Hey did you guys watch the Oscars?
Chris Rock was attacked by Will Smith, over a joke he made about his wife’s haircut. Perhaps there is more to this than we know, probably, but I don’t have any insider information on that.
This definitely sounds, and feels like a celebrity gossip piece, but when I saw The Globe and Mail feature a piece on how this lone act is the kink in the shield that protects toxic masculinity from being seen in Hollywood, I had to say something!
So here is the video that I saw of the incident (I didn’t watch the Oscars)
Did you see Jada’s face when Chris Rock made the joke? I swear that’s a cultural thing.
Will Smith didn’t even look that bothered at first, it was after all an innocent joke. It can be argued that it’s a old joke, that we shouldn’t comment on others appearance. Yet, people do this all the time. I think Will Smith may have been out of line, maybe he was reacting to Jada’s reaction? I don’t know for sure what goes on in crazy hollywood, maybe people were talking about how Jada cheated on him and instead of divorcing, they have an open marriage?
Chris Rock handled the situation by de-escalating it very quickly, because he doesn’t have anything to prove. You know he made a joke, it wasn’t well received and maybe he feels bad. The intention of Chris Rock was obvious, he just wants everyone to have a good time, right? I always thought black people had thicker skin than that, I mean, okay if Jada was offended, they could have talked to Chris about that joke.
I think Will Smith should have let her sit in her own emotions.
Anyway, even if Jada “hurt” Will on purpose, because he seems to be a very emotionally driven actor, not everyone is going to know this. I’m just saying, you’re a famous couple of people, you might want to take that into consideration.
So here’s the article, it’s behind a paywall, and I left the Globe and Mail when they started with their woke politics, that writer bashed on Nazem Kadri when he was a Toronto Maple Leaf, mounds of opinions just based on rumor, and not really anything of any substance in the Business sections.
I thought I’d mention it if anyone does subscribe to the Globe and wanted to know what I was talking about. I think toxic masculinity is just a derivative of the covert toxic femininity.
That’s just me though. Guys, can’t we just get along?
Andeluuu 
First, it was not just a joke. Chris had been targeting Jada for years and the Smiths just rolled with it. Two, Jada didn’t just decide to cut her hair off, it was a medical condition influenced decision, so the joke was intended to inflict pain whether intentionally or not. Three, Will was not being toxic by defending his wife AS HE SHOULD. The way he decided to do that was a reflection of the pain Chris’ joke caused. I saw the entire clip and Everyone was laughing at a joke Chris made prior and instead of going on with the show he decided to throw that joke in. None of the production team knew about the joke before hand because Chris left it out of rehearsal.
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Let’s assume that you have information about the incident that isn’t readily available to the public, as it seems you know something about this whole incident. You can’t say it was intentionally meant to inflict pain, if you intentions aren’t to hurt someone, then how are you guilty of intending to hurt someone?
I don’t think that Will had to go and defend Jada over a joke that she didn’t like, a lot of people say things that offend other people, that doesn’t mean we should go out and assault people. I don’t know what you are referring to when you say that Chris left the joke out of rehearsal, everyone continued laughing throughout the entirety of Chris Rock’s performance.
I’m amazed you can read minds through watching clips, I can’t. Perhaps you can show me how, so I will know what my wife is thinking. When I figure out what my wife is thinking, then I will go ahead and diffuse the situation, not attack a comedian. Have you heard the saying that we can’t control other people’s actions, just how we react to them?
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You haven’t seen the articles online? The producers stated the joke wasn’t a part of the rehearsal nor was it on the teleprompter. Yes I agree we have total control over how we react to a situation. As a decent human being, once it becomes public that what you said was offensive and/or hurtful, basic decency would compell you to make a correction. The apology from Chris Rock that surfaced on instagram was removed and Chris’ team said it was fake, that he did not issue an apology to Jada. That says loud and clear he intended to hurt her. Jokes are fine, no one disputes that but to target an issue that is medically related that is linked to causing mental health issues is wrong and cruel.
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That’s a rather weak argument. Do you agree that Jada is a liar then, and a very shallow person?
She said just days before the Oscars she didn’t care what others said about her having short hair.
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Have you seen her interview where she talks candidly about her struggle to make peace with her condition? Or are you just selectively choosing to not acknowledge that? The same way you feel Chris was wronged so was Jada but instead you call her a liar and shallow. The same way Will could have remained seated, Chris could have continued with the show. Instead he CHOSE to single Jada out on purpose.
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I wish I could read minds, I’d be able to filter people faster. I deal with disabled and elderly people everyday so I see the effects of slick comments disguised as jokes regularly.
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So the inability for you to educate the disabled and elderly on how to handle information, somehow falls on the responsibility of others to regulate their jokes, or comments?
You’ve never been bullied, ever? No one has ever made fun of you, that’s ridiculous. A person with alopecia can get mad all they want, the joke was about the hairstyle, so stop acting like you’re defending the disadvantaged. Chris Rock assumed that he was dealing with mature adults, if there was any mistake that Chris Rock did, that was it.
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I never stated I couldn’t educate the disabled and the elderly. You are attempting to down play what occurred. Chris knew his joke was possibly borderline too much which is why he never rehearsed it. I know exactly what it feels like to be bullied. I’ve also experienced gas lighting so I can spot it a mile off. Prefacing the joke with I love you was to cushion the nastiness that was coming. On the surface it looks innocent enough. It would be different if Jada had laughed at the joke but she did not. An accountable individual would have apologized to her IMMEDIATELY once he realized he went too far. So miss me with the it was only a hair joke. Have you ever witnessed someone suffering from alopecia? Your flippant disregard for another person’s feelings is blatant. As I said in my blog post (since obviously you didn’t read it) both men were wrong and both need to apologize to Jada.
