Pop Style Opinionfest: Less About the Slapping, More About the Clapping

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What? Like you thought we were just going to ignore the biggest celebrity story of the year? This would have likely been an Oscar post-mortem episode in any instance, but there was no question of us doing a little unpacking of the reactions to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock onstage at the Academy Awards. To those of you sick of hearing hot takes on the altercation, the key word here is “reactions.” Or as the title of the episode puts it, it’s less about the slapping and more about the clapping.

Why did Will laugh at the joke? Why did Jada laugh at the slap? Why did everyone give him a standing ovation? Why wasn’t he escorted out? Whose story can we believe in a week full of conflicting accounts? What’s likely to happen next? And perhaps the most important question of all, Why is everyone still talking about this?

In much lighter news, we review the first three episodes of HBO Max’s new series about Julia Child, Julia.

It gets the broad strokes of Child’s life and journey correct while carving out space for itself to tell episodic television stories exploring larger themes about middle class mid-century life. We talk about when this approach works and when it doesn’t and how star Sarah Lancashire’s embodiment of Child is more important than whether she gets the voice exactly right. And we try to sum it all up by exploring the importance of Child as a cultural figure and how her status as a game-changer cannot be overstated even now.

And with that, we must go take our post-Oscars, pre-Grammys nap. Thank you for listening, darlings!

[Photo Credit: Seacia Pavao/HBO Max, Kyusung Gong/A.M.P.A.S.]

• Awards
• Chris Rock
• HBO Max
• Jada Pinkett Smith
• Julia
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• Oscars 2022
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• TV Reviews
• Will Smith