Entertainment Desk : dhakamirror.com
At the 94th Academy Awards in March, Will Smith startled the world by punching Chris Rock in the face. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, was mocked by Rock. 15.36 million people watched the Oscars this year, up 50% from 10.4 million in 2021.
Many initially thought the incident was scripted by the Academy, but when Smith, after being seated, yelled at Rock for not saying his wife’s name, it became evident that it was real. Real.
Smith won his first Oscar for playing Richard Williams in “King Richard” later in the event. After months, the controversy persists. After a board of governors meeting in April, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences banned Smith from Oscars and other Academy events for a decade for his violent behaviour.
Smith’s actions have led to change in the Hollywood outlook towards violence. After the slap, many believe Smith should have been punished with assault and denied his Oscar.
Here are some other major events that will have big effects on Hollywood:
Kanye’s antisemitic rants
After his divorce from Kim Kardashian, his antisemitic and pro-white supremacy sentiments, and his fashion choices, rapper Kanye West has been in difficulty for a while. The new antisemitism controversy began when in October this year, West was removed from Instagram for alleging rapper Puff Daddy is controlled by Jews.
He then logged in to his Twitter account that had been lying for two years, sharing that he will be “going death con 3” on the jews (presumably meaning DEFCON or defense readiness condition). He was suspended from Twitter too, until being reinstated once Elon Musk seized command of the microblogging site.
He was then suspended again after he shared the image of a Star of David with a swastika etched inside of it. The Star of David is a sacred symbol in Judaism. Regarding his suspension, Musk responded in a tweet, “I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.”
Before he shared the tweet, West had expressed his admiration for none other than Adolf Hitler in an interview with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the news website Infowars, Hitler is one of the most hated men in history. A German dictator, he who oversaw the murder of six million Jews during the World War II under his Third Reich.
Jones began by saying that he does not believe West is a Nazi and does not deserve to be demonised. To which West, his face completely covered in a black mask, countered, “Well, I see good things about Hitler also. The Jews…I love everyone, and the Jewish people are not going to tell me ‘You can love us and you can love what we are doing to you with the contracts, and you can love what we are pushing with the pornography’, but this guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud that this person ever did anything good and I am done with that.”
Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial
The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial garnered headlines not simply because of the amount of celebrity involved, but also because of the sordid facts of the turbulent marriage that came to light. The trial was televised, so Depp and Heard fans (mostly Depp) edited snippets on Tiktok. The result was a lot of trivialisation of what should have been considered a serious issue.
Depp won the Fairfax, Virginia trial. He had sued Heard for an op-ed she had penned for the Washington Post titled “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”. While she had not named him, Depp filed for defamation anyway.
The trial awarded Depp $10 million in damages. Heard was awarded $2 million in damages as well for being “defamed” by Heard’s lawyer who had accused her of creating a hoax. Heard has often accused Depp of physical and emotional violence, which Depp denies.
Depp lost a London defamation trial against News Group Newspapers for calling him a “wife-beater” in The Sun. The judge found Heard’s accusations “substantially true”.
