What We Are Patently Ignoring About "The Slap"- And Why It Matters.
It's been two weeks since Will Smith famously slapped Chris Rock and the world jumped on the outrage train. But what we are refusing to acknowledge about it could kill us. Literally.
For two weeks now, the outrage has been thick over Will Smith’s very public slapping of Chris Rock. In true American fashion, the Twitterverse has been an absolute free-for-all of name calling, finger pointing and self-righteous indignation. Accusations of “violence” have been particularly thick and heavy; as if our gun-toting, football loving, MMA worshipping nation has somehow shown itself for decades to be the highest bastion of peace, love and harmony, which was all destroyed by a single slap.
Meanwhile, just last night, on Sunday, April 10 alone, two people were killed and 10 injured in a shooting at a nightclub in Cedar Rapids, IA; one man was killed and another injured in a Roslindale, MA shooting; another man was killed and five people injured in a shooting in Elgin, IL; four people were injured in a shooting in Baton Rouge, LA and a high school student was fatally shot inside a home in Richland, VA.
And that’s all just one week after a mass shooting in Sacramento, CA, in which 6 people died and 12 more were injured; 3 people were killed and 4 more injured in a house party shooting in Wilmington, NC and and one teen died in Florida after getting together with his buddy to shoot each other in the chest while wearing flak jackets. But yes, please, by all means - let’s talk about how violent Will Smith is for slapping Chris Rock!
It is absolutely beyond my comprehension how we have the gall and sheer audacity to claim that one grown-ass man slapping another grown-ass man is violent. It literally took us 122 years to determine that LYNCHING was not okay, and we’re going to act like a slap is violent? And let’s just talk about that for a second. Will Smith played Muhammad Ali in a major motion picture. That means he probably spent a year or more training with some of the best boxing trainers in the country, if not the world. If Will Smith had wanted to cause Chris Rock pain or harm, I’m pretty sure he could have TKO’d him with ease.
We act like Smith put the beat down on Rock in the parking lot or walked up on stage and cold-cocked him. Nope, he slapped him. Smith didn’t harm him, hurt him, or put him in the hospital. Rock rubbed his cheek briefly and went right on with the show. Obviously, I can’t speak for the entire Black community, but I have to say I suspect there wouldn’t be many protests and demonstrations if cops walked around slapping Black people instead of shooting them.
In fact, America would probably be held up as the gold standard of decorum if we settled more of our disputes with slapping. But let’s talk about some of the other utterly inane accusations flying around about this incident. Like this statement from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar:
…Smith’s slap was also a slap to women. If Rock had physically attacked Pinkett Smith, Smith’s intervention would have been welcome…. But by hitting Rock, he announced that his wife was incapable of defending herself—against words. From everything I’d seen of Pinkett Smith over the years, she’s a very capable, tough, smart woman who can single-handedly take on a lame joke at the Academy Awards show.
This patronizing, paternal attitude infantilizes women and reduces them to helpless damsels needing a Big Strong Man to defend their honor lest they swoon from the vapors. If he was really doing it for his wife, and not his own need to prove himself, he might have thought about the negative attention this brought on them, much harsher than the benign joke. That would have been truly defending and respecting her.
There is just so much wrong with this statement and the assumptions it makes that I almost don’t know where to begin. As I’ve already said, if this were truly about Smith trying to “prove himself” he would have cold-cocked Rock, not slapped him. So let’s deal with the part about Pinkett Smith being perfectly capable of defending herself.
Clearly, he literally has no idea how Hollywood works for women, and even more so for Black women. Although Black women have certainly made some huge strides in Hollywood, there can be no denying that it is white men who still pull all the strings. It is not the actor, the director or even the producer that has all the power in Hollywood, it is the studio heads, who, by and large, continue to be almost exclusively white men.
Therefore, if you want to keep working in Hollywood, you do not “make waves” - particularly if you are a woman. Women in Hollywood know that if you get labeled as “difficult” you don’t work anymore. So they laugh, smile, wear the pretty dress and suck up all the smarmy comments that rip their souls to shreds. All so they can do what they love.
So while, yes, under ordinary circumstances I would say that women are not dainty little delicate flowers that need protecting, in this instance, Jada was absolutely, unquestionably incapable of defending herself. To do so would have not only jeopardized her own career but potentially those of her husband and even her children. So on her own, she would have absolutely just “sucked it up” no matter how much it hurt.
But expecting her to do that just glosses over the bigger question of why should she have to? There are already few enough women in America that don’t have massive body image issues but women in Hollywood are expected to subject every single inch of their bodies to the intense scrutiny of every man, woman and child in America. Who, by the way, do not hesitate to critique, criticize and make inordinately hurtful comments about regardless of how they themselves look. Remember Stewart Allen Clark? The hugely un-sexy pastor from Missouri who told women they needed to be more like the ultimate “trophy wife” Melania Trump. Do you by any chance see the problem when even a pastor thinks it’s okay to comment on the physical features of another man’s wife? Why do we continue to believe this is okay?
