Will Smith Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

A Heart (of a Sort) – Or is this pepper just acting? – Photo: L. Weikel

Academy Awards

I wrote back in February (here and here) about a few of the films we’d watched that were nominated for Best Picture in the Academy Awards. The last time I gave an opinion, I was still rooting for Dune. I was surprised to discover when I checked a few minutes ago that I never ended up writing about Coda. We really liked it, but even if I’d written about it, I probably would’ve still had Dune as my preferred front-runner.

Over this weekend, we tried to stuff in a couple more nominees, if only because it makes watching the Academy Awards more interesting. (Yes, I know, many people no longer even bother to watch them. But we do.)

Licorice Pizza and Belfast

The last two we managed to see before the Oscars were Licorice Pizza and Belfast. To put it succinctly, perhaps my taste is too pedestrian (harkening back to my reaction to The Power of the Dog), but Licorice Pizza was…odd. I tried to like it, but none of the characters spoke to me. I didn’t even actually like the characters, which is crucial, at least for me. And I don’t mean that I have to ‘like’ the characters in the sense that I would want to be their friend or family. I just like to find someone in a movie who intrigues me, makes me want to understand or protect them, or is even such a ‘bad guy’ that they capture my imagination.

For whatever reason, I just couldn’t make heads or tails out of the main characters of Licorice Pizza. In fact, I don’t even understand the title. The best I could guess is that the two flavors just don’t go together. (I won’t explain any further, since I don’t want to spoil it for you if you want to see it and still haven’t.)

I’m so glad we watched Belfast today, though. It gave me a much greater appreciation for the competition and I have to say, it really touched my heart. I know a few of you had recommended Belfast a while back, and now I understand why. When I wrote about wanting to see it (back in February) it was available on Amazon but it was $19.99 and you had to buy it. It’s now rentable on Amazon for $5.99. I guarantee, it is money well spent.

Bizarre Behavior

Finally, we did end up watching the Oscars tonight. We re-watched the utterly bizarre assault by Will Smith on Chris Rock several times. That whole interchange was so bizarre, we kept trying to discern if it was staged.

It was quite obvious that Chris Rock had no idea he was going to get clocked by Smith. And that’s understandable, since Will Smith did not have even the slightest look of disapproval on his face when he heard the joke. (Jada Pinkett Smith had a cloudy expression cross her face, but ?) And quite honestly? I had to think a minute before I even got the joke. Heck – GI Jane was from back in 1997! And when I got it, it didn’t even seem mean – dumb, maybe, but it was simply an allusion to her shaved head.

The Reactions

I’ve been watching the reactions of people online and on Twitter and I find it astonishing that so many people assume that Chris Rock ‘should have known’ that Jada Pinkett Smith has alopecia, a condition that involves hair loss, and that’s why she shaves her head.

Why on earth would Chris Rock be presumed to know that? Do people really think everyone follows every utterance of every so-called ‘famous’ person? She’s a stunning woman – and to me (I didn’t know she had alopecia until tonight either) her shaved head just seemed like a bold fashion statement that could only be carried off by someone both beautiful and confident.

I find it much more deeply disturbing that people are rallying around Smith for his utterly inexcusable and unprovoked assault on live tv, and then vulgar shouted threats at Rock when he returned to his seat. It was a joke. It probably went over the heads of half the people there because they weren’t even born when GI Jane was released. And anyone could see from the delivery that it wasn’t intended as a real cut to Pinkett Smith.

Worst of All

The worst reaction though, in my opinion, was Smith’s truly bizarre tearful ‘acceptance’ speech when he later won for Best Actor. Ew. He didn’t even have the grace to apologize to Chris Rock – which at least would’ve been a step in the right direction. Instead, he tried to justify his behavior as an act of love.

Sorry, but that’s an excuse used all too often in abusive situations. As are the tears. (Let’s remember – he just won for Best Actor, too!) And then capping it off with some baloney about thinking his supposed great talent as an actor makes him a vessel of LOVE?

Please.

The fact that he received a standing ovation after that garbage was appalling. What in the world are we modeling to our children? He is no better than TFG, who infamously said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

A little self-restraint, followed up with some humility, would have served him – and the world he thinks he’s here to inspire as a ‘vessel of love’ – far better.

(T+110)

Power of Intention

I think most of us are at least tangentially familiar with the concept of setting intentions in order to accomplish goals or manifest the reality we want to experience. If you’ve read a bunch of my posts, you know I tend to harp on the importance of setting intentions at particularly auspicious times of the month and year. And if you’re familiar with shamanic journeying, you know it’s important (essential in my opinion) to always have an intention before setting out to visit other realms. The power of intention has the capacity to yield astonishing results in our lives.

The truth of this was dramatically borne out in a movie we watched recently. King Richard is about Richard Williams, the father of tennis greats Venus and Serena Williams. Will Smith plays the girls’ father and it’s obvious why he there’s a lot of Oscar buzz around his performance.

Even if you’re not ‘into’ tennis, it’s unlikely you’ve never heard of Venus and Serena. Not only are they each phenomenal in their own right, the fact that they are sisters and they’ve both dominated the sport for years, is downright spectacular.

Having a Plan

Especially when Venus and Serena were just breaking onto the tennis scene, I remember reading or hearing about their father being ‘difficult.’ At least that’s how I remember it being spun. I remember wondering, vaguely, if he was one of those weird ‘stage fathers’ who browbeats their kids and makes life miserable for them all in the pursuit of dominance in the sport.

To be honest, I didn’t really care all that much one way or another. We only watched tennis matches when visiting my sister Jane on the 4^th of July. Wimbledon was on the menu every single year, along with lobster and corn on the cob. But watching them play through the years – wow. It was obvious they were incredible athletes. And their behavior off-court was equally impressive. I don’t remember ever seeing them misbehave or act out like the John McEnroes of tennis.

Perhaps because my interest in their story was tangential at best, I had no idea how they came to be who they are. And believe me, their father was the man with the plan – he set the initial intention that created the opportunities his daughters capitalized on through hard work and sheer talent and intuition. (And not an insignificant amount of intention setting on their own part, too.)

Family

What I think I loved most about this movie – beyond the gobsmacking tenacity of the father and talent of the girls – was the way their whole family was so loving and supportive of each other. As trite as these qualities have become through overhyping in the media (often by those who don’t live them), love, respect, and integrity honestly seem to be core values of the Williams family.

And lest you think it was all ‘King Richard’ who made it happen, I beg to differ. No, this was most definitely a collaborative effort of both parents and the three older sisters, too.

It was amazing to watch how perilously close things came – at least a couple of times – to a totally different destiny playing out for the entire family. I have to wonder if at least some of the ‘luck’ was a function of the power of the intention set by Richard Williams himself (and which obviously ‘rubbed off’ on his girls).

King Richard is streaming on HBO Max right now. It looks like it’ll only be available on that venue for another seven or eight days. (I’m not sure how that works or why that’s the case.) If you want to be inspired by greatness and perhaps moved to hone your own power of intention, watch this movie.

(T+3)