Summer of Soul

Will Smith's slap of Chris Rock was a stomach-churning moment at the 2022 Oscars, and robbed one of the night's winners of his moment to shine.

He talked about what the Harlem Cultural Festival, often referred to as “Black Woodstock,” should have been, a national phenomenon, something his parents should have taken him to when he was 5 years old. Gone was the possibility that one of the evening’s most noteworthy achievements — two actors of color, Smith and Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”), winning Oscars the same night — might lead the next day’s headlines. In this business, you gotta be able to have people disrespecting you and you gotta smile and pretend like that’s OK.” He said what Denzel Washington had told him during a commercial break: “At your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.” He said he wanted to apologize to the film academy and his fellow nominees. With tears streaming down his face, he invoked his real-life character, Richard Williams, the father of Venus and Serena Williams, describing him as “a fierce defender of his family.” He said, “I know, to do what we do, we got to be able to take abuse. Had we all really just seen Will Smith, beloved movie star and bet-the-farm favorite for the lead actor Oscar for “King Richard,” strike Chris Rock onstage, and then curse him out from his seat, after Rock made a crude joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith? (We had.) Would Smith be asked to leave or charged with assault, or would he be allowed to stay and accept the Oscar everyone knew he was momentarily about to win? The winner of this year’s Oscar for documentary feature was “Summer of Soul ( … or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s sublime, ecstatic film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Few were surprised; even fewer seemed to take notice.