If the Batman Slapping Robin meme has long been in pop culture, Will Smith just made history at the Academy Awards with his macho intervention to defend his wife against a more or less inspired joke by resorting to violence. In light of recent events and after rediscovering a video in which Will shows a kid how fake slapping is done in movies to make it look real, his gesture at the Oscars can be viewed from the perspective of an actor who stood out for his performance in blockbusters such as Men In Black, Independence Day and Bad Boys, which glorify aggression and divide the characters into good and bad. The Golden Age of Hollywood and the history of cinema, in general, have validated face slapping through various justifications, including gratuitous ones, reproducing the values, fantasies and power relations existing in society at that time. The power of insult, whether happening publicly as in the case of Chris Rock or in private, generates a series of negative emotions meant to humiliate the aggressed, portraying them as a weak, vulnerable and docile individual, subordinate to the autonomous, who plays the role of the aggressor, the one who takes the initiative and acts accordingly. Under the disclaimer that violence is not the solution, I used this opportunity to revisit some memorable face slaps in the history of cinema.

He Who Gets Slapped (dir. Victor Sjöström, 1924)

In silent films, the slap as a way to hurt male pride and a tool of mockery plays a significant role in the plot development of He Who Gets Slapped. The protagonist, a scientist now turned clown, is emasculated and slapped by his patron, an aristocrat who takes credit for the former’s accomplishments. Humiliated in front of the academic community from which he expected validation, the protagonist turns the biggest insult of his life into the main act of his circus bit – he gets repeatedly slapped by his fellows, a rather masochistic performance meant to help him digest this defining moment, alleviate his suffering and failure through ridicule. In Sjöström’s classic, the slap becomes a symbol of endurance, and aggression, a therapeutic ritual of the “fight fire with fire” kind. Relieving pain over and over so as to empty it of meaning and make the clown both a victim and an aggressor is one of the earliest cinematic records showing people’s propensity for laughing at others’ suffering.

Red-Headed Woman (dir. Jack Conway, 1932)

Red-Headed Woman is a pre-Code romantic comedy – made in the brief era between the widespread adoption of sound in pictures and the enforcement of the “Hays Code” censorship guidelines – revolving around a woman who uses sex to advance her social position. Lil Andrews, played by the magnificent Jean Harlow, is a young woman determined to break up Bill Legendre Jr.’s marriage, but despite her efforts to fit into high society, she is seen as an impostor. In a scene highlighting her seduction skills, Lil corners Bill, challenging him to kiss her and confront his feelings for her. The man warns her to back away and slaps her, but the gesture doesn’t stop her advances; Lil asks to be slapped again under the pretext that she likes it. Her unexpected reply, and completely out of line with social norms, deprives the unfaithful husband of the illusory upper hand he thinks he holds. Being slapped in the face and demanding more, she undermines a gesture of submission into an act of domination. Bill realizes with astonishment that he has no comeback to such a disconcerting response and that his pathetic act of physical intimidation only elicits defiance.

Gilda (dir. Charles Vidor, 1946)

Another receiver of an iconic face slap is Gilda, played by Rita Hayworth, coming from Glenn Ford, an extremely jealous husband, in the classic noir of the same name. Johnny is a domineering husband, tormented and at the same time drawn by the protagonist’s sensuality. In her iconic tight black dress, paired with long satin opera gloves, Gilda steps into the spotlight and begins to sing Put The Blame On Mame, captivating the audience on the screen. Like any femme fatale, Gilda is simply magnetic by the way she wears her hair, the sensuality with which she moves, addressing the audience directly and looking impertinently in their eyes while provocatively taking off one glove. It’s rather a minor gesture of striptease, but enough to drive her husband to fury, who accuses her of promiscuity in a marriage full of contradictory feelings. When Gilda stands up for herself against the accusations she receives and owns up to the title of “woman of low morals”, Johnny stops her with a slap. A gesture meant to cover her mouth and prevent her from saying out loud the label she was given. In this context, the slap is a way to control the woman in a patriarchal society that demonizes the display of sexuality, a way to undermine her autonomy and put her in her place, that of an accessory to the man.

The Birds (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

The following scene depicts very well how the newcomer in a community is always portrayed as the scapegoat, the source of all evil. Shot from Melanie’s (played by Tippi Hedren) point of view, a distraught woman, frightened by the recent bird attacks, confronts her, taking upon the role of the inquisitor in a scene reminiscent of a witch hunt. As she pounces on the protagonist with a flurry of accusatory questions, making it obvious that she shares the hypothesis of Melanie’s arrival being the root of these attacks, her face takes up the entire screen and her voice becomes more and more hysterical. The viewer sees only Tippi’s hand slapping the woman and her dumbstruck reaction. Through this scene, Hitchcock offers a possible answer to the question on everyone’s mind: what causes the bird attacks? The framing and the camera angle make the viewer take part in this blame-tossing show and thus empathize with the protagonist. Ironically, the accuser is also a marginalized member of the community for whom she speaks; under different circumstances, she herself could have been the accused. If up to that point the viewer didn’t rule out the hypothesis of the protagonist’s involvement in the bird attacks, given that the tension and succession of scenes sometimes suggest causality, the slapping scene refutes any argument, plunging us into the same horror and despair with the characters.

