There are approximately one million opinions floating around the Internet right now about The Slap—from those at home as well as those who were there. If you're pop culture averse and have somehow missed this moment, The Slap is, of course, the moment that Will Smith stormed the Oscars stage on Sunday night and slapped Chris Rock after Rock made a joke about Smith's wife and her newly bald head. (Jada Pinkett-Smith suffers from alopecia, which she has shared publicly.) There are conversations about assault and illness. Blackness and Scientology. But my mind continues to turn to Best Picture winner CODA. The plucky film is historic for a couple of reasons: It's the first film from a streamer to earn Best Picture and, more importantly, it's the first film with a predominantly deaf cast to collect such a statue.
That should have been a massive celebration. But by the time Best Picture was announced, this year's Oscars ceremony had dissolved into chaos. Immediately following the altercation, Chris Rock fumbled through the rest of his presentation of the award for Best Documentary to Questlove, who gave a speech that no one paid attention to due to literal shock, before the suddenly host-less show awkwardly stumbled into the In Memoriam segment. The night's biggest awards followed: Jane Campion (first-time winner), Jessica Chastain (first-time winner), and CODA. But the world's collective attention was shot. The only lingering award that seemed to garner any attention at all was Best Actor, won by Smith, because people were desperate to hear what he had to say.
CODA's win being overshadowed feels like the biggest loss. The deaf community has been long overlooked in Hollywood. In fact, the only deaf performer to win an Oscar, until last night, was the film's star Marlee Matlin, who earned a statue back in 1987. CODA had become the movie version of a breath of fresh air, reminding us how compelling and heartwarming a simple story can be when someone dares to tell it from a new perspective. It did the unthinkable and became a Best Picture favourite at the perfect moment in the awards season, and then bam. Its win was blighted.
In some ways, the Oscars predicament (and the Oscars general treatment of CODA) is a perfect representation of what Hollywood has gotten wrong when it comes to the deaf and hard of hearing community. Throughout the evening, the Academy only provided American Sign Language translators for awards CODA won, as if deaf people were only interested in the awards that concerned their community directly. CODA won three awards—that's a lot of show to brush off without an interpreter.
I don't know exactly what the Oscars could have done to curtail the response to The Slap as it pertains to CODA's win. But I do know that, in all this arguing about whether a man "should have defended his wife" or "whether violence should be condoned," we lose sight of the fact that Smith stole a (likely) once-in-a-lifetime moment from at least four different major award recipients. In the one moment where this community finally got centre stage, a standing ovation, and a moment to put sign language at the forefront, our attention was elsewhere.
The video above captured the moment, and I hope everyone takes a moment to watch it today. You'll see a celebration of a small team that beat some pretty hefty odds. You'll see rows and rows of Hollywood's most powerful recognising deaf culture, and lifting it up. I hope we remember it. After all, last night will follow Will Smith's career forever. Why can't the same be true of everyone who made CODA?
Justin Kirkland is a Brooklyn-based writer who covers culture, food, and the South. Along with Esquire, his work has appeared in NYLON, Vulture, and USA Today.
