Comedy is a dangerous business, Exhibit A. No-one's especially interested in last night's Best Picture winner, Coda, but everyone's talking about Will Smith punching Chris Rock at the Oscars. Rock made what he clearly thought was a very softball joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's haircut and Will Smith punched him in the face. Unbeknownst to Rock, and apparently all the other people googling about it, Pinkett Smith had publicly talked about a hair loss condition she has.
For anyone aware of her condition, the joke would certainly strike a sour note, but most people seem to feel Will Smith reacted badly. Indeed, when I watched the clip, before googling the story behind the incident, my first guess was that Rock had been harassing Pinkett Smith for years, been sending her dead animals in the mail, or stealing her underwear, and the joke was the last staw. Something like that would warrant the level of Will Smith's reaction. But actors like Smith have to keep their emotions close to the surface, they're used to imagining themselves in extreme circumstances. That's not an excuse but it's an explanation. It's the same reason the Oscars is a ceremony that increasingly makes viewers gag from its excessive self-importance. People in this business stoke their own emotions routinely.
At the same time, I would say Will Smith couldn't have let the moment pass. The right move would be for him to walk up on stage, lean over and say into Rock's ear, "My wife has a condition leading to hair loss. A joke like that isn't cool." Rock probably would've apologised and that would've been the end of it. As it is, the incident ends with Rock clearly not having a clue what happened, and Smith and Pinkett Smith clearly not contemplating the possibility that not everyone in the room is aware of every public detail of their lives.
The moral of the story is, comedy is dangerous, but so is taking yourself too seriously.
Twitter Sonnet #1566
On brittle fields of green the brothers clash.
On dusty plains the brothers ran ahead.
An ancient bar condoned a heartless bash.
Enough machines were raised to wake the dead.
The sleepy rabbit caught the eyes of socks.
A bloody arrow led the act away.
A crowd of singing boats have choked the docks.
A spotted Rover fed the bones to pay.
The hairless men assembled past the glass.
The clerks arranged the clothes about their frames.
To dress a stone is like to buy a gas.
Between the walls the dummies play their games.
A night of fists distracts from years of lasts.
We trade a hasty deck for diff'rent pasts.
