Will Smith comes back to awards stage for the first time since slapgate. Here's why

Will Smith made a comeback to the awards season events on Wednesday night as he accepted the Beacon Award at the African American Film Critics Association Awards, reported Variety. This is the first time Smith has attended an awards function after the debacle that was the Oscars 2022 ceremony for him. Smith was last seen in Emancipation, which received mixed reviews with many critics calling it Oscar bait. And despite that, it was not nominated for an Oscar, though apart from AAFCA honour,it did win Smith a trophy at NAACP Image Awards. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by William N Collage, the film follows the fascinating true story of Gordon and Whipped Peter, the visuals of whose whipped back took a symbolic meaning during the American Civil War.

Smith said at the ceremony, "Emancipation was the most individual difficult film of my entire career. It’s really difficult to transport a modern mind to that time period. It’s difficult to imagine that, that level of inhumanity.”

How was Emancipation?

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Also Read:Emancipationmovie review: Self-important and ponderous, Will Smith's Oscar bait is dead on arrival

WION's review of the film read, "A coherent film based on Whipped Peter's story could have been inspiring and rich with drama, but Emancipation watches like a film that a hypothetical machine would churn out if it was instructed to manufacture the perfect Oscar bait. It is as though Smith kept the film as a second alternative to score an Oscar nomination if 'King Richard' did not succeed. It has that "prestige" look and often seems appears to be a bad parody of one of HBO's crime dramas. Visually, the film is nearly but not exactly black-and-white, another choice probably to give the film a pretentious aesthetic but that does not justify its presence."

What happened with Will Smith at Oscars 2022?

He whacked comedian and presenter Chris Rock across the face during the last year's Oscar ceremony after the latter had cracked a joke at the expense of the former's wife Jada Pinkett Smith. It might have boosted the ratings of the televised ceremony, but it became a permanent stain on the Academy's reputation.

What has been the impact of Will Smith's slap?

As a punitive measure for his act of violence, in April the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences barred Smith from Oscars and any other events organised by the Academy for a decade following a meeting of the board of governors.

In August last year, it was reported that Will Smith's reputation saw a steep decline due to the slap. As per Variety, Smith's popularity and approval ratings declined significantly following the Oscar ceremony. In the data provided by Q Scores to the publication, he was one of the top 5 or 10 rated actors in the US. But after the incident, his Q Score went down to 24 from 39. Henry Schafer, executive VP of Q Scores, said this is a significant drop. At the same time, his negative rating went up from 10 to 26.

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