Will and King Richard

Welcome to my blog in almost a decade. Wow! But with so much being talked about on the streets, I wanted to bring some of my own insight into what we saw at the Academy Awards only a few weeks ago with Will Smith and Comedian Chris Rock. Although, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air was set to win a prestigious award for best actor, as a therapist and lover of psychology I quickly started to analyze the reaction of Will Smith as it related to his own history, his role as King Richard, and his own trauma of being a man, in particular, a black man, in Amurica.

So what I’ve researched and learned is that Will Smith has been a witness and victim of domestic violence that stems from childhood between his father towards his mother. In his interview on the Today Show Smith, says , at age 53, and writes in his book that his movie star persona is a construction created to hide "the coward," A description of himself that stems from a traumatic part of his upbringing.

We look at the men in society and in particular the black man who is given the message of ‘you can’t talk about ‘it’ and if you do talk about ‘it’ no one will look at you the same.’ We as men absorb and take this on to carry for the rest of our lives in what is the invisible backpack. And as Oprah once said, “Men are not taught to be men, they are taught to be not like women.” The invisible backpack that men, and in particular black men, carry contains an enormous burden with limited resources on how to open the back pack, look under the rug and express the core feelings of shame, guilt, sadness and rejection that most men may feel at some point of their life.

So what we see on stage in front of millions around the world, unfortunately, was a representation of man’s emotional journey and struggle towards acceptance and being seen as a human being with feelings, thoughts and weaknesses. Fortunately or Unfortunately, many other entertainers supported Will’s trauma response as it was showing his woman his devoted protection for her, even though Jada said absolutely nothing during the scene on stage.

King Richard similarly, had to take it in, be strong, be a protector and cheer leader while never being given in any moment the opportunity to say “Hey, this hurts me tremendously. I need you to see me.”

‘Little’ Will Smith, likewise, as a child, we assume, was not given this chance to speak up, to stop the violence between his mother and his father who he ironically states in his interview on the Today Show is also his “hero.”

In conclusion, if we put it all together in the same basket, we see a man who saw violence as a child and was helpless, fulfilled many roles where he could act out his anger in movies with aliens and the like but now was confronting a role similar to his own father’s. What we saw on stage towards Chris Rock, in essence, was a trauma response to heal and understand his own father. I know, we are all saying, ‘Wow, you condone violence, no bueno,” Absolutely not! However, if we are to take a step back and see the whole picture. We see generation after generation of men who are only seen as hunters and gathers, protectors with two fists and an over active nervous system. What the message we ought to be saying is why don’t we see one another. We have to see each other, men, women and those who don’t identify as either, with feelings, thoughts and with large invisible back packs filled with emotions, negative core beliefs and trauma.

Be kind.