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In reply to the discussion: Comedians Rally Around Chris Rock, Express Concern About Violence Towards Comics [View all]appmanga
(1,239 posts)...for people who just don't seem to get it.
The Motion Picture Academy doesn't make a lot of noise about their award show being a cheesy exercise of marketing and promotion; they present The Oscars as a celebration of art, progress, and most important movies being a medium of free speech that at times pokes, provokes, and even incites. They cling to the notion they're nurturers and protectors of a segment of the arts.
Chris Rock is every bit of an artist as Steven Spielberg of Meryl Streep, and he does what artists do. If a film was threatened to be banned, you could bet your last dollar every person in that audience would decry it as censorship and subjugation. Their right to produce and display their art must prevail even if the film depicts the basest brutality or the rankest profanity and emotion.
Chris Rock is entitled to serve his art form with the same tolerance and reverence those people have for theirs. There should be nothing any more sacred in his art than there is in movies or other media.
Years ago when somebody put a crucifix in a jar of piss, millions of people were outraged to the point of making death threats, and many in Congress swearing to shut down the NEA (fun fact: the idiots who make such a huge point abortion isn't in the Constitution threaten to take money away from the arts which are in the Constitution along with a mandate to promote them), those folks didn't realize the art wasn't a cross in urine; it was their reactions. They were set up to be a performance art project, and they fell for it. They were exposed for the ugly hypocrites they were and Will Smith was exposed as a coward and bum. In many quarters his family is regarded a bizarre troupe in an exhibitionist freak show, and you can find something to effect in the most cursory of Google searches. Smart people know the first thing you need to buy once you attain a certain level of success is a thicker skin. I wonder what the reaction would have been if Leonardo DiCaprio, or even one of his girlfriends had smacked the daylights of out Amy Schumer over one of her jokes.
It's a dick move to abuse people when they're doing their jobs. It's a bitch move to slap someone and scurry away. It's a punk move to slap around a guy you outweigh by 40 or so pounds. I continue to wonder if he steps to Jamie Foxx, LL Cool J, or even Ricky Gervais, like that. He's probably lining up Kevin Hart and Tig Notaro as his next opponents.
I wish Chris Rock would have simply said after Smith stopped yelling "Fuck you. You don't tell me how to do my job". Instead, he was intimidated. If you don't get the wrongness and implication of that, I wonder why the hell you'd be on this site.
ETA: but, nothing, not even a one-legged kid with cancer losing an ass-kicking contest is off limits
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