Oscars 2022 Review: What We’ll Remember
by Ella Harold March 30, 2022.
The 2022 Academy Awards will always be remembered as “The Oscars When Will Smith Slapped Chris Rock.” As soon as the frightening assault occurred, its impact and infamy were inescapable. Something this ugly has never happened at the Oscars (not in my memory, at least), but any kind of unscripted curveball has a way of defining these telecasts. Last year’s ceremony was expected to be “The Pandemic Oscars” before it became “The Oscars When Chadwick Boseman Lost,” and the 2018 Academy Awards saw a “La La Land”-slide turn into “Moonlight, Actually” in its confounding final moments. The last word on live awards shows isn’t easy to predict, nor can it be controlled. Producers set a theme, but the night’s ultimate thesis isn’t so easily assigned.
Smith’s slap — delivered after Rock made a crass joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair — wasn’t even an isolated moment. It took over the final hour-plus of the broadcast. As the presumptive favorite to win Best Actor, audiences knew his impromptu trip to the stage wouldn’t be his last of the evening. Sean Combs could promise the beef would be squashed at the after-party, but viewers didn’t have to wait for backstage reporters to get the scoop. They could hear from the man himself.
It wasn’t supposed to be so boring. I have trouble recalling the last year when the Oscars weren’t mired in controversy, from #OscarsSoWhite and #OscarsSoMale to the Kevin Hart saga that led to three host-free years and the spectacle of men who’ve been accused of sexual misconduct “supporting” Time’s Up. But the run-up to 2022 was contentious even by that standard. While responses to the first hosts since 2018 — Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes — were muted, virtually all other news regarding the telecast provoked a backlash. Fan-favorite awards decided by Twitter and appearances by celebrities who had nothing to do with movies, like DJ Khaled and Tony Hawk? It reeked of futile pandering to an 18–34 demographic that’s never coming back to linear TV, much less awards shows. And that’s exactly what it was.
