Zoë Kravitz shares a few words on her internet-maligned Oscars Slap take
"It's a scary time to have an opinion," the actor laments
Aux News Zoë Kravitz
In the hours and days following the 2022 Oscars, when “The Slap” became the singular, universal nomenclature for an unforgettable confrontation between Will Smith and Chris Rock, not even Hollywood’s most impenetrable cool kids were safe from derision.
At the top of that list: Zoë Kravitz, who decried Smith’s slap with a pointed Instagram from the ceremony captioned, “here’s a picture of my dress at the show where we are apparently assaulting people on stage now.” Internet response (and ridicule) was decisive and supercharged by the already-chaotic online moment (Kravitz eventually deleted the post). These days, however, it appears she’s trying to make peace with the past fanfare.
“I have very complicated feelings around it,” she says in a new interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I wish I had handled that differently. And that’s okay.” Although Kravitz has her own regrets about the situation, she also expressed that the circumstances around her choice to take down the posts felt somewhat “scary.”
“It’s a scary time to have an opinion or to say the wrong thing or to make controversial art or statements or thoughts or anything,” she tells writer Hunter Harris. “It’s mostly scary because art is about conversation. That should, in my opinion, always be the point. The internet is the opposite of conversation. The internet is people putting things out and not taking anything in.”
Kravitz also hints that the incident (and simply where she’s at currently in life) gave her the legs to let go of pleasing the internet and focus on her creative endeavors. Kravitz is currently at work directorial debut Pussy Island, a thriller stacked with an ensemble cast including Naomi Ackie, Simon Rex, Christian Slater, Geena Davis, Alia Shawkat, Kyle MacLachlan, and Kravitz’s current paramour Channing Tatum.
“I think I’m in a place right now where I don’t want to express myself through a caption or a tweet,” she continues. “I want to express myself through art.”
59 Comments
She has literally nothing to apologize about.
Three stars.
“here’s a picture of my dress at the show where we are apparently assaulting people on stage now.I mean, someone was assaulted on stage at the show. She showed a picture of her dress at said show. She told no lies!
Yeah, I guess the argument is it was tacky to put focus on her dress and make light of the slap, but also…who cares? She went to an awards show that, by all usual accounts, is a place to be seen and show off your look. It’s not her fault the slap heard round the world happened. And she gave it more weight than a lot of people did by addressing that it was, in fact, an assault of a person on live TV.I hope she realizes that there is no way to please the internet, there are purity hounds trying to sniff out the most minor of imperfections to attack anyone and everyone.
I guess the argument is it was tacky to put focus on her dress and make light of the slapBut the thing is, I don’t see how they could make that argument based on what she said. Did she put focus on her dress? Did she make light of the slap?If anything I’d say the opposite is a more credible argument.Firstly, she called it an assault, which is a lot more than most other celebs at the Oscars did, so is definitely not making light of it. Secondly, given all the politics behind Oscar dresses and designers and the transactional nature of the star/designer relationship, I could see a scenario where the designer of her dress would be pissed that, instead of holding up her end of the bargain and simply looking pretty while saying who she’s wearing, and putting focus solely on the dress, she instead made a comment that could be interpreted as shade towards the triviality of Oscar dresses in the light of ‘people getting assaulted’ at the event.
I’m not in her brain, but it seems to me that she was drawing attention to the slap by comparing it to all the superficial Hollywood things that usually happen at things like that.Although in a country where people think The Punisher is a role model, I’m not surprised that people missed the point.
I agree, which is why I don’t see why people are/were mad at her.
Firstly, she called it an assault, which is a lot more than most other celebs at the Oscars did, so is definitely not making light of it.Right?! Didn’t Will Smith get a standing O later on? The very kindest gloss I can give is that they were still in shock but still, hugely bad look.She doesn’t have to apologize for anything.
Exactly. She wasn’t complaining like “thanks to the slap, no one noticed my pretty dress”. It seemed quite the opposite. Like “I’m wearing a dress and, btw, assault is okay now?”
Thank you – yes!
The argument was that she Shouldn’t have criticized Smith at all because some people think that any joke made about any black person is the same as a lynching even from another black person so they think Smith was perfectly justified.
If there are people out there who didn’t read that tweet as a strong indictment of the slap (and instead saw it as making light of it), I think that many folk need to brush up on their critical reading skills….No wonder she’s like “eff the internet, I’m expressing myself through art”
I mean, why else do they put on those dresses except to parade around and take pictures?
Are we starting a movement to just have the awards show entirely in the nude?I can get behind that.
Where do I sign?
Yeah and to be honest, while it WAS assualt, considering it was between 2 men and Smith didn’t straight up punch Rock it was just kind of meh.
So slapping people is no big deal?
Well it is, I mean as I said it WAS assualt, a big deal, but usually when there is an altercation among men involving physical violence someone is getting punched. At the end of the day they were both wrong Rock shouldn’t have cracked the joke about Jada and Smith DEFINATLEY should not have slapped him.
yeah i don’t get what was controversial about her statement, or why should she feel any need to apologize for it or clarify it.
Yeah I don’t see why that was controversial. Whether you think the assault was justified or not, an assault on stage definitely happened. And she was wearing a dress. I don’t see the problem.
She was right though.
Her original take was correct. Say no more. Move on.
She was correct.
She has complicated feelings and wishes she’d handled it differently?
She didn’t hit anybody!
I honestly have no recollection of her being internet attacked for sharing a very factual opinion lol. the internet is in a wild time right now where some feelings are very justified (Chapelle, Rowling obsession with transphobic comments is naturally going to have people comment back), but then sorry to folks like Kravitz who get unfairly shredded for a pretty reasonable response to something she actually sat through and witnessed.
