So, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for making jokes about his wife’s alopecia, and the world is going nuts about whose right and who was wrong.
It looks like it is wrong to hit someone at face value. However, what if that person has done this several times. What if the burden of taking care of a family in the public eye gets to you as a man have the responsibility of protecting everyone in your family. Are we looking at the extremes of capitalism where people make money at the expense of others without really appreciating its cost to others?
This incident was on a day when I had just finished watching reruns of Judge Judy and a similar incident. I highly enjoy and respect The Judge, but this made me question the pillars of society. The Judge finally partially justified her decision with the childhood saying, ‘sticks and stones may hurt my back, but words will not hurt me’ it made me wonder how far gone we are as a humanity.
When dealing with children, we are careful to choose our words. We encourage them to be polite and decent in their speech and communication. Recently science has shown that parents and other adults we esteem affect our psychological development through what they say. Suddenly, as grown-ups, we talk of freedom of speech, and people can say all manner of things, poke fun about sensitive issues, and it is all OK? It is even more Ok if they make money or get famous in the process? Now you do not have to consider the effect of what you say on others.
Legally, if you hurt someone emotionally, it is not a crime, but if you do it physically. Emotional wounds often have more significant repercussions than many physical wounds and do not just hurt the person but can go on hurting generations. We see it in the lives of enslaved Africans. We know it to be true of many people in the prison system. So why are we still in the 21st century ignoring the fact that our words have consequences?
Now back to the topic of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. I think this is proof that men are not supporting other men enough. Why would Chris, a star himself, not consider how continually poking at another man’s wife pressures the man to act? Now we are not in a barbaric society. But with a system that doesn’t acknowledge the apparent reality that words break us, people will take such action.
I want to reiterate that men partially are responsible for the number of suicides we see rising among them. Just as they say, women are each other’s enemies men are fatal enemies to each other. Will reacted as a final resort to a man who has continually poked at his wife, not once or twice. It may not be the reaction ‘civil’ society expects. Still, it questions whether civility has encompassed everything we know today and whether we need to rethink what our values and civil society is.
See a similar issue here.
