2016 Academy Awards: Chris Rock acknowledges the elephant in the room

The 88th Annual Academy Awards also known as “The Oscars” was aired on Sunday, February 28. This year the Oscars was the most anticipated awards ceremony in recent times, due to the racial controversy that was associated with this year’s awards and nominees. In fact, there were few that actually mentioned the award winners, most of the associated talk came from the speculations of the ceremony. Academy Award winning actress Jada Pinkett Smith was the major known source for the ceremony’s controversy, and remained constant in her decision of not attending the Oscars, as well as her husband, Will Smith who supported the “Oscars Boycott” as well. Despite all of the issues, Actor and Comedian, Chris Rock agreed to be the host of this year’s awards, and was not afraid to address the elephant in the room. Rock opened the ceremony with a funny monologue, to break the ice so to speak. Rock opens saying,“I’m here at the Academy Awards, also known as the ‘White People’s Choice Awards’, and do you realize if they nominated host, I wouldn’t have even got this job.” The crowd then falls into laughter as Rock begins to finish,
“People are like Chris you should boycott, Chris you should quit, so I thought about quitting, I thought about it real hard, but I realized they are going to have the Oscars anyway, they don’t care if I quit, and the last thing I need, was to lose another job to Kevin Hart.”
The audience as well as fellow actor and comedian, Kevin Hart then begins to laugh, which simulates that the awkwardness in the air will eventually end up disappearing, but Chris has a different agenda in plan. Using his comedic skill, he creates a various amount of skits, that all have a racial plot because it seemed as if that was the only way to address Rock’s bigger picture. He feels as if there are more important things in the world to worry about, than if any African Americans were nominated for Academy Awards, an issue that he says, probably happened about 71 other times out of the 88 times the Oscars have been in existence.
Rock was also not afraid to address the Smith’s personally, specifically their decision to boycott the ceremony.
“You have to think about the 50’s and the 60’s, when black people didn’t protest about the Oscars, because black people had real things to protest. We were too busy being raped and lynched, to care about who won best cinematographer. You know when your grandmother is hanging from a tree it’s really hard to care about who won best foreign short.” Rock finishes with a bit of a low blow to Smith saying
“Jada boycotting the Oscars is more like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties, I wasn’t invited!”
Though the Smiths haven’t commented on anything said, Rock does not intend any harm, it was all in good fun. The awards itself was a total success, that resulted in number of chart topping movies, actors and actresses receiving awards, and although a number of black actors and actresses were not nominated, a few were there to support their colleagues. The most surprising news of the night went to actor Leonardo DiCaprio , who won his first Academy Award for best actor in a leading role for the movie “Making The Revenant.”