Apparently it’s a black twitter thing. Black twitter is sometimes wondrously on-point, but more often, it’s just twitter, with all the garbage that implies.
…there was a “controversy” about that comment of hers? Huh? Why? People suck.
If you had the answer, why’d you ask the question?
It was mostly on Black twitter, not surprised that folks around here weren’t aware of it and don’t seem to grasp it, really. This article leaves out that crucial context: it wasn’t the internet in general that went in on Zoe Kravitz, it was Black people specifically and I think knowing that helps frame her “complicated feelings” about it. It was an in-group/out-group thing, her caption positioned her as “out-group” (siding with the white women decrying Will’s violence at that moment- not my take, I’m just summarizing the reactions that I saw) and she got thoroughly dragged in response. There were a lot of tweets questioning her Blackness, her lack of talent, nepotism and re-sharing creepy ass quotes she made about Smith’s underaged son. It’s obviously not having any impact on her career, Black people were never her primary audience (as those tweets pointed out) but individually, yeah it was probably tough to deal with.
Thank you for summarizing this. It is sad how little cultural competency avclub has when it comes to issues that focus on Black people/culture. It was the same misunderstanding of Keke Palmer/Zendaya stuff.
It was mostly on Black twitter, not surprised that folks around here weren’t aware of it and don’t seem to grasp it, really. That’s nothing. Wait until you see them try to deal with anything outside the United States.
Some Americans often find it utterly baffling that the rest of the world exists beyond their borders and doesn’t have an US-centric view of the world.
I did chuckle when they called the Russ Mulcahey masterpiece Razorback a Hollywood film – because Hollywood’s where movies come from! All movies!
Well that’s… dumb.
I’m surprised people aren’t aware of it just because it was so huge on Twitter for a day or two. But it was primarily about her saying some really inappropriate stuff about Will Smith’s son when she was in her 20s (?) and he was 14 that no one would think was ok if genders were reversed.
Good to know black Twitter is every bit as insane as every other part of Twitter than.
Black Twitter during the OJ trial would have been insane. I’m sure plenty of people that had wrong takes then are glad they aren’t frozen in digital amber for the rest of time but Kravitz truly has nothing to be ashamed of.
This is such a fucking non article.
Bold of her to have opinions about violence when she was the one who pushed Alexander Skarsgård down a staircase!
Ha! That’s nothing! Reese Witherspoon threw an ice cream at Meryl Streep! How very dare she!
He accidentally fell!
She posted what would have been the usual Oscar comment which slid into how the night surreally changed into something awful and unexpected, to contrast the two, and clearly was not pro-slap or anything similar. What were people looking for? Hand-wringing only? Will Smith got applauded later in the night. She should not be apologizing for anything.
Will Smith did nothing wrong
“The internet is people putting things out and not taking anything in.”This must’ve been a particularly soul-deadening quote to build an article about a six-month-old controversy around.
Yet….
“Art is about conversation”
What? No it’s not, at least not necessarily. Seems like she could have just left her post up and ignored any backlash. Doesn’t seem particularly scary to me to think that someone somewhere doesn’t think you said exactly the right thing about an awards show.
Its literally the worst thing she could have done…. Im speculating…. guessing shes taken some hits with castings, producers not wanting to be involved, one way or the other, and this statement pops up. Plus she is a POC and has to fight off insane Reddit/Twitter folk, and is feeling cast out. If she was taking hits from the mob, she should have just stepped away and let the mob move on. She was right, to me, it’s sad to see her apologize for standing up for what she feels. Now she just stoked the fire, rehashed something the majority of people agreed with, and respected her for saying.
Welcome to 2022, where the WALL STREET JOURNAL asks you to reflect and make a public statement about internet comments from a six-month-old Instagram post – and you’re ready with a multi-paragraph response
I mean that’s a funny, pointed post and she was very much in the right. The responses she got from Black Twitter were disgusting, and it’s nuts they caped for a dude displaying toxic behavior instead of a biracial woman, often using her biracialness against her (someone called her an Arnold Palmer child). Just further evidence that tribalism is trash.
Last I checked, both her parents are bi-racial, but she is not. Zoë is a light-skinned black woman, which makes the vitriol and derision hurled at her even more horrifying.
Why should Black twitter cap for someone who has said anti-Black things in the past? It’s her personal identity and she can go on a journey to figure out how she identifies but she is not owed support when she hasn’t exactly figured out how pro Black she wants to be
Kravitz is currently at work directorial debut Pussy Island…I could’t hold in a chuckle which coincided with me immediately writing-off any statement or position she’d made previously in the article. Humanity is in a weird spot. Wheeeeeeeeeeee!
She did nothing wrong. She said nothing wrong. It was short and to the point.People watch it for two things; the awards and the clothes. She simply stated “here’s my dress” and “assault is happening in front of me”.Were people expecting one young woman to change clothes before making a statement? Would wearing overalls have made the statement more impactful?Jeezus. She reacted while it was happening. Leave her alone for not taking a day to write an essay and have it edited.
She was right then and she is right in everything she’s said here.
Where’s the lie tho?
I want to express myself through Kinja! comments. Yet I cannot.
“It’s a scary time to have an opinion,”C’mon, everyone knows by now the public have the technology to respond en masse instantaneously. You engage with society at your own risk, same as always.
I can’t imagine posting an innocuous tweet like that and managing to give 0.0001% of a fuck that some losers on Twitter have convinced themselves that it’s the thing that offended them most in that particular 5 minute span. These purity spirals are always bullshit but this takes the cake.
So we’re at the point that we’re having Discourse about the Discourse about the Slap, then, huh