Inside Chris Rock’s Misplaced ‘Outrage’ at Jada Pinkett Smith
For months after last year’s Oscars, it seemed all anyone could talk about was “the Slap”—when Will Smith stormed onto the stage and slapped host Chris Rock for a tasteless joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. For the first 60 minutes of his new stand-up special, Selective Outrage, Rock manages to avoid mentioning the couple, the incident, or the discussions that emerged afterward. Even so, viewers know what’s coming.
“Y’all know what happened to me, getting smacked by Suge Smith,” Rock says near the end of the special. “Everybody fucking knows.”
Rock seems to resent at least the narrative that emerged post-slap. At the time, some social media users and culture writers argued that Rock’s joke was a textbook example of misogynoir, a specific kind of contempt reserved for Black women. On a national stage, the comedian, who once produced a documentary about Black women’s relationship with their hair, compared Pinkett Smith to the character G.I. Jane because of her hair—in spite of her well-documented struggle with alopecia, a condition that affects hair growth. (Rock has said he was not aware of Pinkett Smith’s alopecia at the time.)