EUSEBIUS MCKAISER | Here’s why Chris Rock and Will Smith deserve neither praise nor defence

Rock’s joke and Smith’s violent response are both examples of the toxic patriarchy that society can no longer tolerate

28 March 2022 - 13:32
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Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith at the 'Vanity Fair' Oscar party during the 94th Academy Awards in Beverly Hills, California on March 27 2022.
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith at the 'Vanity Fair' Oscar party during the 94th Academy Awards in Beverly Hills, California on March 27 2022.
Image: DANNY MOLOSHOK/Reuters

There is nothing praiseworthy about actor Will Smith slapping comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars on Monday.

It is worth explaining why the behaviour of both men should be condemned.

The violence happened shortly after Rock cracked an unfunny joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s baldness, which is the result of alopecia.

Smith and  Rock are not monsters. They are, frankly, familiar male figures. That is the tragedy of how little progress we are making in smashing patriarchy.

Rock looked at Pinkett Smith and said: “Jada, I love you. GI Jane 2. Can’t wait to see you.”

He was making reference to the movie GI Jane featuring Demi Moore with a shaved head. 

In the unlikely event you have not yet seen the clip of what happened next, Smith is seen walking up to Rock after noticing his wife was visibly displeased by the joke (notwithstanding the fact that he had initially laughed himself) and slapping a stunned Rock before going back to his seat from where he then twice shouts:  “Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth!”

Later Smith was awarded the Best Actor Oscar and in an emotional speech he apologised to the academy and to his fellow nominees for his earlier behaviour.

During his acceptance speech he also said: “I want to be a vessel for love. Love will make you do crazy things.

“I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people.”

I have several problems with both Rock and Smith, and am gobsmacked by many people online who are defending both of them without considering the most obvious alternative position, and that is that neither deserves praise nor defence.

Firstly, Rock’s joke was at the cost of a black woman who has openly shared her experience of a condition that leads to hair loss. He showed no regard for the facts about her grappling with the aesthetic of the condition in a world in which hair is obsessed about.

Rock made Good Hair, the documentary about the then R9bn black hair industry, precisely because of the complex politics of black hair. He was reminded of that complexity by his three-year-old daughter Lola who asked him: “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?”

Not only are there social complexities related to hair texture, styling, length and so on, but having hair at all is seen as a natural feature of a healthy body. Many of us think of cancer, first and foremost, when we see a woman who is bald, and while we would not readily admit it, we immediately think of her as ill, and possibly facing imminent death. We don’t only live in a world where we still often judge people by the colour of their skin but also by what is on their head, as ridiculous as it is.

The linguistic violence and psychosocial harm that can be and are perpetuated by some comedy are no less real because they aren’t a violent slap in the face.

The nexus point is that all comedians, and certainly ones of a reputably world-class standard like Rock, have an ethical duty to think about their humour and their craft critically. It is no longer acceptable as a comedian to see your job description as making people laugh at all costs. It is simply lazy and uncreative to moan about how much harder it is today than, say, 20 years ago to come up with material that is both funny and ethically acceptable.

The linguistic violence and psychosocial harms that can be and are perpetuated by some comedy are no less real because they aren’t a violent slap on the face. Rock’s so-called joke was a slap on Pinkett Smith’s face. The fact that his hands were behind his back and he was physically far from the subject of his joke does not mean no harm was done.

Girls and women with alopecia should not be easy targets for lazy comedy. Comedy has gone unexamined, the world over, for far too long, and invariably the victims are the usual categories of people who are used to oppression, from black people generally to black women in particular. Rock should have known better and did know better but instinctively relied on the free pass stand-up comedians have always enjoyed.

It is time for audiences themselves to demand more from comedians when it comes to harmful content that recycles casual bigotry. Rock’s joke was, frankly, misogynoir.

I refuse to accept that the implication of my criticism is that comedians will be gagged. We should push back against straw person responses when it comes to analysis of speech acts that are indecent.

The choices comedians face are not either harmful content or silence. Between those extremes there is plenty of room for content that is sharp, socially engaging and awkward even, without falling foul of what is patently unacceptable.

I remember watching Trevor Noah at a legendary comedy and music venue that is no more, The Blues Room at The Village Walk in Sandton, many years ago, and hearing him perform a joke about people with disabilities for the first time, which he subsequently went on to use in other sets.

During the joke, he imitated a deaf person who confronted him for never including deaf people in his material as a comedian. It was a brilliant meta comment on the fear of comedians to offend people they regard as vulnerable, but in the process being exclusionary and implying that people with disabilities lack a sense of humour. He delivered it so well that it was simultaneously hilarious hearing his stilted speech and seeing him use sign language, while being made to think about when we are too politically correct. That, to me, is comedic brilliance. The joke was tinged with some awkwardness because we did not know how far he would go in his story about the deaf guy, and our penchant for dark humour might secretly have made us hope the comedian would get even more edgy, but Noah found the perfect balance between intelligent social commentary and sheer hilarious storytelling that could not be considered safe nor politically correct.

It can be done. It requires commitment to not be lazy as a creative and to take the power of the microphone seriously.

Rock was lazy and uncreative and ignored the power of his larger-than-life presence as a superstar comedian. It therefore makes no sense to praise him nor to defend him.

We have naturalised the use of violence to settle our differences as men, and to give expression to our deepest frustrations and anger.

The problem, however, is that Rock’s off-colour joke does not justify the hypermasculinity and violence performed by Smith. I am sorry, but the idea of defending a woman’s honour by fighting another man is patriarchal and an extension of social tropes about “looking after our girls and women”.

The fact that it was instinctive is not a defence either, because that simply reveals how we have naturalised the use of violence to settle our differences as men, and to give expression to our deepest frustrations and anger.

Smith didn’t have to put up with the joke, but critical responses to such moments are not confined to acts of violence. The fact that he cried during his acceptance speech later will tempt many of us to treat him with kid gloves because a vulnerable-looking man who apologises is such a rare sight. Add to that the fact that he is very good-looking, and likeable generally, and we are even more prone to giving him a discount for his violence. We should not do so.

I cried and wrote several essays on unhealthy masculinities last year on these pages based on Smith’s brilliant and moving memoir. I have enormous goodwill for him, but we must demand more of ourselves as men even as we have to be kinder to ourselves at the same time. We must do both.

Pinkett Smith’s feelings, views and desires for how to engage  Rock (if at all) are not something that Smith seems to be concerned with.

Pinkett Smith is absent in the confrontation between Smith and Rock.

It is again men who are centred in the discourse. Her feelings, views and desires for how to engage Rock (if at all) are not something Smith seems to be concerned with. When he takes a confident stride towards Rock, it is all about him, in fact, and the performance of the alpha male role.

Even his tears later on, not unlike white women tears in conversations about allyship in the fight for racial justice, are about the man of the household as “a fierce defender of family”.

You can criticise Rock’s serious lapse in judgement about the decency of his non-joke and even appreciate Smith’s profound empathy for his wife being the victim of the non-joke, and still condemn Smith’s violence. It is especially troubling that he invokes the idea of love as an explanation for what he did.

When Smith said love makes us do “crazy things” I think of the many women, especially black women, who experience violence in their homes as a result of us men convincing ourselves that we are acting out of love.

Smith is defining love as violence. We should neither praise him for conflating love with violence nor defend his violence as an expression of love.

What we need to do instead is to recover the masculinities of all boys and men from the history of unhealthy masculinities.

Smith and Rock are not monsters. They are not evil. They are, frankly, familiar male figures. That is the tragedy of how little progress we are making in smashing patriarchy.

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