Chris Rock’s Brilliant Comeback: Clappin’ Beats Slappin’
Comedian Chris Rock waited a full year before delivering a knock-out punch Netflix special that teaches us how to be patient in the face of humiliation.
“How come you didn’t do nothin’ back that night?” ’Cause I got parents. That’s why. Cause I was raised right, okay?”
Hollywood couples were the theme of the segment.
Chris Rock poked fun at a husband and wife team, ‘whose star shines brighter?’ Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz were previous Oscar winners who received comparable nominations. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith were next. Their marriage was a punchline waiting for an opener.
Seated near the front of the audience with celebrity smiles, Rock couldn’t resist a bit of fun at the obvious soap opera they had written for themselves. The smiles soon disappeared.
At the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, while reading a brief monologue from a teleprompter script, Chris Rock was about to announce the nominees for Best Documentary Feature. It turned into a dystopian reality show. What surprised most of us is that Rock wrote a sequel.
Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith’s long-lasting marriage had been in the news more than the pandemic! Jada revealed that maintaining a healthy sex life in a 26-year-long relationship is hard — before tweeting after the show, “We NEVER had an issue in the bedroom.”
I don’t know about you, but I have trust issues with people who tweet in all caps.
Will Smith confirmed that “Jada never believed in conventional marriage” and that everybody has to find their own way. He called it “the highest definition of love.”
In a later episode of Jada’s show, she said to Will Smith with a hand over her heart, “It comes from love.” The meaning became clear when Jada’s new romantic partner claimed they had a sexual relationship with Will’s permission. To most folks, including Chris Rock, that seemed like a cafeteria-style marriage where you pick and choose what you want on your plate.
What made this so ironic is that Smith admitted they gave the world too much material to pass up: “The public has a narrative that is impenetrable,” he said. “Once the public decides something, it’s difficult to impossible to dislodge the pictures and ideas and perceptions.”
Chris Rock couldn’t dislodge the idea of Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head as a Hollywood meme, and he drew a comparison to Demi Moore’s dramatic look in the 1997 film G.I. Jane.
- Rock: Jada, I love you. G.I. Jane 2, I can’t wait to see it, all right?
Will Smith laughed but Pinkett Smith rolled her eyes. Rock continued as Smith wordlessly strode across the stage, slapped Rock in the face, then turned around and returned to his seat. The attack, which some assumed was prearranged comedy, startled the audience.
- Rock: Oh, wow! Wow… Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me. It was a G.I. Jane joke.
The audience didn’t know what to do. Was it part of the act? Was it real? As Rock tried to make light of the situation and calm the crowd, Smith shouted from his seat, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!”
- Rock responded, “I’m going to, okay? That was the greatest night in the history of television, okay.”
One Year Later
After being physically humiliated in front of the most prestigious audience of his career, the 94th Oscar Awards, Chris Rock wrote the Netflix special comedy special SELECTIVE OUTRAGE (2023).
To strike the right note, Rock reached out to Aristotle, who knew a thing or two about storytelling. He wrote about plot structure a few thousand years ago. Then a German novelist updated the idea and created a diagram to illustrate dramatic structure. It’s now called Freytag’s pyramid, and Chris Rock used it to sucker punch Will Smith, brilliantly, I might add.
It was so good that it went beyond revenge, the highest definition of comedy, as Will Smith might say.
Channeling Freytag’s Pyramid
Storytelling is the second oldest human occupation (most probably because we couldn’t wait to tell stories about the first occupation). Novelist Gustav Freytag developed this narrative pyramid in the 19th century to describe an Aristotelian structure fiction writers have used for millennia. Although the art of writing traverses dozens of genres and thousands of languages, the actual storytelling formula hasn’t changed.
It describes the five key stages of a story, offering a conceptual framework from start to finish. Writers.com provides a simple diagram to illustrate the five stages of a story:
- Exposition
- Rising Action
- Climax
- Falling Action
- Resolution
1. EXPOSITION: there’s a history
Your story has to start somewhere, and in Freytag’s Pyramid, it starts with exposition. Exposition introduces the main characters and provides a backstory. The first act also presents the central conflict through an “inciting incident.”
