A Toast to Amy Schumer’s Very Best Joke at the 2022 Oscars

Two and a half hours after the 94th Annual Academy Awards, I’m finishing the final brushstrokes for the stories of the night and skimming the last tweets of the red carpet shade, believing all that remaining in my evening is a change and potentially half a sleep aid CBD marshmallow. Then, out of nowhere, it happened: Presenter Chris Rock made a nasty joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair loss, and her husband, Will Smith, stepped forward. stage, hit Rock and yelled, “Keep my wife’s name off your f*corner.”

As if that weren’t enough to cause a stir involving Will Smith for a ceremony, seconds later Smith was called on stage to accept his Oscar for best actor for his performance in King. Richard. During his speech, he tearfully apologized to the Academy and its nominees, adding that “love makes you do crazy things”. Debate heated up immediately, with some arguing that an actor performing assault on stage at the Oscars was too pale and others reacting that there should be consequences. for Rock mocking a Black woman’s chronic illness. (While we’re on that particular subject, let’s all recall the time John Wayne had to be physically restrained from assaulting an Indigenous woman at the Oscars because she had boldness in calling for equality in the industry And while we’re discussing – High-profile Oscars behaviour, let’s not forget that Roman Polanski was awarded a statue in 2003 after running away from the land country in 1978 to avoid consequences for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old. Violence should never be, of course, but it would be nice to hear more of that rhetoric when the perpetrator of that violence was not Negro.)

After all that — to use the technical phrase — bonkers-ness, it’s hard to imagine the evening ever returning to an even keel, and it really isn’t. However, a well-timed joking response from host Amy Schumer helped put the events of the evening into context. While her performance as the host of the show all night long didn’t leave me completely amused (a joke about Leo DiCaprio dating young women felt particularly boring and she shouted at transgender people losing their rights in Texas and around the country as an insulting thought to the border), her response to the Smith-Rock vacuum was one of perfection.

“I got out of that Spider-Man costume. Am I missing something? It’s like a different vibe here,” Schumer joked as she took to the stage after the incident, in what I chose to consider a reference to writer Allison P. Davis’ excellent article. Schumer received a handshake from Tiffany Haddish, one of the night’s best hosts, before answering her own question: “Oh, well. Sure is not.”

It was a small moment and clearly not a script (who but the world’s most elite team of PR-crisis agents could ever prepare for a situation where a candidate slaps a leader). show at the Oscars?), but Schumer’s response was low-key enough to say “WTF?” that went through a lot of our minds without adding fuel to the fire. All in all, it’s like a resounding reminder of why we need hosts at the Oscars: At the end of the day, all the prewritten bits and prewritten articles in the world. World is no substitute for a real human being on stage, especially someone lucky with good comic timing.