Patrick Carlyon: Why Will Smith should keep his Oscar

The Oscars have never been good behaviour awards, so while separating Will Smith from his Best Actor gong might please some it would also set a precedent for hypocrisy.

Slapgate has taken over. Who cares about a federal budget or the Ukraine crisis when a famous person slaps a famous person?

What a talking point. Crazed man defends wife. Man brings night into disrepute. Why an open hand? The tears? And, for the locals, how is it that the ghost of Glenn Milne, of Walkley Awards infamy, has materialised in Hollywood?

Will Smith’s Oscars slap will figure in the award night’s history reel for the next 30 years.

Predictably, talk has turned to stripping Will Smith of his Best Actor award after he slapped Chris Rock. Picture: AFP

The moment turned attention off Wesley Snipes’ golfer-meets-alien inspired outfit (a pity), and Sean Penn’s crafty plan to smelt his Oscars if Ukraine didn’t get a gig in the ceremony (a win).It raises so many questions. Will Hollywood still be able to save Ukraine? And If Chris Rock got a slap for a poor taste joke, why hasn’t Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais ever been gang tackled on stage by a tag team of Judi Dench and Al Pacino?

Predictably, talk has turned to stripping Smith of his best actor award win; the academy has promised to “explore further action and consequences in accordance with our Bylaws, Standards of Conduct and California law.”

It is not known if the academy’s “formal review” will or will not involve interviews with a few billion witnesses.

The moment turned attention off Wesley Snipes’ golfer-meets-alien inspired outfit. Picture: Getty Images

Why has Ricky Gervais never been gang tackled on stage by a tag team of Judi Dench and Al Pacino?

Separating Smith and his gong might please some. There is much handwringing about the implied “condoning” of “violence”; after all, as Smith pointed out in his apology, we all strive for a world of “love and kindness”.

Smith explained that his slap was “not indicative of the man I want to be”. But punishing him with gong removal only nods to cancel culture thinking.

Don’t like it? Make like it never happened.

Separating Will Smith and his gong might please some but it would also set a precedent in hypocrisy.

It would also set a precedent in hypocrisy. The Oscars have never been good behaviour awards. Drunks and wifebeaters have won industry accolades, along with political crusaders who have failed to grasp that no one cares about their entitled sense of political persuasion.

Kevin Spacey has won, as has Dustin Hoffman. Both have been outed for very poor behaviour. Should they give theirs back?

Roman Polanski won best director for The Pianist in 2003, a few decades after fleeing the US after pleading guilty to statutory rape.

He was expelled from the academy in 2018, after academy members — presumably distracted in the fight to save women/Uighurs/Tibet/Taiwan and America from Trump — belatedly realised that Polanski, in having relations with a 13-year-old in the 1970s, failed to meet the academy’s standards of conduct.

He kept his Oscar. So should Smith.