We need to talk about Jada Pinkett-Smith. Which should fill her with joy.
Pinkett-Smith is an actress whose calling card is a supporting character in several sequels to a classic film – The Matrix – although not in the classic film itself. She has not been nominated for an Oscar or a film festival award. She does not have a theatrical career but she does have a Tony nomination, as she is a co-producer of the musical Fela!, which she joined as an investor for its transfer to Broadway. She has recorded two albums with her band Wicked Wisdom, inactive since 2006. She has not been nominated for a Grammy. She has an Emmy as host of a talk show she hosted with her mother and her daughter, and in which she administered emotional confessions from celebrities. She has also published a children’s book.
I do not minimize his achievements: perhaps they are more than those of the person who writes this. Only that one is aware of his irrelevance, and does not go around publishing the 48 416-page memoirs because he knows that his experiences are of no public interest. At 52, and with that trajectory, Pinkett-Smith believes that hers do.
Worse: you are right.
Published last week, Worthy does not seem destined to be a bestseller: it ranks 81st among Amazon’s best sellers, and has not managed to sneak into the Kindle Top 100. However, Pinkett-Smith has been monopolizing the conversation in the media and networks for days, an unsurprising avatar of a culture that cannot resist scandal, even overheated: in those memoirs the actress confesses to having been separated from her husband Will Smith for 7 years, and for so much so that they were no longer a couple – despite presenting themselves as such – when the Oscar winner hit comedian Chris Rock in a live global broadcast, supposedly to defend the honor of his wife. The timing of the confession – when the husband has seen his impertinence punished by the cancellation and his future in the industry seems uncertain – has been read as opportunistic in the majority opinion, to which I join: it smacks of the actress’s attempt to attract urgent spotlights – her talk show has gone off the air, and she has not filmed since 2021 – in order to save her career at the expense of her uncomfortable spouse.
I will not be the one who criticizes that a magazine as prestigious as The Atlantic dedicates an essay to the phenomenon, but I will be the one who objects to the approach. “I find all the criticism of Pinkett Smith terribly unfair,” Jemele Hill writes there. “Unfortunately, when Black women take the courageous step of giving voice to their pain, trauma, frustrations. and vulnerabilities generally face derision, skepticism and disdain.”
I honor Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Nina Simone. I celebrate Halle Berry and Beyoncé. I respect Kamala Harris. Jada Pinkett-Smith? I always imagine her in the company of the Kardashians (so tanned) and Amber Heard (so snowy).
BY NICOLAS ALVARADO
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2023-10-25 06:59:37
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