Rock discovered it when he previously hosted the Oscar awards twice, including in 2016. Pinkett Smith boycotted the ceremony due to the lack of African-American nominees. Rock joked in his opening monologue: “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited.”
Rock wasn’t a fan of Jada Pinkett Smith’s holier-than-thou sentiments and he understood everyone was waiting for him to do a riff on the slap without losing control of the narrative:
“I’m going to try to do a show tonight without offending nobody, okay? I’m going to try my best. Do you know why? ’Cause you never know who might get triggered. That’s right. You say the wrong thing… motherfuckers get scared. You gotta watch out. You know what people say. They always say, uh, you gotta watch what you say. ’Cause words hurt.
You know anybody that says words hurt has never been punched in the face.”
2. RISING ACTION: Smith practices Selective Outrage
The rising action underscores the story’s main conflict. Things “get worse” in this part of the story: someone makes a wrong decision, the antagonist hurts the protagonist, etc. This part of the plot structure complicates or intensifies the conflict. For Rock, it meant setting the playing field.
As for me, you all know what happened. I got smacked by Suge Smith at the Oscars last year. People kept asking me if it hurt, and it did. I took the hit like Pacquiao, though. I won’t be a victim and cry on Oprah or Gayle. Will Smith and I aren’t fighting. He’s significantly bigger than me, and he’s played Muhammad Ali in a movie. Meanwhile, I played Pookie in New Jack City and a piece of corn in Pootie Tang. Will practices selective outrage.
Everyone knows he got cheated on by his wife with their son’s friend. He got called a bitch by everyone, but he hit me, a guy he knows he can beat. It’s bitch-ass shit. Oh, and years ago, his wife said I should quit the Oscars because he didn’t get nominated for Concussion. What the fuck? Then he gave me a concussion?
But for those who don’t know what everybody knows, Will Smith’s wife was messing around with her son’s friend. Normally, I wouldn’t talk about it, but for some reason, these guys decided to air their dirty laundry on the internet. I don’t get it. We’ve all been cheated on. But none of us have ever been interviewed by the person who cheated on us on TV. She hurt him more than she hurt me, okay?
And by the way, everyone in the world called him a bitch. Charlamagne, The Breakfast Club, The View, The Talk, every rapper, and Drink Champs, they all called him a bitch and his wife a predator. But who did he hit? Me. A guy he knew he could beat.
3. CLIMAX: everybody craves attention
Of course, every part of your story is important, but if there’s one part where you really want to hit hard, it’s the climax. Here, the story’s conflict peaks, and we learn the fate of the main characters. Think of the climax as the “turning” point in the story — the central conflict is addressed in a way that cannot be undone.
Rock points out the root of the problem by naming our single biggest addiction is not opioids but attention-getting:
“There are four easy ways to get attention. The first and easiest way to get attention is to show your ass. Even if you don’t have one, that’s the world we live in. It’s why Blac Chyna has more followers than Gayle King.
The second way to get attention is to be infamous. Do something messed up, like trying to stab Dave Chappelle at a show. Infamy will get you attention.
The third way to get attention is to be excellent, like Serena Williams, the greatest tennis player of all time. Being excellent is hard work, though. You have to get up early, exercise, and practice. It’s much easier to show your ass.
And the fourth easiest way to get attention is to be a victim. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are real victims in this world who have gone through unspeakable trauma. But if everyone claims to be a victim, who will be there to help the real victims? Currently, we live in a world where the emergency room is filled with people who have paper cuts. Everyone is trying to be a victim. Look at the Capitol riots. What kind of “white Planet of the Apes shit” was that?”