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Then why mention what you do with disabled and elderly? How someone feels about their condition, alopecia, is not going to change the fact that they have alopecia. If you’re telling me that your short haircut, that is used to disguise your condition, is being made fun of and that hurts your feelings, then that should be the same as someone making fun of you for having messy hair.
Whether or not Chris Rock feels bad, responsible or guilty, that’s not going to have any effect on her disease coming or going. As far as I know Alopecia is incurable, the only things that a person can do is learn to manage the disease and themselves. If you are going to be so fragile that you curl up into a ball and die everytime someone makes a joke, then step out of the spotlight. There is a lot more things people can actually do that’s more harmful than a loosely associated G.I. Jane joke. I tweeted that the whole situation could have been avoided if Jada had the balls to say “this time, they’re getting a real soldier”, instead of getting offended. Then what, Demi Moore is going to say “I’m hurt”, no because Demi Moore admitted that she has a drinking problem, she knows humility.
Life sucks for a lot of people, how entitled do you have to be that no one can ever say anything that you find offensive? Who wants to be around anyone that they have to walk around eggshells to include in conversation? Why didn’t Jada sit in the back, instead of in the front? This isn’t about “feelings”, this is about entitlement. There are other people, with different problems, who get made fun of, and they move on. You’d think that Jada would be grateful for what she has accomplished, but it looks like humility and gratitude doesn’t apply to her, just has to apply to everyone else.
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When you inform someone their behavior towards you is harmful and you want it to stop and they continue the hurtful behavior is the definition of bullying. It has nothing to do with fragility or entitlement but everything to do with accountability for one’s actions. Will is being accountable for his actions but Chris is not. You don’t get to pick and choose what is offensive to someone.
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Chris is being accountable, by not pressing charges on Will for assault. I think you are just hyper focusing on the fact that you think the joke was offensive, but you know what, maybe you should go watch the Golden Globes and see how Ricky Gervais makes fun of people.
They’re white though, no one assaults anyone, are you still offended? Perhaps Chris is being irresponsible for not charging Will for the assault, by letting Will be unaccountable for his actions. Do you think that apologizing over IG, days later, to his followers is being responsible and accountable?
If the answer is yes, you’re too detached from reality.
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I had caught the early TV news on Monday morning and was left disturbed by the assault (initially I thought it was a punch), and part of my emotional reaction was due to the unexpected occurrence being embarrassingly extremely public. For me, it was also telling of the increasingly angry times we’re living in. …
During my own 1980s troubled-teen years, I observed how, in general, by ‘swinging first’ a person potentially places himself (or herself) in an unanticipated psychological disadvantage—one favoring the combatant who chooses to patiently wait for his opponent to take the first swing, perhaps even without the fist necessarily connecting.
Just having the combatant swing at him before he’d even given his challenger a physical justification for doing so seemed to instantly create a combined psychological and physical imperative within to react to that swung fist with justified anger. In fact, such testosterone-prone behavior may be reflected in the typically male (perhaps unconsciously strategic) invitation for one’s foe to ‘go ahead and lay one on me,’ while tapping one’s own chin with his forefinger.
Yet, from my experience, it’s a theoretical advantage not widely recognized by both the regular scrapper mindset nor general society. Instead of the commonly expected advantage of an opponent-stunning first blow, the hit only triggers an infuriated response earning the instigator two-or-more-fold returned-payment hard hits. It brings to mind an analogous scenario in which a chess player recklessly plays white by rashly forcefully moving his pawn first in foolish anticipation that doing so will indeed stupefy his adversary.
I’ve theorized that it may be an evolutionary instinct ingrained upon the human male psyche—one preventing us from inadvertently killing off our own species by way of an essentially gratuitous instigation of deadly violence in bulk, which also results in a lack of semen providers to maintain our race. Therefore, in this sense, we can survive: If only a first strike typically results in physical violence, avoiding that first strike altogether significantly reduces the risk of this form of wanton self-annihilation.
In summation, matters should remain peacefully peachy, or at least non-violent, when every party shows the others their proper, due respect. It’s like a proactively perfect solution. …
It should also be noted, however, that on rare occasion (at least from my many years of observation) an anomalous initiator/aggressor will be sufficiently confident, daring and violently motivated, perhaps through internal and/or external anger, to outright breach the abovementioned convention by brazenly throwing the first punch(es).
Perhaps with the logical anticipation, or hope even, that his conventional foe will physically respond in kind by swinging at or hitting him, the unprovoked initiator/aggressor will feel confident and angered enough to willfully physically continue, finishing what he had essentially inexcusably started. It was as though he had anticipated that through both his boldness in daring to throw the first punch and then furthermore finish the physical job he himself had the gall to unjustifiably start in the first place, he will resultantly intimidate his (though now perhaps already quite intimidated) non-initiator/non-aggressor foe into a crippling inferior sense of physical-defense debilitation, itself capable of resulting in a more serious beating received by that diminished non-initiator/non-aggressor party.
Or, another possibility remains that the initiator/aggressor will be completely confident that when/if he strikes first and the non-initiator/non-aggressor responds with reactor’s fury, he, the initiator/aggressor will himself respond to that response with even greater fury thus physically/psychologically overwhelm the non-initiator/non-aggressor with a very unfortunate outcome for the latter party. Regardless, it has always both bewildered and sickened me how a person can throw a serious punch without any physical provocation.
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Man, you wrote an article by yourself.
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