Has it been? I just did a google search and it's brought up a bunch of articles saying that Chris Rock didn't know about the alopecia.
Funny Events of the "Woke" world
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
Sure, it wouldn't have gained notoriety without the slap. I'm not arguing the slap was a wise move from any perspective.
And it's not about anything "changing" for those people. They got a good laugh at the expense of someone's disability and discomfort. I'm saying that's shit.
Uhrm, it's a far smaller leap of an assumption, considering most people would be upset at a physical disability being taken the piss of on national television.
And yes yes yes, you can say it wouldn't bother you all you like. But that's not a common attitude outside of people steeped in internet culture. Disability is a sensitive topic for most people.
But don't you see? If one rando has no problem with something, then no one is allowed to have a problem with it. Having feelings makes you sensitive, and that's the absolute worst thing you can be to randos.
No they're not, you're being completely ridiculous. You started about using hyperbole to say the joke got "uproarious" laughter, which it completely didn't. You're saying a "slight" sting for getting a slap about as hard as you can slap someone. If Jada was so sensitive about her medical condition (not disability, is she allowed handicapped parking or something?), she wouldn't have come to one of, if not, the biggest event in Hollywood with a shaved head, she would've wore a wig if she was that upset about it. Also, Chris Rock might not have known about her condition.
I really don't understand how you are saying a single joke can be more harmful than actual violence, it's just a ridiculous stance.
---
Disney leaked meeting shows they are pushing a gay agenda.
Whatever makes you feel better about your ego I guess...?
Disability... Jesus, it sounds like she's stuck in a wheelchair or is incapable of speaking anymore. I get Alopecia is clearly not something anyone would want to have but as a "disability" it has a really extremely low impact on one's ability to live a normal life. And let's not forget this is an ultra privileged woman with Alopecia, except for her hair she probably has anything anyone could dream of having. This is not a joke targeting someone who has the whole world against them and just had Alopecia as the latest misfortune to be added to their long list of traumatic events.
And here's another thing, discomfort is not something you can measure beforehand. The whole point is that Chris Rock (and the public?) probably assumed that since these are the Oscars and roasting among celebrities is quite common one simple GI Jane joke wouldn't cause "discomfort". It's not like he spent the entire night rambling about her baldness.
Last edited:
Rufo's the guy who's knowingly lying about the CRT stuff, right? Shockingly, he's blatantly lying about the content of the minute long video he posted.
We are y'all such easy marks?
And?
They've been pushing the straight one since the 40's.
If now they are pushing both gay and straight I'd see that as some harmony finally achieved. It's not true ofcourse, because Disney is not pushing the gay agenda, they're at best throwing out some gay table scraps. Which in the eyes of conservatives is still WAY too much obviously. Disney will be where actual gay exposure is right now in 10 years at the earliest, as Disney is always at least 10 years behind with social issues so as not to scare the (American) Christian conservatives.
Okay, let's say you have a tiny dick. I'm not saying you have, I've no way of knowing, but lets say for the sake of this argument and all future arguments, you have an unusually small dick. And that's fine, it makes no difference to anyone else beyond the societal expectation that you will not have a tiny dick and that doing so compromises your masculinity. So anyway, you go to a comedy club with your friends (which, in this example, you have), to see a local Louis C.K. tribute act, but they announce there's a special guest. It's Amy Schumer! She's doing warm up for a gig, testing new material before trying it on a bigger crowd (the most unrealistic thing in this example IMO).
Anyway, she's doing a bit about how guys with tiny dicks are terrible in bed again. And all your friends are laughing, but they aren't laughing at the concept of some theoretical guy who's a bit crap with the ladies, they're laughing at you. Some of them are literally pointing at you and giggling. Brad (known as The Big B) has lost the ability to laugh, he's wheezing so hard. Because it's funny. And it's funny because it's created a pecking (pecker?) order, and you're at the bottom. That's the joke. And there's nothing you're going to be able to do about it, and why should you anyway? It's not like it's a disability, it's just an extremely mockable physical characteristic that you can't change and reflects negatively on your masculinity.
Anyway, Schumer moves on to another joke, and this time it's about guys who don't even lift. Oh, fucking hell, everyone's laughing at you again!
"People who have medical conditions should just stay inside. Otherwise they're fair game for taking the piss".
Oh, for... "disability" does not just indicate severe physical disabilities. People with medical conditions constantly have to put up with others appointing themselves arbiters of what "counts" and what doesn't. Less visible disabilities are valid and you ain't the judge.
Ooooook? Not sure what the point is, here. The money and privilege somehow magically neutralise the medical condition? Someone should tell her doctor!
