MODERN COMEDY
Chris Rock wasn’t very funny at this year’s Academy Awards.
Well, not judging by Will Smith’s reaction, anyway.
The actor wasn’t funny either, but his behaviour did seem to fit in with a lot of modern comedy.
I didn’t see Smith slap Rock on live tv, but I read about his reaction to the comedian’s attempt to get a laugh out of Mrs. Smith’s bald head, which is a symptom of a medical condition called alopecia, and my first impulse was to have sympathy for Will.
Not that I thought his physical attack was the right thing to do, but I thought maybe his judgement had been clouded by rage and the desire to defend his wife from verbal abuse. And I was pleased to hear someone had finally stood up to a stand-up and said, ‘Hey, that’s not funny.’
And to be honest, I was glad the incident had opened the door for me to moan about what I see as the sad state of live comedy in the modern world. Minorities talking about members of their own group using terms members of no other group are supposed to use, women talking about women in a way men wouldn’t dare to do in public, and gays talking about homosexual sex and making passes at people in the audience… something straight comedians rightly cannot do.
But I won’t go on too much about those things because the day after the slap, my partner’s son showed me a video clip of what actually happened and I had to change my opinion. Rock’s comments might not have been funny, but they weren’t nearly as offensive as I expected them to be, and they weren’t delivered in the aggressive tone many comedians use these days… and Smith had plenty of time to think before he reacted. So, now I can see that Smith was totally wrong. I also have to admit Rock handled the incident as well as he could have.
Maybe Will and his wife had just had an argument, or maybe he was remembering not winning an Oscar for portraying Mohamed Ali and he slipped back into the fighter mindset he’d cultivated for that role. Whatever the reason, it did not justify hitting someone who was not threatening anyone’s welfare.
But let’s get back to why I think the slap may qualify as modern comedy. Normally, the Oscars ceremony involves a bunch of actors making believe they like each other and trying to look like they are happy for each other’s success, so Smith’s behaviour was totally unexpected. And that’s what comedy should be about, theme and variation. Nice, nice, nice to the point that you expect nice… and then, not nice. Comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy were masters, and it can be very funny.
And the fact that the slap was not funny doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Lots of what passes for comedy these days isn’t funny, it’s just unsettling, and that seems to be enough to make people laugh… possibly because when we are uncomfortable, we often don’t know what else to do.
And like many comedians today, Smith has broken one of society’s taboos, and it looks like he will get away with it.