Following the events of last night's Oscars involving Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, the governing body over the Oscars - the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, or AMPAS to give its acronym - issued a statement.
In a terse tweet issued about 30 minutes from the official Twitter account, AMPAS said that "(the) Academy does not condone violence of any form," adding that "we are delighted to celebrate our 94th Academy Awards winners, who deserve this moment of recognition from their peers and movie lovers around the world."
Initially, unconfirmed rumours suggested that the Academy could move to force Will Smith to hand back his Oscar, however it appears that this is not the case as the Academy has made no further statements on the matter and have not issued any disciplinary action regarding it either.
So far, the reaction to the incident has been decidedly mixed online and after the event itself across Hollywood. It's been reported that Chris Rock has so far not filed charges with police following the incident and has made no comments about the incident as of writing. Will Smith apologised to the Academy and his fellow nominees during his acceptance speech for Best Actor, but left out apologising to Chris Rock for slapping him. The incident took place during the award for Best Documentary, which went to 'Summer of Soul'. When asked about the incident itself, the documentary's director Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson refused to comment on it with Variety.
Elsewhere, the incident is currently trending across Twitter, Google, and Facebook and is likely to go down in history as the defining moment of an otherwise stilted ceremony and potentially add further fuel to the fire surrounding the Oscars and its continued relevance in today's world.
