Quote:
Originally Posted by TorqueDog
Yeah, I would not recommend reading any of the Twitter reaction. I clicked in Minnie's link, read for two minutes, and decided to just close the browser tab before my brain turned to mush.
The lowlight was something along the lines of 'oh so you're against "violent physical assault" but not against "violent verbal assault" against black womxn', at which point the shark was well and properly jumped, and decided against subjecting myself to such bullsh-t any longer.
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"People who are for/against Smith/Rock situation but are for/against (completely unrelated situation). HMMMM"
"I don't care about this, (completely unrelated situation) was my own 'Will Smith' I lived with every day."
"Cancel culture was the first step, it's open season on comedians now and that's what the left wants."
"If you're (a man, a woman, white, not-Black, cis, etc) you don't have any right to speak on this like you
know."
"If (Smith or Rock) had (slapped or joked) on (completely different person in a completed unrelated situation) I bet you all would feel REALLY different about this!"
Etc. etc. The list of truly terrible, dumb takes on this is never ending on Twitter. People have lost their minds. Read a few dumb ones here, but Twitter is the supercharged version atm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
I find it more weird that anyone would stand up for Chris Rock. The guy was just being an a-hole.
Good on Will Smith. That type of humor is so stupid and lame and I'm 100% fine with slapping someone who thinks that stuff is funny and okay. Also let's not kid ourselves, Chris Rock would have just loved it if Smith had just stuck to words. Now he clearly got a bit shook up, and that's good. Just because you get paid to make others laugh is not an excuse to be a scumbag.
I mean, it was such a lame joke it's not even a joke if she's not there, the only real punchline is "ooh, look I'm being rude to someone in the audience". It's a great example of "taboo breaking" humor done badly. "Oh look, I'm insulting someone for their disabilities". Soooo brave 
Gervais, who I also don't find particularly funny, at least roasts people for things they do, and things people totally deserve to get roasted for. You know, roasting DiCaprio for still only dating young girls even though he's getting close to 50, or talking about the racism of Hollywood press, or about Apple's relationship with China, or just the general hypocrisy of the supposed liberals in the audience. In general his target is hypocrisy and immorality, or bad movies. Stuff people did, not something they are.
Making fun of someone's disability is just school bully stuff, it's just Chris Rock being an unimaginative scumbag, and I'm totally for slapping stupid scumbags who make lame insult jokes thinking they're funny. Oscars or not.
I don't get why Americans are so fascinated with this type of low-brow insult humor and roasting, as if there was some taboo there to be broken still. It's never anything clever. They should watch more British comedy shows to see how this stuff is done well. |
I hate this whole take for a few reasons.
People are standing up for his right to tell a
joke, specifically a
harmless one, and not get
assaulted. No one is defending it because it was funny, good, or even not mean. No one is saying Smith shouldn't verbally respond or whatever. This isn't a person waving getting in people's faces screaming "'kill all ####!' death to #######!" and getting smacked, this is a person
telling a GI Jane joke for Christ's sake.
It's also, personally, insulting to categorize this into the same vein as "making fun of someone's disability" or bullying as it completely diminishes the actual bullying and difficulties disabled folks face. But congrats, I'm not going to find you and slap you for making a dumb, dismissive comment (because I'm an adult, but also because that seems logistically impossible).
Regarding Gervais, making pedophile jokes against Dicaprio for dating younger adult women and making fun of Gibson and Downey Jr. for alcoholism and addiction are certainly far out of the realm of good taste, so using him as an example of what's OK and what isn't is effectively meaningless. It's just another way of justifying to yourself these actions, when there is no situation where it is ok to hit someone for making a joke. That doesn't mean we can't emphasize with Smith in some way (that whole night is a cry for help if I've ever seen one) but that doesn't mean we say what he did is ok. It's a terrible standard to set.