On Sunday afternoon, I was browsing different news outlets to give myself an end-of-the-week update as to the general state of affairs — and yes, to look for a topic that piqued my interest for this cycle’s op-ed pitch. I read several op-eds lamenting the gradual toppling of classic big-screen cinema and Hollywood traditions like the Academy Awards. It was truly thought-provoking: What does the future of cinema look like, I wondered, in the context of streaming giants like Netflix? I stored it away as a potential prompt. And then the next morning, my friends casually mentioned in conversation the “slap heard around the world,” and I realized after finding out more about the infamous incident that this was what I wanted to — had to — write about. 

The incident goes as follows: Oscars host Chris Rock made a tasteless joke on stage about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, and after the camera panned to a shot of Will Smith laughing while she rolled her eyes, he strode onto the stage, slapped Chris Rock and told him to keep his wife’s name out of his mouth. Quoted here sans expletives. 

Of course, the reactions were immediate and dramatic: a deluge of social media comments making a joke out of, condemning or applauding Will Smith’s actions. It certainly sparked a storm of renewed interest in the Oscars, a ceremony that, only the day before, had been remarked upon as a dying tradition. However, after looking through the various tweets and statements about the incident, especially from fellow celebrities, I began to get a sense that people were riding the tide of this public outrage in order to virtue-signal or push their own prejudices or agenda onto the trending page. 

Again and again, people stressed that violence was never the answer. Words like “love” and “peace” flooded the topic feed, and people from all over the world felt invited to impose their own copy-and-paste morals and opinion on the situation. They qualified their positions: They allowed that neither man had been in the right, but repeatedly the word of online judgment punished Will Smith for his actions. Comedian Judd Apatow took it further and even stated in a now-deleted Tweet that Will “could have killed” Rock in “pure out of control rage and violence.” Other Twitter users were quick to condemn him for his placement of Will Smith in the role of the “so scary” black man, but the message was clear; A country as racially divided as America was going to dissect and maul this incident between two successful Black men, and drag it into politics. 

Aside from virtue signalling, what happened at the Oscars should certainly not be an event for prejudiced or racist people, of which America has plenty, to chew up and blow bubbles out of like gum. Ultimately, the altercation between Will Smith and Chris Rock was an intensely personal one that, while highly publicized, still does not deserve the massive blow-up and scrutiny it got. Will Smith’s Oscar acceptance speech, after the incident, stressed his determination to “protect” his loved ones, and I believe his actions on the stage were just that: an effort to protect his wife from a potential repeated, mocking and demeaning campaign. Standard disclaimer: I do not condone violence. However, Will’s action was not political, it was not “out of control rage,” and frankly I believe the slap had less to do with the violence and pain of the impact than the public humiliation that Will wanted to return to its unprovoked inflictor. 

I acknowledge that Will Smith has an immense public platform and is admired by vulnerable young people who may have been adversely affected by the incident. However, I argue that above being the Will Smith to his millions of fans, he has every right to claim his private role as husband, father and protector of his family. Let the Academy fret over disciplinary measures, let Chris Rock decide whether he wants to press charges; Such is their right. But we must realize that celebrities don’t give up their personal identities in exchange for their fame, and their spotlight is no excuse to drown them in our delicious, lucrative outrage.

In the spirit of fairness: At the beginning of this piece, I described the process of my decision to write my article about this incident as an example, in and of itself, of the growing value of outrage. Even with a relevant background and current course, I was immediately drawn to the intense controversy of the Will Smith slap. Instead of waxing eloquently about the transforming face of film and cinematography, I offered my condemnation of the online outrage over the incident, and shared in the hogpile mentality of this age of outrage. I don’t think of myself as being in a better moral position than anyone who publicly commented on this; I simply wanted to share a certain growing feeling of disappointment with the wild trend of capitalizing on outrage at the expense of personal and private identities and lives.

Bianca Nam is a sophomore in Saybrook College. Her column, “Moments Notice”, runs every other Wednesday. Contact her at hyerim.nam@yale.edu.