With so much talk about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock for making a joke about his Wife, Jada Pinkett at the Oscars ceremony this year, most are simply taking sides and not seeing the great opportunity this mishaps gives Will. While I’m sure Will Smith sees his blunder, given the facts as they are, he could turn this misfortune into a golden opportunity to not only redeem himself, but fulfill his Wife’s #oscarssowhite agenda. If done right, Will could take power away from the legendary award show and give that power to minorities. Here’s how:
Now that Will has resigned from the Oscars’ board and been banned for 10 years from the ceremony, he has to figure out how to preserve his celebrity and recoup his losses. Here’s what I propose he do to flip this situation in his and minorities’ favor.
First, Will should hire a good show producer like Jesse Collins and start his own motion pictures award show called the Ptah awards. The Ptah awards would take a step the Oscars simply can’t, they would function from a foundation other than White Male Supremacy. The show would be what the Oscars aren’t and that is fair. Given Will Smith’s universal appeal, he’s the perfect actor to usher in Hollywood’s side-stepping of White Male Supremacists values. The Oscars participate in the universal American practice of discounting black people’s value. For the Oscars this practice means giving black people the absolute minimum necessary to keep them content and engaged while simultaneously denying them as much as possible. Otherwise they will do like Jada Pinkett Smith and start publicly making light of the show’s White Male Supremacist practices. For the Oscars, they make sure to include symbolic black award nominations on a yearly basis and an occasional win every once in a while. This strategy is just enough to keep Black people engaged to a ceremony that is all about White people. However, psychologically, this practice gives America the subconscious impression that black acting is subpar and that every once in a while a black actor rises to the level of white excellence.
Will Smith should get Chris Rock to host the Ptah Awards by giving him an offer he can’t refuse. The two, as producer and host, would gain major publicity by making very public amends, which would include Will sincerely apologizing and discussing the incident with Chris on camera. The award show itself would truly be fair, which would mean fair consideration, less restriction on who gets the lions share of awards and a more colorful array of award winners. White people would win plenty of awards too. The Ptah Awards would need to be produced on the same scale and quality as the Oscars and the producers should be vigilant for saboteurs and negative media campaigning from the Oscars’ franchise.
Aside from the publicity Will Smith and Chris Rock making amends will garner, the similarity of the award statues would cause great controversy. Being grounded in White Male Supremacy, America would automatically think the statue of Ptah mimics the Oscar. WRONG. The Oscars’ statue is modeled after the Ancient Egyptian god Ptah. The controversy would be a shot over the bow of White Male Supremacy because America would have to fully discuss the subject. Honest discussion is White Male Supremacists’ kryptonite. Just look at how they are responding to the notion of Critical Race Theory.
The Oscars award show has been on its last leg for a while now. Jada Pinkett-Smith was right about it being “so white.” It is incapable of equity because discounting blackness is inherent to America; the Academy is just behaving like the country of its birth. A Ptah Awards Show would cater to White America’s current trend of trying to be righteous with racial matters. The unwillingness to support an A-list celebrity award show run by a likeable black celebrity while fully supporting the White one would reveal a lot of hidden demons White America won’t acknowledge.
Will Smith’s blunder breathed life into the ailing Oscars show. The Ptah Awards would capitalize on it by taking the value of his deed and fueling a new, more inclusive awards franchise. It could even absorb the academy into it, making the Oscars like the skin a snake sheds, which leads to a new, more colorful and better being. I think this plan is possible and it would be a way for Will to gain what it appears he seeks, a new challenge that could actually contend with him. Lack of challenge in one’s life causes one to do foolish things like go on stage during a national broadcast and slap the man hosting this national show. Will Smith is so unchallenged that committing a crime on camera in front of the world didn’t dissuade him from letting his emotions erupt. That need of a true contender should manifest in a overture on the Oscars’ franchise.