One begs to ask a question to society, are we becoming too intolerant to not ignore a ‘lame’ or a ‘below the belt’ joke? And are we leveraging our freedom of expression to make jokes at anybody’s expense? Society seems to have lost its charm around a good laugh and warmth amongst each other.
After Sunday night’s knocker of an Oscar Night, the World is debating between these 2 questions, whether to support Chris Rock or to condemn him for making a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s medical condition or whether to censure Will Smith for the violent act or to condone him for having stood up for his family on the biggest world stage of the Oscars.
In between this debate, I want to ponder upon a few larger points on who gains and who losses the most from such public incidents?
The biggest gainers of the Oscar slapgate
The “Biggest Gainer” amongst all this will be The Academy; after all negative publicity is still publicity and what else could a show with its falling viewership year after year desire for? With its fair share of controversies, some self-inflicted ones, would the Oscars refuse to gain whatever little it can from something that everybody is talking about and will continue to talk about for years to come? I can bet you, they may already have a late-night talk show host in their minds as the next host for the next 2023 edition and they may already be scripting their ‘slap stick’ jokes (pun intended) on Will and Chris episode.
The “Bigger Gainer” has to be the media, both mainstream and social media. What would have been a dull night with next day headlines simply reading about the last night’s winners from the Oscars, Chris Rock & Will Smith certainly gave them ample enough airtime and readership to beat this episode drum for the next few days and even weeks. There are already talks about Will Smith’s personal life, his marriage, his past jokes and whatnot as part of the “yellow journalism” that doesn’t spare a moment to destroy lives & careers. There is a division amongst communities and even amongst the black community about what a brother should have done and what a brother should not have done – which the media, especially the US News & Entertainment News Media is best enjoying and making full use of to increase their viewership and website traffic.
I must not forget to acknowledge another gainer from this episode has been the world of social media. The end of the year 2022 meme calendar has already found its entry for March and it can’t be matched. I can tell you that image of Will Smith slapping the left cheek of Chris Rock has become a meme template for ages to come.
And the “Big Gainers” will be both Chris Rock & Will Smith with an equal share of how they play their cards to gain public sympathy, to gain the patient hearing of the public and then to gain rights to tell their side of the story. I read a joke that said, “ChrisRock may already have got a 45-minute script for his next stand up and Netflix may just be signing him”. In showbiz, you know that commodity sells even if that commodity is your or somebody else’s personal tragedy or controversy. I’m pretty sure both Chris Rock and Will Smith will not only individually tell their stories with a series of interviews, tell tales to the world but also do a grand act of “finally make-up”. Who can forget so many such friends turned foes and foes turned friends stories in our Bollywood, you name them and we have them. There is an entire gossip industry that feeds & breeds off of these rumour mills and they will keep you entertained with stories – some authentic and some fiction.
The biggest losers and the lessons to be drawn from such publicity incidents
But now let’s talk about the big, bigger and biggest losers in all this, which according to me is more important to dissect and learn from.
The “Big Loser” or I should say the victim in this episode has come out to be humour. Politics, religion and many socially charged topics have already blurred the lines of blasphemy, profanity and obnoxiousness. While cracking below-the-belt jokes at the expense of others has certainly brought down the quality of humour & comedy but at the same time, our benchmark of good laugh has certainly gone bonkers where nobody knows what’s going to fly and what’s not going to fly. I’ve read tweets where some first blamed Will Smith for not taking Chris’s joke in the right spirit and then all of a sudden do a 180ᵒ turn learning about Jada Smith’s medical condition and even a vice-versa too.
Come on, let’s be honest. We all laughed at Chris Rock’s G.I. Jane-2 joke that night initially until we learnt the fact about Jada Smith’s “Alopecia” and what really irked Will Smith. I’ll admit that I didn’t know about the disease, let alone Jada’s suffering and I assume most of you didn’t either. When I did learn about it, the only thing I could think was that Chris Rock must be too close to the Smiths’ and must have that confidence in the family to be able to crack the joke on stage at their expense. We all do know whom to be comfortable with and whom not to. Did Chris Rock make that error in judgement, who knows? But certainly, we all made equal errors in our judgement at that moment.
The “Bigger Loser” in this drama obviously is the audience. We all were left confused that night about whether it was staged or was it for real. Even the audience at Kodak Theatre didn’t know whether to laugh with it or laugh it off. The audiences for years have been taken for, are being taken for and will continue to be taken for rides with a lot of make-fake until break PR stunts!! Just that same day, almost everybody in India fell for the Twitter spat between IPL team Rajasthan Royals’ Twitter admin and their captain Sanju Samson for having posted an objectionable image of the Captain. This spat later turned out to be a hoax stunt, which was to grab attention and had everyone from media influencers to the Rajasthan Royals team involved including the captain himself who played victim all through the afternoon. The stunt even went to the extent of the Social Media admin being fake fired as part of the script.
What the brands, the brand ambassadors and the celebrities miss and fail to understand is that they are playing with the emotions of their consumers and the more they antagonize these emotions for gaining views & eye-balls, the more trust deficit they’re creating within the market for everybody including other brands, brand ambassadors and celebrities. Some brand ambassadors very proudly mention the fact that they don’t play with the health of their fans and won’t endorse some of the dirty products, but then why do they decide to play with the emotions & trust of their fans by playing such dirty tricks with them? It reminds me of the infamous “Boy & Lion” story that we all have heard in our childhood. One day the lion may just be for real and no consumer or fan would believe you that day. Brands are playing with leverage and the day they may need this trust the most, one may have already run out of that long rope with the public. It’s thin ice I can tell.
The “Biggest” and sadly the least talked about Loser in all of this is and will always be society. I’m a nobody, sitting thousands of miles away from Hollywood LA adjudicating whether the jury is for or against the two gentlemen. Even as I write this opinion, I’m still so much split whether it was staged to rescue the falling viewership of the Oscars or was it for real that Will Smith put his entire social image at stake. Between the fan wars and camps where some are blaming Chris Rock for it, some are blaming Will Smith and some are even blaming Jada Smith in all of this, we as a society still aren’t answering who is at loss in all of this? It’s magnanimous of both to doze the sparks before it became a full-fledged wildfire (at least one less than California wants to handle in the Summer). For Chris Rock to not have pressed assault charges against Will Smith with LAPD and for Will Smith to come out with an unconditional apology addressed to Chris Rocklike a man.
One begs to ask a question to society as ourselves, are we becoming too intolerant to not ignore a ‘lame’ or a ‘below the belt’ joke? And are we leveraging our freedom of expression to make jokes at anybody’s expense? Society seems to have lost its charm around a good laugh and warmth amongst each other. While our jokes are going too deep below the belt, we are reaching too far up the throats for each other. What’s too less to outrage upon and what’s too much to joke upon has become convoluted. There are many who’ve misused both the trust & ire of the public and made the waters too muddier for others to even make simple statements or make innocent jokes or make an honest mistake. Every word, every joke & every action is seen with tints of colour and shades of social differences that live amongst us today. And I can tell you that there are people taking the best and the worst advantages of this.
Public Memory is and always will be short-lived. You’ll have another such Shahrukh-Salman or Will-Chris or Sajid-Ashutosh controversy to divert your attention. You’ll see many PR stunts that involve fake fights or create imaginary friction between stars, brands or even make fans fight like cocks but one will need to go back and ask the all-important question: who stands to gain and who loses in such public spectacles.
As Will Smith ended his apology letter to Chris Rock, I guess this point also will be “a Work in Progress” for society to ponder on.
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