The Will Smith-Chris Rock Slap Debate Is Overshadowing An Insidious Labor Issue
Image; NPR
On March 27th, 2022, during a lived televised broadcast of the 94th Academy Awards, actor Will Smith approached comedian Chris Rock on stage and slapped him across the face. He allegedly did so because of a joke the comedian made about Actress and wife of Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head (Jada has the medical condition alopecia areata). Clips of the incident went viral and became a heated part of the pop culture "discourse" as people debated whether this action was right or wrong.
You might have opinions on this event, or like Daniel Radcliffe, you might simply be tired of people talking about it. We will sidestep the ethicality of this action and instead chat about the labor issue that no one is talking about.
After debating the wrongness of the slap, a lot of celebrities then immediately left the Dolby Theater to cross the picket line at the Chateau Marmont after-party — many of them not even knowing (or caring that they did so).
After parties are a massive thing in Hollywood, and no night personifies this sentiment more than the Oscars: the Governor's Ball; the Vanity Fair party. The night is littered with various events, balls, and galas for celebrities to drink, pose with other stars, and strut in fabulous outfits.
Beyonce and Jay-Z hosted one such after-party at the Chateau Marmont, a venue with longstanding labor issues. According to reporting from The Hollywood Reporter, Management has created a hostile work culture rife with racial discrimination and sexual misconduct for years. The climate at the hotel often valued the customer over the health and safety of their staff.
In one example from that THR article, a housekeeper described an incident where a male guest began masturbating while she cleaned the room. She reported the guest, but Management refused to bar him from the hotel, and he continued to visit. In her own words: "[Management] made me believe that they were going to deal with it, but they didn't do anything. They made me feel unsafe at work. Every time I saw him, I was reliving my experience. I felt abused again."
According to the THR piece, the hotel owner, André Balazs, was also a piece of work that was constantly intoxicated, openly violated the city liquor laws, and groped staff and guests alike. One of his staffers remarked: "It's like having an alcoholic, drug-addicted father, but it's your CEO."
Partly in response to this toxic workplace culture, hotel workers started organizing several years ago with the union Unite Here. A push began in earnest sometime before 2020, hoping to push for a vote within the next year or two.
When the COVID pandemic emerged in earnest in 2020, temporarily reducing the bookings of the hotel industry, Balazs allegedly saw this as an opportunity to stop the unionization drive in its tracks. He announced a pivot to turn the Chateau Marmont into a timeshare, firing 248 workers in the middle of a pandemic without providing them severance packages or extended health insurance. People have been leading a boycott of the Chateau Marmont ever since, and prolific voices such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay have endorsed it.
Again, this is the venue where Jay-Z and Beyonce chose to host their after-party. The THR piece came out in 2020 (about two years ago), and they either didn't care about the venue's reputation or are so far removed from labor issues that the toxic work culture of where they decide to party doesn't even enter into the equation.
On the night of the 94th Oscars, organizers from UNITE HERE Local 11 were actively picketing the venue, often fighting against the private security force the Carters had hired. Unless showing up very late to the party (most of the picketers reportedly dispersed around 1 am), guests, who ranged from Tiffany Haddish to Chris Pine, had to cross this picket line to enter. The word "Boycott" was projected onto the building outside, meaning that some celebrities had to know something was up, and they simply didn't care.
Do you know what many of these celebrities did care about, though? The Will Smith-Chris Rock slap.
"I wish I had a man who would protect me like that," attendee Tiffany Haddish joked to People.
"Here's a picture of my dress at the award show where we are apparently assaulting people on stage now," attendee Zoë Kravitz posted to Instagram.
The only celebrity guest who seemed to comment on the labor issue was Rosario Dawson, who claimed she did not know about the boycott and signed onto the pledge after the fact.
However, most attendees have not commented on this issue, and the same applies to A-list celebrities in general. Hollywood was quick to debate the case of the slap, something that, in the grand scheme of things, is relatively minor. Yet when it came to making a tangible impact on the people fighting for better working conditions (people who make their A-list life possible), they were and continue to be silent.
The whole conversation about the slap feels like a distraction. It's a spectacle concerning an ultimately minor issue compared to the vast wealth inequities plaguing modern America. Will Smith and Chris Rock are two wealthy elites who decided to air their grievances in public, and regardless of your opinion of that action, it's clear a lot of people in this industry do not care about the workers they consider beneath them.
Nothing slaps the energy out of Hollywood more than having to consider the working class.