Lori Falce: Who should the Academy really investigate?
Except, wait a minute. No, they’re really not.
From the moment Smith charged the stage during the live Oscars broadcast and slapped comedian Chris Rock for a not-funny joke about wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, the only issue taken seriously has been public relations.
If the issue was mocking people for their appearance, the Academy would have apologized to Pinkett Smith, whose head is shaved because she has alopecia, and announced that future ceremonies would not include personal attacks. (And perhaps Pinkett Smith would have apologized for her own role in the 1996 comedy “The Nutty Professor,” in which Eddie Murphy, in a fat suit, is aggressively targeted by an insulting comedian.)
If the issue was a physical assault seen in real time, the police would have escorted Smith out. But the police seemed to agree this wasn’t an issue as they said Rock was not pressing charges so they were letting it go. Perhaps an assault seen by 15 million people doesn’t need to have the victim agree to antagonize the man who hit him.
Maybe the real issue isn’t what happened on this stage on this night. Maybe it is what has happened on lots of stages — and lots of screens — with the complete sanction of the Academy and the industry.
Woody Allen is a darling of the Academy, with seven nominations for Best Director and 16 for Best Original Screenplay. He won once for directing and three times for screenwriting. Nine of the nominations and one of the wins came after allegations of child sexual abuse of not only his wife Soon-Yi Previn, the daughter of his ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow, but of Dylan, the daughter he adopted with Farrow.
While Roman Polanski was expelled by the Academy after his 1977 arrest for sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl and subsequent flight to Europe to avoid incarceration, it took them until 2018 to take that step. Before then, he made more movies that got more awards, including “Tess,” which gained him a Best Director nomination and “The Pianist,” for which he won that category.
Do we even have to mention Harvey Weinstein — a predator whose behavior was a barely concealed secret obscured by what The New York Times called a “complicity machine?” Weinstein’s company has 81 Oscars. He personally has one for Best Picture for “Shakespeare in Love,” which has not been taken back after his New York sexual assault convictions and life sentence or amid his pending trial in Los Angeles.
The more than 100 Weinstein victims who have stepped forward include Oscar winners and nominees including Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, Ashley Judd, Lupita Nyong’o, Mira Sorvino, Uma Thurman — and Gwyneth Paltrow, whose turn as Viola in “Shakespeare in Love” garnered Weinstein his Oscar.
The Oscars is often a kind of pitched battle, but not usually a physical assault. It generally tends more to the political, with people taking stands that have increasingly turned it into an opportunity for Hollywood to fire shots at Washington. That definitely happened more than once Sunday night.
But that’s a blow that can come off as fake as a stage punch when after years and years of opportunity to police their own, the Academy either does too little too late as with Polanski or nothing at all as with Allen and Weinstein.
Smith shouldn’t have hit Rock. Rock shouldn’t have taken a shot at Pinkett Smith. But if the Academy really wants to open an investigation, it should turn that spotlight on itself.
Lori Falce is the Tribune-Review community engagement editor and an opinion columnist. For more than 30 years, she has covered Pennsylvania politics, Penn State, crime and communities. She joined the Trib in 2018. She can be reached at lfalce@triblive.com.
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