The Good Slap
I was all set to write about one of my favorite animated films, The Secret of NIMH, and then Chris Rock got smacked upside the head for being a jerk. So, you’ll get that later this week. Because I gotta open my big mouth about this.
Chris Rock got slapped for mocking Jada Pinkett Smith’s medical condition at the Oscars last night, and it has brought out a lot of opinions. And feelings.
There’s a lot to think about. Will Smith defending his wife was toxic masculinity in action; violence is never okay…. except when it’s punching a Nazi.
Well, let me nip that right in the bud.
Chris got what he had coming to him.
Should every jerk get slapped? Nah. But I understand why Smith did it.
I’ll let S.A. Cosby, a fine writer friend, say it:
Rock is not a Court Jester, and Will Smith isn’t the king. (okay, maybe he was King Richard.) Jada Pinkett Smith is an actress, not a ruler who has to tolerate this sort of mockery as part of the job. She isn’t even some obnoxious media presence who was long overdue for a dressing-down. Rock chose to make a cheap joke about her medical condition in front of millions of people. I’m more concerned with our ability to find that acceptable, than I am about Will Smith going caveman and slapping Chris Rock—a comedian who found it fine to joke about “shaking the shit out of women” during arguments a few years ago. Violence is fine for him when he’s dealing it out, apparently. And we’re all okay with cruelty towards people as long as we get a laugh.
Going after Jada Pinkett Smith isn’t “punching up.” It’s not even lateral. He decided to punch down, and he got slapped for it. Should it always happen? No. It probably wasn’t the wisest decision Will Smith has ever made, but I’m fine if there are no consequences for it. We’ve become all too tolerant of rude and cruel behavior in the guise of “humor,” thanks to shock jocks and social media.
As someone who trained with UFC fighters for years, Smith threw a haymaker slap that I’m surprised even connected. It’s not like Smith used his boxing training from when he played Muhammad Ali. And as someone who was unmercifully bullied by little men like Chris Rock for years, because I was the big fat kid who who would be punished for “picking on” the bully if I raised a hand to stop their emotional torment: good for Will.
Little shits like Rock hide behind our zero tolerance for violence. And teachers are not able to stop bullying, even with “zero tolerance” for it in schools. The bullies know how to adapt. Rock had a history of mocking Pinkett Smith, and he chose that night to continue it. In my case, the worst was saved for the privacy of the schoolyard; then the bullies used shorthand in class and the hallways, so the teachers didn’t recognize it, and I seemed like the “hot tempered” one who was exploding for no reason. Bullies aren’t stupid. They have a lot of practice.
I was taught not to hit. It made me tolerate abuse for years. I have never struck anyone first, not even in the ring. I take a punch and then counter it. I didn’t learn to fight until much later; in school, my solution was to hit the gym until crowds of young men would cross the street if they saw me strutting down the sidewalk. That was toxic, to myself and the people around me. Now I’m fifty years old, and I can peacefully respond to even the most virulent bullies.
My question is, why should anyone have to?
Men have gotten away with this crap forever. A woman gets hit? “She was asking for it. She drove him to it.” A man gets slapped? Oh, he was practicing freedom of speech. Harassment laws are unequally enforced, for all sorts of reasons. But the laws exist. It’s just so commonplace that reporting it is exhausting, until the bullying gets so bad that we’re asked, “why did you let it get this far?”
We expect the Smiths to laugh along and take it. Alopecia isn’t cancer, but her shaved head wasn’t a red carpet fashion choice. Too much “humor” these days is the easy laughter of tickling our discomfort, saying things “we shouldn’t,” and then teasing at “going too far,” instead of something actually funny. Unimaginative comedians have been a sort of morality police for years; dressing down those who dare rise above their station, punching down with gusto. Chris Rock knows how to be funny, but the “comedy roast at the Oscars” vibe has taken over. He probably didn’t even write the line. Maybe Bruce Vilanch is waiting for his slap.
Terry Crews famously didn’t slap his agent when the man grabbed his genitals in public, because Crews, like me, had been conditioned to not use violence of any sort in a confrontation. And Crews was right not to do it! The groper was a white man. Crews wouldn’t have been cheered on Twitter if he hit back, he’d probably be arrested or sued. The Oscars tolerate crap like Seth MacFarlane making sex jokes about 12-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis onstage—to show they aren’t stodgy—and next year I’m sure the comedian du jour will make a rude joke and then reference Will Smith with an innocent, “who me?” expression to dodge getting their own smack upside the head.
The lesson? Don’t start shit.
The slap, uncensored:
You can tell me I’m wrong in the comments, below.
Great post, great comments. I don't disagree with anyone. Thanks for this, Tommy.
I will say though that my wife told me she first read it that Will Smith had slapped KID Rock. How much better would THAT have been!
This kind of situation is so difficult, I think, because getting it right relies on nuance, judgement, and a finely tuned sense of justice — all of which are often super scarce, particularly in the heat of the moment. Which is why we end up imposing blanket policies, like “violence is never the answer,” so that judgment etc. never have to get called into question at all. But, as you point out Tom, bullies rely on those blanket policies. And in this case, I think Smith got it right. I’m not convinced Smith is the type of man who would get it right every time — which I guess makes it feel a little dangerous to me. But Chris Rock has got to stop punching down & getting paid to do it. And that he punched down against a Black woman with a medical issue on Oscars night when she’s seated right there and can’t leave — well, I’m glad there was someone there to get the fuck you across to him in a way that I hope Rock’ll remember for a good long time.