Cheap Seats 2022 By Rich Trzupek

Slap! - 04/06

By Rich Trzupek
  Apparently the nation has witnessed a recent conflict among wealthy entertainers in which one wealthy entertainer was slapped by another wealthy entertainer during annual proceedings during which wealthy entertainers congratulate themselves for being more entertaining than other wealthy entertainers.
  Now I’ve nothing against entertainment. I’m as willing to suspend disbelief as the next fellow, if my reward for doing so is to be entertained. My standard for engaging in that surrender is surely lower than most of the entertainment professionals and entertainment critics who earn their livings in the entertainment industry. The professional critic believes he or she can define what art ought to always be enjoyed and what art should never be enjoyed. Professional criticism of something as personal as art is only valuable when it does not take itself especially seriously.
  The fallacy here is that the idea of standards should apply to emotional connection. It’s a fallacy in two ways. It’s a fallacy because it presumes that emotional connection is a rational, definable, scientific construct. It’s not, which is what gives emotion so wonderful and ultimately indefinable a human quality. What touches Dulcinea does not necessarily touch Quixote. The strength of that bond might influence their relationship with each other, but it should not have any impact with either’s relationship with the world in general.
  The honest storyteller does not attempt to defend Dulcinea’s prudence or Quixote’s romanticism, much less Sancho Panza’s blind and enlightened mixture of faith and skepticism.
  I’m all for entertainers and entertainment in other words. Cervantes instead gives us delicious glimpses of what is going on within the minds of his protagonists. He does so without malice. Quixote is both a visionary and a fool. Dulcinea is both an idyll and a cynic. Panza is a cynic and a pragmatist. Cervantes lets his story unfold from each unique perspective, not of which is completely right, but none of which is completely wrong.
  I am adamantly opposed to the proposition that entertainers or entertainment should have more influence on modern society and morality than the opinions of the person who collects our trash or the perhaps marginal lunatic lecturing from atop a soap box on Saturday morning. In days of yore, the court jester was there to amuse those engaged in the work of governance, nothing more. One does not appoint Puck as Minister of the Exchequer.
  In this context, what are we to make of modern society when one wealthy entertainer makes rather simple-minded fun of another wealthy entertainer and this results in the latter wealthy entertainer’s spouse feeling obligated to confront and physically-assault the spouse’s perceived antagonist?
  From my perspective, I see no villains nor heroes among the participants, only playmates. Whether they are unwitting or purposeful playmates doesn’t really matter. That’s what they are.
  The self-acclaimed critics of this entirely human, entirely irrational, encounter also fall into two camps. There are those who support the vulgar joke and those who support the vulgar response to the joke. Both sides piously claim that most dangerous of high-grounds: moral superiority. Neither is entitled to do so. What we have instead experienced, and should have enjoyed, in the irreverence of Chris Rock versus the intolerance of Will Smith.
  Whether by accident of by design, Rock took a moment to chip away against a privileged, royal class, as he often does. He did so not, as far as I know, because he personally despises the existence of a privileged, royal class, or because he believes Jada Pinkett Smith’s position in that privileged, royal class is somehow a reflection of her supposed failings.
  Instead, Rock made a jest that centered on the proposition that Ms. Pinkett Smith had been forced to exchange one form of personal appearance for another form of personal appearance.
  Is it an insult to be called “G.I. Jane?” It sounds more like a compliment to me. Is it then an insult to make fun of a woman who is devoid of hair on her head? Making light of appearance is entirely different than using appearances to deny opportunity or liberty. Poking fun at the way one looks may be crass, but it’s also harmless, despite the wails and moans of a generation of liberal academics to the contrary. Perhaps it was an insult because Jada Pinkett Smith is currently bald is because she was diagnosed with alopecia? While I’m sure it is distressing to have some or all of the hair on your scalp fall out, it is a hundred miles distant from diseases that could threaten Ms. Smith’s life, cause her pain or impact her ability to embrace the joys of living.
  So Will Smith surely over reacted to an insult that was is the bottom 10 percent on the crudeness scale of all the insults Mr. Rock has delivered over the years. But, Mr. Smith was simply doing what males have done for generations: he defended his woman.
  He defended her, though she did not need defending, not with a gun, a knife or even a punch. He chose to slap Mr. Rock. In terms of aggressiveness, a slap is akin to a poke or a pinch. It’s startling. It’s annoying. But it causes no lasting injury.
  The only distressing thing about the incident is that it is further evidence that we live in a society grown so fragile that it can no longer stomach either crass words or crass responses to crass words.
  Email: richtrzupek@gmail.com