I am so tired of this belief we seem determined to cling to in America that words do not matter, words have no power and words do not HURT. They absolutely do! There are literally millions of women in America and around the world in highly abusive relationships that have no idea they are even in one because their husbands or partners are not physically abusive. We literally all have SCARS from words that have been spoken to us (including Abdul-Jabbar himself, I am sure), and yet we continue to cling to this insane belief that only physical wounds matter and not psychological or emotional wounds.
Even the American Heart Association acknowledges that broken heart syndrome is a very real thing and is caused by a surge of stress hormones that can be caused by an emotionally stressful event. Although broken heart syndrome is not generally fatal, it is an absolute indication that emotional pain has physical consequences. People seem determined to believe that Smith’s “attack” on Rock was “completely unprovoked” but that is just not true. Words matter, words have power and words cause physical pain.
Although we have come a long way in addressing mental health issues, the very fact that we still call them “mental” health issues (as if emotions don’t matter) shows how very far we still have to go. Science is showing us that pain is pain is pain. The pain we feel from words that cut like a knife is every bit as real as the pain of being physically cut with an actual knife.
Although we say idiotic things like “it’s all in your head” when it comes to emotional pain; the truth is that if you have a bone literally sticking out of your leg, even that pain is actually in your head not your leg. So, yes, ALL pain is in your head but that doesn’t make it any less real. Your brain doesn’t actually know the difference between emotional and physical pain. And then we wonder why we have an opioid epidemic on our hands.
Could it maybe be that we continue to try and deny that emotional pain is every bit as real as physical pain? We have CAT scans and PET scans and all kinds of scans for the body, but injuries to the soul we just pretend don’t exist. So let’s just stop with the idea that the only reason to defend someone is if they are being physically attacked rather than verbally assaulted. Words. Have. Power.
And please stop with all this “Will Smith set the Black community back” bullshit. Will Smith has literally spent his entire life bringing honor and respect to the Black community. For the life of me I cannot even begin to imagine all the shit that man has had to eat with a smile to have the kind of career he has had. If the Black community wasn’t brought down by Bill Cosby raping a minimum of at least 60 women (that we know about), it sure as hell isn’t going to be brought down by Will Smith slapping another Black man. If Will Smith doesn’t deserve some grace for a single moment of passion - defending his wife rather than himself - I certainly can’t imagine who would.
For those that point out “well, he was laughing too” - exactly. If Chris Rock had ripped the shit out of Will Smith he would have kept right on laughing and said “please sir, may I have another.” But Rock didn’t rip on him, he ripped on his wife; arguably the love of his life for good or for ill. A woman that, based on the mores of the industry they work in, could not defend herself. No, she didn’t ask her husband to defend her, but it’s also not a big secret that men can bear almost anything themselves but watching those they love be caused pain is nearly intolerable. Just because we didn’t see the look of pain in her eyes doesn’t mean he didn’t.
And where exactly is the contract that states that in order to receive a prestigious award from your peers, you are required to sit and be mocked, belittled and made fun of in front of an audience of millions? I understand when people sign up for a Comedy Central Roast, they know what they are getting into, but why should being mocked and ridiculed be the price of receiving a prestigious award for years and even decades of hard work? It is so very typical of America that the Academy oh-so self-righteously punished Smith for his actions without ever bothering to take a single second to contemplate whether they might actually have any culpability in this event.
We have all just spent the last two years in a global pandemic.
While their prisons might have been a bit more luxurious, all the Hollywood celebrities were locked up right along with the rest of us and even their palaces couldn’t save them from the plague. Celebrities caught the virus and ended up in the hospital right along with everyone else - and so did their children. Their newsfeeds were just as full of fear and death and dire warnings as everyone else’s. And if it wasn’t the virus, how many celebrity suicides were there?
While celebrity actors might be professional enough to go through the motions of putting on their designer suits and dresses and smile for the cameras, how many of them could barely drag their asses out of bed and needed an entire pharmacy of anti-depression and anti-anxiety meds to get them through the night? And the Academy and Studio Heads all wisely decided in their infinite wisdom that it should just be business as usual and the show should just go right on mocking and belittling celebrities the same way it has for the last 40+ years.
And then they can’t figure out why their ratings are so low. So many people kept saying that “the slap” took all the attention away from the winners but the truth is, without the slap, millions of people would not have even realized the Academy Awards ever happened. In truth, the winners probably got a lot more attention because of the slap than having it taken away.
I think the reason we are so determined to throw Will Smith under the biggest bus possible is because it’s easier than facing our own culpability. We don’t want to acknowledge that we are a nation of bullies. We desperately want to cling to this idea that words don’t matter and words don’t count, so we can go right on using them to beat the shit out of people and they can’t do a damn thing about it because we didn't use our fists.
