Everyone loves a Halloween costume that references a recent pop culture moment, but one child’s costume on The View left the audience feeling a sting.
During a segment called “Newsworthy Halloween Costumes: BOO Are You Wearing in 2022?” a child dressed as the infamous Will Smith-Chris Rock Oscars slap appeared in a gold morph suit with a red painted handprint on his face.
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The View hosts — all of whom were also dressed in costume — brought out the program’s wardrobe supervisor Ashley Alderfer Kaufman to introduce each costume in the segment.
“We do not want to endorse violence of any kind, but we couldn’t help but talk about one of the hottest hot topics this year,” she said as the child posed awkwardly in front of the hosts. “So, we have our interpretation. We have an Oscars statue, we call this ‘The Oscars Slap,’ and he has red face paint on the statue.”
Other costumes in the segment included Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago raid (a child dressed as the former president, wearing a faux toilet with ‘flushed’ confidential documents) and an inflation costume (a child in a blow-up outfit covered in $100 bills).
During the Oscars ceremony in March, Rock made a G.I. Jane joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Smith walked onto the stage from his front-row seat and took a swing at Rock with an open palm, generating a loud smack. Smith returned to his seat and shouted for Rock to “Keep my wife’s name out of your f–-ing mouth!”
The incident quickly became one of the most buzzed-about entertainment moments in 2022.
Smith later apologized for slapping Rock. He was banned from the Academy Awards for 10 years.
On Twitter, several fans of The View expressed their distaste for The Oscars Slap costume.
Several Twitter users also criticized The View for the costume’s red handprint, as such a marking is commonly associated with missing and murdered Indigenous women.
In 2014, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police claimed over 1,200 Indigenous women were reported missing or murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2012. The Assembly of First Nations claimed 16 per cent of all homicide victims in Canada are Indigenous women.
This weekend, Saturday Night Live also made an Oscars slap costume, where comedian Devon Walker dressed as Rock, complete with a handprint glued to his face.
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