Whether we call it irony or hypocrisy, it’s who “we” are today.
More than half of those surveyed in a new poll said the comedian was in the wrong when he joked about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head at the Oscars — and do not fault actor Will Smith for smacking him on camera.
The Blue Rose Research poll found that 52.3% of people blamed Rock for the incident, compared to 47.7% who said Smith was out of line, according to a report published by Mediaite.com on Tuesday.
Forget about Will Smith and Chris Rock for a moment. Consider instead the issue of physical violence in response to speech. Remember when the guy getting sucker punched was named Richard Spencer, and suddenly punching someone because you generally hated his views became the subject of hot debate, and far hotter rationalizations?
After all, Spencer was a “Nazi,” it was argued, so how could it be wrong to punch him? And so it slid down the slippery slope to punching fascists, whether by those who thought wearing black masks exempted them from law and norms and blessed their hitting people with bike locks?
But this comes at the issue from the perspective of the tolerant and empathetic, who can express with the utmost sincerity why their violence, brimming with the best of intentions and directed at the worst people ever, is good violence, as opposed to the bad violence of the other side. They internalized the nonsensical contortions necessary to explain why speech is violence because it hurts their feelings, it traumatizes them, and if you don’t agree, you deserve to get punched.
Yet, this isn’t necessarily the reason Will Smith gave in to his impulse. When he went from laughing at Rock’s joke to seeing his wife upset by it, he shifted modes into the defender of her honor. To some, this was a reflection of the honor code of “toxic masculinity,” defending one’s woman from insult. But that’s more an elite white folx way of explaining it. No less a heavyweight than Roxane Gay explained why, after repeating the requisite “violence is wrong” mantra, she loved it.
And what gets lost in the discourse is that, however disappointing the incident was, it was also a rare moment when a Black woman was publicly defended.
For many Black women, it was a painful spectacle because we know what it is like to experience that kind of scrutiny, interrogation and disrespect in personal and professional settings. We know what it’s like to withstand scrutiny without intervention.
For Gay, there are laws, rules and norms, and then there are black women’s feelings, which can’t be constrained by any of the foregoing. If you disagree, that’s just because you don’t get it, and you should shut up, sit down, listen and do as you’re told. And it’s not her job to educate you either. Educate yourself.
John McWhorter, however, is an educator by trade, and so provides some background to the perspective.
In the ’90s, the sociologist Elijah Anderson documented that “street culture has evolved what may be called a code of the streets, which amounts to a set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, including violence,” such that “people become very sensitive to advances and slights, which could well serve as warnings of imminent physical confrontation.”
For criminal defense lawyers, street “justice” is nothing new. If you want to survive the “mean streets,” you can’t let people think they can push you around, which includes dissing your woman. A “real man” won’t take that sort of disrespect, so he has to do something about it. Too often, this involves a gun. This time it was a slap, which in the scheme of violent reactions, is a lot less permanent.
In this vein I suspect that Smith was, on a certain level, performing for Black America, supposing that many of his Black fans would see him as going to a perhaps unideal extreme, but one that might be warranted when a man decides to “stand up” for his woman. Smith seems to have been trying for something vernacular, as it were, not unlike Biden letting go with his unfiltered personal take on Putin. But the Oscars incident was a smack seen around the world, where so many saw not “how we do it,” but violence, period.
The problem here is that this concedes some things that few want to admit, as they fly in the face of the preferred narrative of equity. If there is such a thing as black culture where violence is normalized, where “might makes right,” does that mean those who embrace it, or as McWhorter says, perform it, are somehow less refined, less civilized, than those who respond to words with words rather than violence? This is an unacceptable question, and yet McWhorter asks it.
