The hosts of ABC’s “The View” celebrated Halloween this year by dressing as famous female television characters (Whoopi Goldberg was June from “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Joy Behar was Peggy Bundy from “Married… with Children,” etc.), but it’s a different costume on the show that is courting the most attention. During a segment in which kids dressed up in costumes inspired by the talk show’s “Hot Topics” segment, the show trotted out a young boy dressed as the Oscars slap. The costume was a gold body suit to make the kid look like an Oscars statue, plus a red handprint painted on his face to emulate Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock.
The segment was hosted by Ashley Alderfer Kaufman, who serves as wardrobe supervisor on “The View.” Kaufman told viewers as the costume was unveiled, “We do not want to endorse violence of any kind but we couldn’t help but talk about one of the hottest topics of this year.”
The “Oscars slap” costume shocked viewers, many of whom took to social media to criticize the decision. One viewer said the costume was in “bad taste,” while another observed, “Difficult to keep up with everything but the red handprint on one’s face is the symbol for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Too bad no one was able to flag this costume idea in advance.”
Other costumes that appeared during the segment included children dressed as the Mar-a-Lago raid (a kid with a Donald Trump wig dressed as a toilet flushing down FBI documents) and inflation (a kid wearing an inflatable car dealership costume with money glued on it).
Goldberg, an Oscar winner herself and a longtime member of the Academy, said Smith’s decision to slap Chris Rock was “not okay” during the episodes of “The View” in March that followed the incident. She added at the time, “I think he overreacted. I think he had one of those moments where it was like [goddamn it], just stop. I get it, not everybody acts the way we would like them to act under pressure. And he snapped.”
“We’re not going to take that Oscar from him,” Goldberg added at the time. “There will be consequences I’m sure.”
Goldberg was correct, as the Academy did not strip Smith of his Oscar for best actor but did suspend his membership for 10 years. Watch the full segment from “The View” in the video below.