In the Heat of the Night (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)

Without question the face slap with the biggest impact in the history of cinema is the one cast by the detective played by Sidney Poitier to a white Southern plantation owner in In the Heat of the Night, an adaptation of the crime novel of the same name written by John Ball. The scene went down in the history of American cinema as the first scene in which a black man dares to strike a white man without being punished for it afterwards. Screened just one year before the assassination of Martin Luther King, the film is representative of the emancipation of African Americans in the United States, at a time when racial segregation was still strong in the cotton-dependent South. Jewison’s film is progressive in that a white detective collaborates with an African-American inspector, both reaching an agreement and mutual respect despite the differences, but especially due to the slapping scene. When landowner Endicott (Larry Gates) slaps Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), the black detective who accuses him of murder, the former gets a taste of his own medicine. To his surprise, which is proof of the social changes caused by the Black Power movement, Tibbs’ response has no major repercussions, although a visibly disturbed Endicott admits that back in the day he could have asked for Tibbs’ execution as punishment. The detective’s scornful look and the disapproving gesture of the landowner’s servant, also black, only support the legitimacy of Tibbs’ deed, that of responding in kind. His anger is defensive and not aggressive, deeply rooted in restoring the dignity and humanity of the emblematic character for the race he represents, until then caricatured and exploited in cinema.

Chinatown (dir. Roman Polanski, 1974)

The film reaches its climax right when Faye Dunaway’s character gets slapped, in a moment of maximum tension. Frustrated because the investigation appears to have reached a dead end, Jake (Jack Nicholson) abandons his previous professional conduct and uses violence as an unorthodox means of interrogation. Both the victim and the aggressor are at their most vulnerable, but the latter resorts to the lowest of the lows, that is, hitting a woman. Evelyn too breaks down under pressure, but less because of the violent act, which she rather uses as a safety valve, as a pretext to divulge the tormenting secret she has been keeping all her life, that of the incest. Gittes slaps Evelyn repeatedly as she alternates one version or another of the story, versions that don’t exclude each other, showing her in a hitherto unexplored position, that of an abused woman. Her non-response to aggression, the fact that she makes no effort to shield herself or fight back, only confirms the trauma she alludes to, a sign that she has gone through similar violence before. The scene is also aided by the camera movements: the shot/reverse-shot technique is used to depict the heated argument the two characters have prior to the act of slapping; once the truth comes out, the perspective switches to a two-shot showing now both of the partakers of the secret.

Whiplash (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2014)

Perhaps Hollywood’s most recent memorable slap is the one that takes place during a rehearsal session in Whiplash, when ambitious student Andrew Nieman doesn’t seem to find the right tempo. The teacher, an obsessive character played by J.K. Simmons (the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role), interrupts him repeatedly on the grounds that his performance is faulted. Andrew endures the criticism stoically and starts it all over, which makes the teacher’s outburst even more shocking – he throws a chair at him –, the camera shaking as if it had been hit by an object. The use of close-ups and the fast-paced montage make the scene all the more striking as it engages the viewer in the conflict. In a state of outrage, the teacher slaps Andrew in the face every time he makes a mistake by counting too fast, and the editing is extremely ingenious, switching from one character to another at the rhythm of the blows while keeping the dialogue uninterrupted. Although impressive, the intensity of the scene is not only given by the camera’s ability to shift back and forth between the protagonist’s ravaged face and the teacher’s hostile expressions but also stems from its fluctuating build-up, with the tension going up and down, depending on the instructor’s short temper, who in one moment seems disturbingly calm but may snap at any second. From one point on, it doesn’t even matter if Andrew manages to hit the tempo, it’s just a lesson after all. The repeated aggression and humiliation remind of the slapping scene in Full Metal Jacket, where Sergeant Hartman hits Private Gomer in the face; the instructor gets uncomfortably close to the subordinate’s face and uses violent methods to push the recruits to the limit and show them who the alpha male is.

Andreea Pătru

Film critic and programmer, she collaborates with various international film festivals. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Senses of Cinema, Kinoscope, Indiewire, Film Comment, Vague Visages and Desistfilm. In Spanish she has written for Caimán Cuadernos de Cine and in Romanian she collaborates with FILM magazine. Programmer and coordinator of Tenerife Shorts.