Can't measure the exact impact of a slap beforehand either. Doesn't matter.
Both have a level of discomfort that can reasonably be expected.
valid for what? The world isn't black and white. If you can't see the difference between a joke which involves a cosmetic disability and let's say making a joke about someone who is entirely paralyzed and can't even speak anymore than you may need some introspection.
This isn't about "what counts". It's about recognizing the undeniable fact some conditions have more impact on one's life than others. And that as a consequence joking about one is more out of place than others.
Actually yes, on a mental level it should. A person who is 100% privileged with the exception of a purely cosmetic condition probably lives a better life than 95% of the entire human race. She should be able to take a joke. If she can't she should use some of those dollars to go on therapy.
Apparently not. You seem to think being physically assaulted in public is a short sting while facing a small joke about your appearance is this huge deal.
Last edited:
Chris Rock is better off than people in Ukraine right now, so he can't complain. And most of them might be better off than people in a country that's been at war for years, so the people of Ukraine can't complain either.
Who said anything about complaining? If Will Smith wanted to complain about the insensitive joke he was welcome to.
There's an assumption that because we've looked back at some things that used to pass for comedy and determined that they were somewhere between 'not cool' and 'actually rather hateful' that it means that we must today be oversensitive, because the older generations were just fine with that stuff. ...Bluntly, as we turn back the clock we find that the older generations were also 'just fine' with Jim Crow, "Separate but Equal", and Slavery, just to name a few examples. The prior generations being "ok" with something is not an indication that those things were fine and dandy. In many cases, we've simply learned to look from a different perspective rather than simply the dominant one.
I remember seeing Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story a while back, and there's a scene that stuck with me and I think exemplifies this. It depicted Lee and his girlfriend (Linda) going to see Breakfast at Tiffany's, and...well, here's the scene.
We see most of the audience - including Linda - to be quite amused by Mickey Rooney in yellowface acting as comic relief early in the film...until Linda notices Bruce's decided lack of amusement, giving us quite a lovely 'before and after' take on the scene. Before? She's laughing along with the bulk of the audience. After? Having realized how this is somewhere between frustrating and painful for Bruce, it hits her that the comedy of the scene is rooted entirely in its portrayal of a racist caricature of Asians, as if that were intrinsically funny. And having become aware of that, it suddenly becomes as uncomfortable for her as it is for Bruce.
And that's really something that I think neatly encapsulates the truth of this 'too offended' stuff. A lot of what is being spun as people today being 'too easily offended' is really more that a lot of what was played for comedy decades ago was...well, gauche caricatures that we had sadly taken for granted (For reasonably obvious examples, see again Rooney's aforementioned role for yellowface and Minstrel Shows for blackface). Once we start understanding the perspective of the people 'represented' by those caricatures, however, it becomes very uncomfortable very quickly.
Contrary to popular portrayal, that is not a matter of us becoming "too easily offended", it's recognizing that - when that was passing as humor - we were being little different than kids on a playground laughing at how 'funny' it was that the wimpy kid couldn't defend themself against the schoolyard bully. And much like how - as functional adults - most of us will not condone schoolyard bullying even if we egged it on in our youth, modern audiences are reexamining old comedy routines and realizing that a fair number of them crossed a line that we had previously deigned not to notice, and at times had even been nothing more than voicing prejudicial attitudes and cruel mockery.
Bluntly: If your best defense is "we used to be ok with X", then you don't have a defense. The past is not some perfect exemplar nor a model of how things absolutely should be. It is not some lost golden age that we are but a shadow of. Yes there were things that people got right in the past. But there were also a great many things they got wrong. That is the nature of the world and progress. Everything is always in an iterative process, and getting things right the first time around is an extreme rarity. Far more often we get them wrong until we learn from our mistakes, slowly working our way to getting it right. While we want to carry successes forward, we also have to constantly reexamine things and learn from their failures, even those we had initially ignored. And that's a continuous process. Do not make the mistake of assuming that things have been perfected just because they're familiar to you. The world is still very much a work in progress, and it always will be. We should never assume that the world today is the finished product or a regression from that finished product.
So to return it to the topic at hand: Being more sensitive to things that past generations accepted does not necessarily translate to us being oversensitive today. At least as often as not, in fact, it's instead realizing that we were insensitive in the past, if not outright unacceptable in our behavior (eg: racism now being more of a societal shame than a societal norm).
This is all a very valid point. However it loses a bit of steam when the turn around is not true. For example many of these "woke" comedians will make a mockery and insult white people, or cis people, as if it is not still racist or bigoted.
