BY KENNETH MUFUKA
In the Oscar ceremonies, watched by 27 million people in the US and relayed all over the world, the famous actor, Will Smith, objected to a joke about his wife from fellow comedian, Chris Rock.
He stormed the stage and gave him a huge slap in the face.
The story of Will Smith is a stupid story. However, I remember my time at The Sunday Mail with the great journalist Willie Musarurwa.
Willie would say, “Ken, I know this is a sleazy story. But if we leave it out our competitors will make a scoop and laugh at us all the way to the bank.”
Will is one of those young black actors who went to Hollywood to make money, be famous and get the hell out of there. They feel entitled, but to what we don’t know. Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman carried the weight of the black race behind them, and they tried to do good.
This new generation is what Hillary Clinton in her campaign against Donald Trump placed in a “basket of deplorables” and Will may very well be one of these irredeemable.
Born in 1968 to a school board administrator and a violent father, Will says in his biography:
“My father was violent, but he was also at every game, play, and recital. He was an alcoholic, but he was sober at every premiere of every one of my movies. (This) intense perfectionism that terrorised my family put food at the table,” Will told People Magazine, November 3, 2021.
There is more and this is the episode Will carried throughout his life to hide his avenging spirit.
“When I was nine years old, I saw my father punch my mother in the side of the head so hard that she collapsed. I saw her spit blood. That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other time, moment in my life, has defined who I am.”
This is very interesting to Freudian psychologists.
“Within everything that I have done since then — the awards, the spotlights and the laughs — there has been a subtle string of apologies to my mother for my inaction that day. For failing to stand up in her moment (of most need) for failing to stand up to my father, for being a coward.”
Standing up
When I first arrived in the US, my son went to a school in the “hood” (new word for ghetto). There he was bullied for speaking English properly and in due course his speech patterns became unrecognisable in polite society.
I taught him to sneak in on the bully boy and hit his leg with a stick while shouting Zulu war songs. The bully boy, seeing he was facing a Zulu warrior (of which he was informed by Afro legends) made a truce.
“African boy, don’t tell nobody you hit me so hard (sic), we are now cool.” The bully boy said. Those who have never lived in the “hood” try to drill into our heads such lofty ideas like: “Kenny my boy, think of the consequences. Look before you leap.”
In the world in which Will Smith lived, he had a burning desire to do justice for his mother. You stand for your woman and damn the consequences.
When I started writing, I was of a mind to condemn the brother totally (Zimbabwe English) but when I found out his experiences in the “hood” and compared them with those of my son, I felt some empathy for the brother.
Will’s father and mother were divorced. As fate would have it, Will prospered mightily, collected over US$1 billion in fees over two decades. Now he had to take care of his sick father, lying in his bed with cancer. His mother had died earlier, without seeing the avenging spirit of that violent man she had called a husband.
The pent-up anger would resurface from time to time.
Syndrome
Will Smith’s has tried to keep his family together despite the stormy seas they have to pass through. Jada (Hebrew meaning wise) his wife runs a talk show called Red Talk. Unfortunately, nothing is private in these shows. Recently, a comedian Brother Rebel Wilson remarked: “personally I thought that Will Smith’s acting has been all right considering all of his wife’s boyfriends.”
Jada married Smith in 1997 and had two children Jaden (23) and Willow (girl, 21). Augustino Alsina (27) Jaden’s friend, a rap musician used to “hang out with Jaden” until they found out he was doing more than hanging out. He was sleeping with Jada.
What happened after is bizarre but only if the reader is a normal person. Augustino went public on radio to parade his conquest. This kind of gave him some clout in the “hood” sleeping with a famous actor’s wife.
Blacks simply identify these as “issues”. In Africa they are referred to as demonic spirits milling around the family traceable to the “ngozi” (restless spirit) of Smith’s mother who died with an unforgiving heart.
The Los Angeles police have received a report of an incident whereby an actor by the name of Will Smith was involved in an assault on a citizen. They are investigating the case. If Will Smith had slapped a white person, Federal Marshals would have taken him straight to a jailhouse bypassing the judiciary.
The Oscar Nominating Committee has also received a similar report and is considering withdrawing Will Smith’s Oscar award as a punishment.
When I started on a journey to find out what happened to Will Smith, I was totally flabbergasted. At the end of my journey, I am filled with empathy. Will Smith is troubled by demonic spirits and needs some help. He specialises in violent action-packed films, like Men in Black, which gathered US$1 billion in fees. These films merely feed his frenzy for self-immolation; they do not heal his wounds.
- Ken Mufuka is a Zimbabwe patriot. He writes from the US. His books are available at Innov8 Bookshops in Zimbabwe and at kenmufukabooks.com in the wider world.