It was 2:00 p.m. EST on Sunday, Feb. 19. Curtains up on the 76th British Academy Film Awards (also known as the BAFTAs). No one knew it yet, but the Earth was about to move.

The ceremony began with a performance by Ariana DeBose, a theater and film actress who was most recently recognized as the first openly queer African-American woman to win an Oscar. She opted for a medley of “Sisters are Doin’ It For Themselves” and “We Are Family,” with an interlude that included an original rap. Within 24 hours of the event, the internet exploded with reactions to her performance, specifically the rap section. 

Responses on Twitter ranged from standard bad reviews and callbacks to DeBose’s role in the ensemble of the original Broadway cast of “Hamilton” to comparisons to past viral memes and tweets hailing her performance as the new pinnacle of camp. One Twitter user republished the rap as a Rupi Kaur style poem, and others made some good old-fashioned memes. 

Everyone, myself included, became obsessed with one particular line of the performance, when DeBose rapped, “Angela Bassett did the thing,” with very distinct vocal intonations and dance moves. The moment was all over my social media feeds. Celebrities like Halle Berry, Adele, and Lizzo couldn’t seem to get it out of their heads. Even Angela Bassett referenced it in her acceptance speech when she won Entertainer of the Year at the NAACP Image Awards only a few weeks later.

Don’t worry. I am NOT here to start a fuss about a trend that everyone seems to be having fun with; I’m here to stop it. DeBose’s initial response to her newfound internet fame baffled me, to be honest. She deactivated her Twitter account and went silent. I immediately thought that if I were her, I would be leaning into the trend, perhaps making TikTok videos lip syncing to the iconic performance and using a newly elevated platform to highlight other work, such as DeBose’s outstanding performance in the 2022 remake of “West Side Story.”

It wasn’t until I saw BAFTA producer Nick Mullen’s comments on the situation that I understood the extent to which feelings had been hurt. Mullen described the “backlash” that the performance had received online as “incredibly unfair” in a statement to Variety. To make matters worse, a handful of Twitter users rushed to DeBose’s defense, complaining that the actress had been bullied off Twitter and that people should be paying more attention to her work in “West Side Story.” I even saw a tweet (one that, infuriatingly, I cannot find anymore) claiming that the whole situation was reminiscent of the backlash Janet Jackson received after her wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show.

While I understand that DeBose, her fans, and the BAFTA producers may not feel great that her performance was not touted as artistic genius, I genuinely believe they’re overreacting to the criticisms of the performance. “Overreact” isn’t a word I find myself using very often—as a Black woman myself, I’m aware of the harm it can cause—but there are a few reasons I believe it’s warranted here.

Firstly, the performance was bad. There’s no way around it. Both songs sounded more yelled than sung, and the musical accompaniment wasn’t nearly loud enough to match DeBose’s energy. And then there’s the infamous rap. The rhymes were rudimentary at best, and they didn’t follow a consistent pattern, leaving the audience to play catch-up while she barrelled on. Not only was the phrasing awkward, I found the ‘girlboss’ sentiment of the entire rap to be problematic. There is nothing wrong with her celebration of the incredible performances of different women in film this year. However, when DeBose divorced words and phrases like “slay” and “did the thing” from the context in which they were created (specifically, within queer Black spaces) and repackaged them for the primarily white audience at the BAFTAs, they lost their flavor and became infused with a tinge of white feminism that left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths.

In my opinion, the criticism that the performance received was fair. Furthermore, none of the tweets I saw were excessively mean. In fact, most of the ones I encountered were praising the over-the-top style DeBose employed and categorized it as a rare “cultural reset.” Some of the tweets commending her may have been in jest, but I didn’t see any that were mean-spirited. I also couldn’t find any tweets that made negative personal comments toward DeBose. I understand if DeBose deactivated her account to escape the attention, but to claim that she was bullied off the app is an exaggeration. Emphasizing DeBose’s plight as a victim has the potential to downplay the experiences of other women in the public eye who have had their reputations ruined by factors that are out of their control, or for no apparent reason. 

As for the issue concerning the ignorance of DeBose’s performance in “West Side Story,” there were a lot of other factors that affected the attendance of that film. For one, different movies are targeted toward different audiences, and musicals are not usually advertised to a particularly wide one. Plus, Ansel Elgort, who was cast as the leading male role, has recently been the subject of multiple sexual assault allegations, and many filmgoers chose not to see it for that reason. Neither of those things detract from DeBose’s acting, but they both heavily affected whether people saw “West Side Story” in the first place.

At the end of the day, we all have as much of a right to criticize bad art as artists have to make it. 

While I appreciate the inclusion of queer Black people like DeBose at the forefront of major awards shows, it isn’t fair to expect everyone to turn a blind eye to the quality of their work for the sake of diversity. 

BAFTA producer Mullen cited a need for change as a reason for DeBose’s unique performance at the show:

“…There’s a view that the BAFTAs have to be this slightly stiff, traditional British, middle-England messaging,” Mullen said to Variety. “But American awards shows have much more razzmatazz, much more showbiz, and perhaps a broader range of people being involved.”

What’s more American than an awards show flop?

Sulan Bailey can be reached at sbailey@wesleyan.edu