Now you might not be a Bible person and I certainly don’t want to be one to push it down anyone’s throat, but it does have some interesting things to say on this topic that might be worth paying attention to. Like this:
It is foolish to belittle one’s neighbor; a sensible person keeps quiet. - Prov. 11:12 (NLT)
Or this:
Those who guard their lips preserve their lives, but those who speak rashly will come to ruin. - Prov. 13:3 (NIV)
That one seems almost a little prophetic to me. But wait, there’s more.
The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences. - Prov 18:21
Here’s another that seems a bit prophetic:
Those who guard their mouths and their tongues keep themselves from calamity. - Prov 21:23 (NIV)
Honestly, I also like the take from the New Living Translation on that one, which says:
Watch your tongue and keep your mouth shut, and you will stay out of trouble.
The really sad thing about all of this is that we desperately need our comedians right now, possibly more than ever.
The one thing we don’t need right now, is to be mocked, belittled and made fun of. We have all spent the last two years living in fear, watching those we love dying all around us. We haven’t even been able to go to funerals, let alone properly grieve or mourn. At some point, we need to realize we can’t just “go back to the way things were” or simply carry on with “business as usual” either.
Yes, we need comedians to help us laugh, to bring light into the darkness but we shouldn’t have to “take” a joke. And before you ask, the answer is no - we cannot “take” a joke right now. While it’s questionable whether a joke is something we should have ever had to “take” in the first place, after two years of fear and pain and loss and isolation and loneliness and suffering NO, WE CANNOT “TAKE” A JOKE.
Right now, we don’t need the Richard Wrights or the George Carlins - not that there’s anything wrong with them. They are great comedians that helped us see the world in a different light but to everything there is a season and this is not that season. We need the Lucille Balls and the Robin Williams’, we need the Chris Farleys and the Erma Bombecks. We need the people who knew how to make us laugh without it having to be at the expense of someone else. We are all fragile right now. There are no “strong ones” we can pick on - not that anyone should have ever had to do that to get a laugh in the first place.
Ironically, we desperately need the Chris Rocks and the Amy Schumers, but not the material from the Academy Awards. It was heartbreaking really, Beyoncé got things off to a beautiful start. Beyoncé was just what we needed but then the Academy and the Networks had to go right back to their bullying, belittling bullshit and quite frankly - they got what they were asking for and Will Smith and Chris Rock paid the price for it.
Out of all of this, I have come to respect Chris Rock the most. Not only did he move on graciously and handle it like a pro, he hasn’t gone off giving a bunch of angry interviews or threatening to sue like Jim Carrey said he would have. What Will Smith did was wrong, for sure, but it should be far more understandable than any of us are willing to admit. And frankly, I think the 10 year suspension from the Academy was bullshit. They need to admit their own culpability and stop using Smith as a scapegoat. That’s like building a house directly on a fault line and then suing the contractor when the house cracks in half after an earthquake (that you don’t want to admit actually happened).
We need time to heal, to grieve and to mourn. We need to laugh and to cry and to let it all out. And in that process, we also need to ask if the place so many want to get back to was ever healthy in the first place. I suspect if we’re really honest with ourselves, we will realize it was great for a few, bad for many - and the few it was good for were probably bullies.
It is no surprise that all the comedians were outraged at Smith’s actions. After all, they have a vested interest in making sure that no one feels entitled to walk on stage and respond physically to the jokes that they tell. I’m quite sure that rage is the result of fear because what Smith did is probably their worst nightmare. But the truth is, they should be afraid!
We are a bullying nation and we have gotten away with it for years because enough people largely had the emotional resources to deal with it. But comedians need to read the room. We are in a very different time right now and you cannot “get away” with in 2022 what you could theoretically get away with in 2019. Although it is questionable whether people should have ever gotten away with what they did in the first place. Smith’s slap should be a wake-up call. Quite frankly, I believe it might actually save lives if people actually pay attention to it rather than simply getting angry about it.
We are a nation that just loves guns too much to think we can go right on shooting our mouths off the way we do without consequences.
If you want to stop school shootings, you should maybe stop waiting for the government to solve the problem and maybe take a page from Smith’s book. For years now, we have basically told children being bullied that they just have to suck it up. And they do - until they just can’t anymore. Honestly, I can’t imagine there is a parent in the country that wouldn’t far rather go pick their kid up from school after being suspended for slapping the shit out of a bully than eventually visit them in prison because they just couldn’t take the bullying any more.
The fact that when Will Smith snapped, the worst thing he did was slap another man is actually a massive testament to his character and integrity. And if you’re wondering why he got a standing ovation just a few minutes later; well, I’m sure it was partly because he was long, long overdue for the award that he got; but quite frankly, it was probably just as much for doing what probably every person in that room has wanted to do for years now. Not to Chris Rock specifically but to all of the comedians that have taken home huge paychecks for relentlessly belittling them for years.
Words matter.
Words have power.
Words hurt.
Let’s stop trying to pretend they don’t, before things get completely out of hand.
The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. Prov 12:18 (NIV)