There are times when only the established norm will do the job, regardless of one’s feelings. It reminds me that a few years after Anita Hill’s mistreatment during Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings, the scholar Karla F.C. Holloway, in her book “Codes of Conduct: Race, Ethics, and the Color of Our Character,” asked whether Hill would have been better off “turning it out” in those hearings. If, in other words, she had directly excoriated the white male senators giving her grief by using a Black American cadence and phraseology. If she had “read them for filth,” in today’s parlance. For a Black woman, Holloway wrote, that meant “handing over to our adversary our version of the stereotype that motivates their disrespect to us — just to prove to them that they could no better handle the stereotype than they can determine and control our character.”
The nice phrase for it is “code switching,” where a black person goes from using the polite effete norms of ‘white” speech and behavior to the street version, with its cadence and phraseology and a slap, punch or bullet as the case may be.
On the one hand, the slap was acceptable because it’s acceptable to use violence in response to speech that’s unacceptable. On the other hand, the slap was acceptable because a black man finally defended a black woman’s feelings. And on the third hand (I know), the slap was acceptable because that’s how black people roll. We all agree that violence is not the answer, of course, except when it is.
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Paid shills creating/controlling a narrative on a mutually masturbatory award show with shit ratings?
Nah. No way. Hollywierd gave up on that a long time ago.
“…there’s no name, there’s no name,
for the pain we cause you, again and again..”
So cynical.
Ricky Gervais, when asked about “The Slap,” said he wouldn’t have joked about Jada’s hair. He would have joked about her boyfriend.
One can only wonder if “street justice” would have applied in that scenario and if Gervais would be accused of “perpetuating White supremacy” in the aftermath.
Comedy is dying and comedians, formerly those we could count on to tell the uncomfortable truths few dared say, are failing us.
“[N]ot unlike Biden letting go with his unfiltered personal take on Putin”, except that it is unlike Biden’s “letting go” in that Smith’s action caused physical injury.
“It’s an ill wind that blows no good”… and there’s now a company in Mexico that’s now making Chris Rock pinatas. I shit thee not.
Doubtful that there was any actual injury, but it was physical violence (redundant, but these are the times in which we live) nonetheless.
Would not Rock’s joke be considered fighting words?
Not by anyone who wasn’t braindead.
Everything is racial grievances with these people. Everything. If Smith were a white guy with a black wife, with everything else being the same, the take would be “just more white violence against the black man”.
And if you want encouragement that this crap is ever going to get better, an anecdote to convince you otherwise. I was watching tv with my 4 yo grandson and a two minute infomercial on microaggressions came on with a cartoon marching band and cartoon cheerleaders. And a microaggressions song. On Disney Junior. All indoctrination all the time.
Which “these people” are you referring to?
I was referring to the woke/intersectionist/CRT left. But your point (at least what I think your point is) is a good one. You could make the same statement about the proud boy/white nationalist right as well.
Let’s find an empty island and ship them all there and let them sort it out.
Tricky you, using the commentary of two black people to make your point about black culture, since it would have been totally racist for a white guy otherwise, even if you said the exact same thing. Very tricky.
It must be the assault culture we are bombarded with in entertainment. If this were a movie he would be a hero. Some of the most iconic moments in cinema are the slaps. Violence is light entertainment.
As long as it’s not sexual. Maybe if Moe grabbed Curly’s ass all the time instead of slapping him we wouldn’t think it was so funny. Oh but wait, Regina Hall felt up Josh Brolin and Jason Momoa without their consent and people thought it was hilarious.
“For Gay, there are laws, rules and norms, and then there are black women’s feelings, which can’t be constrained by any of the foregoing.”
A lot of folks like to bring up Frank Wilhoit’s definition of conservatism as a matter of in-group vs. out-group enforcement of norms apparently without realizing they are describing the equity agenda. Sure, it’s sold as a corrective, but these things always are while typically being counterproductive to the point of self-perpetuating. One of the worst things about the American left wing is how right wing they are.
If only someone did that spiderman meme where spiderman points at spiderman and says, “you’re the bad one.”
Edit: And CLS was kind enough to help.
Pointing is violence. Ask any high school bully.
