The Academy, which awards the awards, went on to tweet that all Oscar winners “deserve this moment of recognition from their peers and movie buffs worldwide.”
The reactions to the Academy’s statement are not kind. Many note that the Academy did allow the violence, because it didn’t intervene and because Will Smith was later awarded the Oscar for best actor.
Rock made a joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith and GI Jane, a movie in which Demi Moore plays a soldier with that nickname with cropped hair. Smith reacted furiously. He slapped Rock. “Shut up jef*cking about my wife,” he shouted. Jada Pinkett-Smith suffers from the hair disease alopecia, a condition that causes a person to become partially or completely bald.
Smith apologized to the Academy for receiving the Academy Award for Best Actor, but not to Chris Rock.