of Abuse?
Knowing Smith’s family history and his psychological struggles help make sense of the nonsense
15 years ago, I wrote a book about my life that starts,
“In South Philadelphia, born and raised, a playground is not where I spent most of my days.”
It’s a nod to the show Fresh Prince of Bel-Air that stars Will Smith who is from West Philadelphia which is mentioned in the opening theme song.
I have liked Smith as an artist even before he started acting. His song, “Parents Just Don’t Understand”, was one of my favorites as an early teenager.
When I checked my email and read my daily news update, I was shocked to find out that Will Smith had slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars.
When I read further and found out that it was because he was defending his wife Jade Pinkett Smith (who hosts a talk show that I love-Red Table Talk), I was not surprised, nor was I surprised to find out that he felt remorse afterward.
Why the lack of surprise?
Because I knew that Will Smith grew up with an abusive father and has been striving his whole life to be and do better than his father.
He has also been seeing a therapist for many years to help him process all that he endured throughout his childhood.
That doesn’t just go away.
Will Smith revealed that he has suffered from guilt because he believes he failed to protect his mother as a child when his father beat her to the ground in the family’s Philadelphia home.
The “Men in Black” star recounts the domestic abuse in his new book “Will” and called the traumatizing attack a defining moment, according to an excerpt of the book published in the Sunday Times.
“Within everything that I have done since then — the awards and accolades, the spotlights and the attention, the characters and the laughs — there has been a subtle string of apologies to my mother for my inaction that day,” Smith says.
“For failing her in that moment. For failing to stand up to my father. For being a coward.”
In his deeply emotional analysis of the incident, Smith reflects on his indecision to intervene.
“What you have come to understand as ‘Will Smith’, the alien-annihilating MC, the bigger-than-life movie star, is largely a construction — a carefully crafted and honed character designed to protect myself. To hide myself from the world. To hide the coward.
“How we decide to respond to our fears, that is the person we become,” he writes.
“I decided to be funny. I wanted to please and placate him because as long as Daddio was laughing and smiling, I believed we would be safe. I was the entertainer in the family. I wanted to keep everything light and fun and joyful.”
That is why I am not really surprised that he reacted to Chris Rock the way that he did.
Smith was triggered and didn’t want to be “the coward”.
He choose to stand up and defend his wife when he saw that she was clearly upset that Rock had teased her about her head being bald (she has alopecia).
Was it the “right” or mature thing to do?
No…and he knows that as was expressed through tears that he tried to hold back shortly after the incident when he accepted his first Oscar for his role in King Richard which portrays him as the fiercely protective and motivating father of tennis legends Serena and Venus Williams.
Growing up in an abusive family has lifelong ramifications.
Smith took care of his father when he was ill, but admits, the incident haunted him even then.
“As a child I’d always told myself that I would one day avenge my mother. That when I was big enough, when I was strong enough, when I was no longer a coward, I would slay him,” he wrote.
One day, he found himself pausing at the top of some stairs as he wheeled his father toward the bathroom and experienced a dark thought.
“I could shove him down, and easily get away with it,” he writes. “As the decades of pain, anger, and resentment coursed then receded, I shook my head and proceeded to wheel Daddio to the bathroom.”
Everyone has a story, a history, that oftentimes reveals the layers that contribute to our multifaceted personalities.
I hope that this story has helped shed some light on not only what happened at this year’s Oscar and why, but how and why those who have suffered various forms of abuse can’t “just get over it”.
It’s a lifelong process.
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