Either it's all okay or none of it is okay. The problem is really the selectiveness of it and a lack of understanding of what's good versus bad.
Why did Dave Chapelle's Black White Supremist work? A skit that should be called Ableist, and racist by all metrics. Well it's because we've collectively decided that racist jokes against white people is free game because eye for an eye or whatever. It's fine a lot of that shit is really funny.
The breakfast at Tiffany's scene used in the movie doesn't work because it's shitty low brow attempts at humor. It hangs on the ignorance of not really knowing the culture and just making fun of stupid nonsense. Just like squinting your eyes and going "chin chang wong" is not fucking funny, and is just dumb. But people once laughed at that shit.
At the same time, bad comedy will always exist and if it hits someone's laugh button then whatever.
For me the biggest difference is that if Breakfast at Tiffany's were made today exactly the same way, then the media would have a fucking riot, the director and actors would be on their hands and knees apologizing and the movie would be pulled. Yet because we revere things of certain eras, the film is still played on TV and movie theaters holding retro events still show the film. Maybe John Wayne Westerns are very racist towards Indians but are still shown with no concern for offense. Why do you think that is? If we can look back on something and realize where it goes too far or is in poor taste, we know not to do it anymore or approach things with different tact.
There isn't anything directly wrong with joking about different cultures, I think that should be fair game so long as the joke sits on a foundation of truth. Joking about a stereotype or something that is straight up frabrication is never something that will land very well with audiences.
The problem with the approach these days is that I think social media has given people too much spotlight for being offended. So Tiktoker's or whatever go out looking for shit to be offended by just because they know it will bring them attention. So when i say people are too offended these days, it's more based around the attention that the media puts on someone being offended rather than the offended person themselves.
Joke's by their nature target something. There is always a target, even in broad terms every joke has to be a jab at something. Unless you are joking about inanimate objects and somehow being funny about it, there is always the possibility of offending someone.
My question to the class is this, If someone offends you.....what then? What is the consequence of that? You're feelings are a little tender? So?
Offense is meaningless unless the offended party acts upon it. Every bad joke is nothing but a fart in the wind unless the offended party takes action. Case in point. Chris Rock's joke would have been a nothing one-liner in a slew of shitloads of other one-liners and is only remembered because Will Smith made a bad decision. The offended acted out with aggression and violence, the offended became the offender because someone's feelings got hurt. Instead of letting it slide, and forgetting about it, now that offense will always be a bigger memory than it should have been.
And that goes for everyone who takes offense at a joke or comment. You can be upset about it, but keep your reaction contained and everyone will forget about it because words are fleeting.
I can't help feeling you're watering the term of disability until it loses all relevance. I mean, what else is a disability, dandruff? Excessively hairy ears? After all, you can't be the judge...
I know that one! I've suffered from this my whole life! They use to call me Gramps!
Whatever you do, don't make any jokes about it!
So, I'm not allowed to make jokes about the silly things that white people do even though I'm whiter than Christmas morning in Siberia?
The all-or-nothing fallacy is just that: a fallacy. The logic is too inconsistent and leaves absolutely no room for nuance. It fails to recognize that we live in an inherently complicated world. Pretending that the world isn't complex is just an excuse to avoid thinking about difficult subjects. Is it fair that white comedians can't really make jokes about black people? Not especially, no, but we don't live in an inherently fair world. There's a lot of cultural baggage around race and it ain't going away because a handful of white boys think that Dave Chappelle sketches give them the license to use the N-word.
Correction: your metrics. The punchline of the sketch wasn't that white people are stupid, it's that white supremacists are ridiculous. Putting their words in a black man's mouth only magnified how ludicrous these ideas actually are.
Cultural inertia.
This is funny to me because the last time I brought up truth in comedy, you had a much different take. That you are learning how important truth in comedy is is a good step forward.
In other words, the people we used to use as the butt of our jokes now have platforms to say, "Fuck all'a y'all."
So your argument is that if someone is the target of dehumanizing "jokes," they should just suffer in silence because you don't want to hear about it.
People can make jokes about whatever they want, but bad jokes are going to garner a negative reaction. Comedy is not a magical shield from consequences. As is being discussed in this very thread, a lot of humor ages very poorly as it's a product of the culture that created and culture is in a constant state of flux. The best comedians understand not all of their material is going to age well as tastes will change over time.
True, there will always be a market for shitty comedy that others and demeans people needlessly, but people who laugh at that are generally assholes or at least ignorant. For every John Mulvaney or Steve Hofstetter there's a guy making trans attack helicopter "jokes." There's a reason the latter have limited audiences and tend not to get remembered.
Last edited: