Will Smith didn’t just slap Chris Rock on Sunday. The actor’s unexpected violent reaction to a joke in bad taste also slapped the Oscars and the rest of the winners of the 94th edition of the awards. The list of winners has, as usual, much that is questionable but also, beginning with the coronation of ‘CODA’ as best film, it can be read as a list of advances in the field of inclusion that the Hollywood Academy and, in general, the film industry have longed for and need.
With ‘CODA’ and its triplet of statuettes, a plenary session, a modest film that has managed to give enormous exposure and recognition to the deaf community triumphed. His award for best film was received in the stalls of the Dolby Theater with most of the attendees waving their hands, applause in sign language, an image that until this year had been unimaginable.
The same thing happened when he received the statuette as supporting actor Troy Kotsur, the first deaf-mute male performer to win the Oscar, 35 years after her ‘CODA’ co-star Marlee Matlin won it, for ‘Children of a lesser god’. That in his applauded speech Kotsur spoke of his father, who was paralyzed after an accident and lost the ability to use his hands to communicate, served to underscore the challenges the community is dealing with.
The ‘streaming’, no turning back
The Oscars even finally decided to open their club of glory to a phenomenon that until now they have kept at the doors: that of ‘streaming’. And they threw again Netflix rejection messages, which took only one of the 27 Oscars to which its films were eligible, but they allowed Apple TV + to enter their Olympus. There is no turning back now.
If Will Smith hadn’t pulled off the heist today there would be more talk of Ariana DeBose, the second Latina actress to win an Oscar after she won it for the same supporting role as Anita in ‘West Side Story’ Rita Moreno and the first to proudly define herself as an “openly queer person of color.” “There is a space for us & rdquor ;, she said in her applauded speech.
There would also be more talk about the focus than Jessica Chastain, one of the best active actressesawarded as the protagonist of ‘The eyes of Tammy Faye’, also put in the LGTB + community and in the reactionary laws that are stalking it more and more in the United States, a reality that the three comic presenters also made reference to.
Women, Latinos, Asians and Blacks
These Oscars where Amy Schumer launched with a successful poison dart the joke that they hired three women as emcees “because it is cheaper than hiring a man & rdquor; would also be celebrated as historical for women, with Jane Campion entering, in her second attempt and thanks to the punished ‘The power of the dog’, in the limited group of directors with a statuette. The New Zealander did it right the year after Chloé Zhao join Kathryn Bigelow in that ridiculously small club (and in which, as another presenter, Wanda Sykes, recalled in a comic gag, there is still no black director).
If Will Smith had not done the inexplicable, these would also be Oscars that would force to put the focus on the Latin, not only because of the award for DeBose but also for ‘Encanto’, the award-winning Disney animated film that projects Colombian culture and whose nominated song, ‘Dos orugitas’ could not beat Billie Eilish’s ‘No time to die’ but took the Spanish to the gala. And there would be more talk about a Spaniard, Alberto Mielgo, winning the Oscar for animated short with ‘The Windshield Wiper’, or that Riz Ahmed, a Muslim, was awarded for a very hard short like ‘The Long Goodbye’, which looks straight into the racism and the extreme violence that accompanies it.
Three years after the historic triumph of ‘Parasites’, these Oscars also served to confirm the strength and the source of good cinema that is Asia thanks to the victory, even if it was only in the international film category, of ‘Drive my car’, which had also achieved nominations for best film, for directing and for its adapted screenplay.
monumental work
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The black community would also have multiple reasons to celebrate: the recognition of a monumental work such as the documentary ‘Summer of love’, with which Questlove has helped bring back the forgotten ‘black woodstock’ to the recognition of a figure full of dignity like Lusia Harris, subject of the award-winning short documentary, ‘The queen of basketball’.
In an Oscar that in the winners and except for the monumental surprise that was the award for the best original screenplay for Kenneth Brannagh for ‘Belfast‘ were predictable, with ‘dunes‘ By sweeping technical categories and racking up six statuettes, it could also celebrate the fifth Oscar in the main acting category for a black actor, something only Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker had achieved before. But that actor this Sunday was Will Smith. And although he was applauded, his actions, not his words, dynamited everything.