Everybody is talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. Nobody is talking about Chris Rock not fighting back.
Who’s the stronger man here: the one who laughed at a joke, then saw his wife upset, and decided to walk to the stage, with an odd swagger, and take a swing; or the one who took the punch, laughed it off, and went on with giving out an Academy Award?
It doesn’t take much to figure out Will Smith here. Seems like he felt guilty for laughing at the joke, assumed he’d been caught on camera doing so, and wanted to look like the protector he proclaimed himself later to be.
Chris Rock’s part in this is an interesting study.
He’s a comedian; it’s literally his job to tell jokes. Some of them will be swings and misses, though the jury is still out on “GI Jane 2” being a swing and miss.
Jada Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia, which is why she keeps her hair close-cropped, but she looks good doing what she’s doing.
Even if you’d want to assume that Rock was being mean-spirited, nobody expects Will Smith to jump out of his chair, walk on the stage and punch Chris Rock.
In fact, everybody expects a person in this situation to do what he did at first, laugh it off.
And it’s not just because millions of people are watching on live TV.
Doesn’t matter where you are, this is how grown adults are expected to act.
Credit here to Chris Rock for not escalating the situation, and no one would have faulted him.
Even if he just puts his hands up in self-defense, this thing gets out of control, and what happens if he does more than that?
I can tell you what happens when a person doesn’t fight back: they look weak, right?
That’s the perception, anyway.
Reality is, it takes a strong, self-assured person to stand there, take a punch, not engage the aggressor, and make light of the situation, to defuse the tensions.
Will Smith, again, showing how not to act in these kinds of situations, continued his assault verbally from his seat after sitting down, then made himself the victim in his acceptance speech after being named Best Actor, to the point of conjuring up tears as part of the act.
He probably is the victim, as it turns out, but it was a situation of his own making, and his refusal to walk things back by acknowledging that he was in the wrong.
It was just a joke, man, and one that none of us would have remembered after you won Best Actor.
You need to thank Chris Rock for showing the courage you claimed you have in your tone-deaf acceptance speech and not letting things get any more out of control than they did.
Story by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
