One year after the infamous slap, on the eve of the 2023 Oscars, things are really quite extraordinary between the principals. But also now add to the mix Marlon Wayans, a comedian who has a one-hour explainer on the slap on HBO Max. And, yes, it has become a story of a threesome of sorts — well, a foursome, if you include Jada Pinkett Smith, who would rather forget the whole incident altogether. "Jada has had no part in all of this other than being heckled," a source told People magazine. "Chris is obsessed with her and that's been going on for almost 30 years. Look where he chose to film his Netflix special. Her hometown [of Baltimore]. Obsessed.”
Let me get into the particulars, one year on, because it is a curious story about comedy, about the necessity of boundaries, about Hollywood, about prominent African-American entertainers and also about, of course, the juiciest bit: Obsession.
Let’s start, obviously, with the obsession part — of Chris with Jada; of Marlon with Chris; of Will and Chris. Chris and Will have known each other for decades. Rock even appeared in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air in 1995. And while there is no evidence that Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett-Smith, who ascended in the Hollywood hierarchy at around the same time, ever dated — there is something downright obsessive about Rock’s relationship to (not with) Jada. I wrote last year in this newsletter regarfding the slap:
As I mentioned, this is not the first time Chris Rock has gone after Will Smith’s wife. At the 2016 Oscars ceremony, Rock went after Jada Smith very hard, and in front of her industry peers, which adds an extra layer of discomfort to such an ambitious family. This initial bit of comedic bloodsport occurred in the wake of the Academy awarding all 20 acting nominations to white actors for the first of two consecutive years. Jada had publicly decided to stay home. “Jada says she’s not coming. Protesting. I’m like, ‘Ain’t she on a TV show?’” Rock said, making light of Jada Pinkett-Smith’s #OscarsSoWhite moral stand. “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited!" Images of Hollywood elites laughing at the expense of Jada Pinkett-Smith immediately followed. It was such a palpable hit that even Entertainment Tonight asked her to comment about the barb, one week after the fact.
In a room full of celebrities — a target-rich ego environment — Chris Rock focuses, two years in a row, on Hollywood’s biggest night, on Jada Pinkett-Smith. And one of the year’s Smith wasn’t even in the room!
And then there’s the Marlon Wayans angle, also interesting, also more than a smidge obsessive. The Wayans family has known the Rock family for decades. Marlon has always thought of Chris Rock as an older brother. So much so, in fact, that after a night of intense heckling at a comedy club from Rock — sibling rivalry? — Marlon Wayans steeped away from stand-up comedy for twenty years! I asked my comedian friend, Jess Wood, how extraordinary this was and she replied, “As a comic who was performing during that time - gotta say it was brutal comics were horrible to each other. Sad.” (Check out Jess’ live, brilliant podcast here.)
Marlon Wayans returned twenty years later to stand up and never harbored any public animosity against Chris Rock about the extreme heckling, which is part of the libertarian culture. It might have been also that he came from the Wayans family, infamous for their comic brutality within the already libertarian cosmology of comedy, laying waste to whole expanses of African-American pop culture — and white chicks. It is ironic that the zenith of Marlon’s story of retribution is an HBO Max gig explaining — Chris Rock, the man who drove him from comedy for two decades. “Meanwhile, as Chris Rock was performing for his live Netflix special,” writes Dustin Rowles for Pajiba, “where he only devoted seven or eight minutes to The Slap at the end of the hour, Marlon Wayans released a stand-up special on HBO Max at the same time where he devoted the entire hour to The Slap.” The Pajiba article is called “Marlon Wayans Covered The Slap Better than Chris Rock.” Further, this, via CBS News, explaining the slap:
"I think Will's hurt has nothing to do with Chris. Maybe something that's happened in Will's life," he said. "That was a snap moment. That brother snapped. That's not Will. Will's composed."
Wayans said that if he had his way he would pull the pair into the principal's office and say, "We have to stop this."
"I don't think it's ever cool to hit somebody. But I do think that at some point we can't let that just sit there," he said. "I think for our children, for our people, for the people, that we just can't sit in pain and not come to terms. And I think we can all make mistakes, but at some point... let's sit down and come to the table and fix this."
Wayans, in his absence, seems to have learned through trial by fire about the limits of comedy, or, rather, the existence of boundaries. Of the things that decent people don’t say out loud out of civility. Comedy, especially the Wayans brand, is wholly without boundaries. But his time in the comedic wilderness imparted, I believe, some wisdom to our Marlon. “The one thing he doesn’t touch is Pinkett-Smith’s alopecia,” notes Abbey White in The Hollywood Reporter. “As much as he argues comedy should be allowed to be cutting and unapologetic, that’s where he says he draws the line — coming from someone who quit stand-up for decades over swipes from Rock.”
Comedians, like libidinal children and libertarians, abhor boundaries and rules. And yet to be a compassionate and functioning grown-up in a complex society, boundaries have to be respected. Perhaps Chris Rock and Will Smith from this experience learned something about boundaries as well?
Time will tell.
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