America’s ‘Assault Culture’ deals with groups who are physically violent. (E.G. Shane, Dirty Harry, Death Wish, etc.). It also accepts the very real possibility of harm as a result of doing something. Punch A Blank is meeting speech with physical violence. It demands protection from any consequences due to ‘moral superiority’.
Who can forget the violent Girl Scout bar brawl in Airplane! It’s funny because it’s true.
“… No less a heavyweight than Roxane Gay explained why,…” I saw what you did there.
As has been recognized at least as far back as Hobbes, affronts to honor have been a trigger for violence since time immemorial. But we’re supposed to be more enlightened nowadays, which is why it was semi-shocking to see a supposedly semi-cultured man take a semi-serious slap at a semi-provocative semi-comedian, especially when the nature of the event practically begs said semi-comedian to be semi-provocative. Still, the resort to physical violence seems rather uncool and borderline pathetic to me; maybe Mr. Smith was actually auditioning to be the new late-middle-aged action star a la Liam Neeson and/or the recently-retired Bruce Willis?
And doesn’t it seem rather…patriarchal…for the legal husband (open marriage or no) of the insulted woman (AFAIK, NTTAWWT) to seemingly expect she (assuming pronoun not in evidence) would want her man (AFAIK, NTTAWWT) to defend her honor? Isn’t a righteously powerful and independent woman supposed to be taking care of her own business? How presumptuous of Mr. Smith to deny Ms. Smith’s agency by performing the physical violence that is Ms. Smith’s prerogative as an empowered, enlightened, badass Black Woman! Why, he’s practically putting her back in chains!
Oh, BTW: the idiom you were looking for is, “On the gripping hand…”. All the cool kids do it. Well, at least the cool kids that are or were SF fans, which…probably means not very damned many 🙁 Still, it’s a useful idiom, so thanks to Messrs Niven and Pournelle.
(And lest anyone get the wrong idea, I was not watching the sorry spectacle called the Oscars; I first learned about this curious sociological occurrence while perusing an online guitar forum. Much cooler than watching the Oscars.)
Imma make a bold statement here… Smith was out of line, but Rock had it coming. Control your anger, and don’t take pot shots at someone’s publicly stated insecurities, especially at that kind of event.
Did anyone ask?
When has that ever stopped me?
“Smith was out of line, but Rock had it coming”
Smith should have not slapped Rock
???
Rock should have been slapped.
There’s a biiig missing step.
Smith is old enough to remember that for a man to slap another man across the face in public has a particular message associated with it. It doesn’t really hurt, but more importantly, it doesn’t reduce the ability of the slappee to fight back. First, it is to draw public attention. Second, it says “I have so little respect for your ability to fight back that I will open with this performative violence and dare you to fight back.” It has been called a “bitch-slap” since the days only women were called bitches. This is old-fashioned.
I realize that it’s hard to separate the act, which seems to have captured the attention of a certain sort of mind that focuses only on the concrete, from the topic of this post, the rationalizations about the act, but try. Please.
Violence, with all its associated death and destruction, is always the final horrendous solution. Been there, done that on Uncle Sam’s dime and on the job. Rationalizations either promote or suppress violence.
The problem is not violence. We are always stuck with that possibility because we are human. The problem is that lately the rationalizations seem to lean more and more toward violence as a viable solution. Further, those rationalizations focus on expanding the definition of violence so wide that that it almost becomes a warm and fuzzy retreat from reality.
For those who can’t see past their next “like” this is a useful trend. Not so much for those of us who have experienced serious sustained violence and fear the stupidity of such rationale will lead our grandchildren to experience it again.
What if Smith had walked up there, poked Rock three times in the chest, and said what he said? The rationalizations are begging the question of what level of physical contact is acceptable.
What if space aliens took over Smith’s body…
The discussion is about post hoc rationalizations, not the hoc or any other imaginary hoc.
They want to be “doctor” in the sheets and “gangsta” on the streets. I need to trademark this.
What is this “Oscars” that you speak of?