Then he shifts to Meghan and Harry as examples of the victim parade:
“Everyone is trying to be a victim, like Meghan Markle. She hit the light-skinned lottery, but she’s still going on about it. Going on Oprah and saying, ‘I didn’t know. I had no idea how racist the royal family would be. Didn’t she Google them? What is she talking about? They invented colonialism. But some of the things she went through were not racism, it was just in-law shit. ‘They wanted to know how brown the baby was going to be.’ That’s not racism. Even black people want to know how brown their baby will be. You look behind the ears to see if this is a Steph Curry baby or a Draymond Green baby? It’s a scientific test.”
4. FALLING ACTION: his mother went to a vet for a toothache
In the falling action, the writer explores the aftermath of the climax. This is the portion of plot structure in which the problems encountered during the rising action and climax are solved, in which the audience experiences some doubt about their expectations of how the story will unfold.
He addresses cancel culture and its insidiousness, noting that if you’re of a certain age and go to work, you’re scared. In the old days, if someone wanted your job, they just worked harder than you. But now, if someone wants your job, they wait for you to say something stupid and then pounce on you.
His solution is to strive so hard that eventually, you succeed against the odds:
“My pronoun is broke. That’s right, man. And my kids are spoiled. My kids are fucking spoiled, and I did it. Me and their mother, but I fucking did it. Many Black people get a little money, and they’re like, “I want my kids to know how it is in the hood.” Not me. I want the exact opposite. I want my kids to know shit about the hood. I want them to be lost every time they’re in a hood, okay?”
That’s right. You can’t fuck with the Rock girls, boy. I remember my youngest, Zahra when she was in kindergarten; one day, the teacher said, “Today, we’re gonna learn about the four seasons.” And Zahra said, “That’s my favorite hotel.”
Here’s the amazing thing. Lola got kicked out of school for real. So she had to apply to another high school and write essays explaining why she got kicked out and why it would never happen again. And when it was time for her to apply for college, she had to write why she got kicked out and why it would never happen again. And now, three years later, my daughter, Lola, is one of the coolest people I have ever met. She is so amazing.
Lola Rock is a remarkable woman. She’s my daughter, and she’s attending culinary school in Paris. It’s a touché moment for me. When I think about it, my mother was born in 1945 in Georgetown, South Carolina. Back then, it was against the law for Black people to see a white dentist. If you were a Black child and needed teeth removed, you had to go to a veterinarian. That’s how my mother lost her teeth. Now, twice a year, my mother flies to Paris to have coffee with her granddaughter, who is attending culinary school.
That’s quite an achievement, don’t you think? Yep, touché.
5. RESOLUTION: he who throws the last punch wins
How does Chris Rock end the story? Resolution involves tying up the loose ends of the climax. This means following the story’s aftermath to a conclusion — the protagonist dies, the antagonist escapes, a fatal mistake has fatal consequences, and the audience has something to think about. If a story has a mantra, it is revealed in this segment.
He then turned the audience into his cheering squad by addressing the real problem: selective outrage.
Rock continued to expose society’s hypocrisy with a Jonathan Swift-level parody, pointing out that people are quick to preach about social justice on their phones made by child slaves. Everyone’s full of it, and he doesn’t need Lululemon telling him about their stance on racism, sexism, discrimination, or hate. He just wants to know how their yoga pants handle ball sweat.
Rock unwinds the thread from the general to the particular, twisting it around the middle finger of what’s wrong with our country and the shape we’re in today. He doesn’t lament; he lambasts: we are our own worst enemies:
“We gotta love everybody, man. America’s in bad shape right now, man. America’s in horrible shape. We got it worse than Ukraine. Yeah, I said it. You know why? ’Cause Ukraine is united and America is clearly divided. Okay? We are clearly divided. Our shit is so screwed up right now; if the Russians came here right now, half the country would go, “Let’s hear ’em out.”
Politicians are squarely in the frame:
“Republicans lie. Biggest liars in the world. Republicans lie, and Democrats leave out key pieces of the truth that would lead to a more nuanced argument.”
Then Rock returns to the Will Smith smackdown. The audience has been waiting for this moment. How will he handle it? Will it be funny or furious? He makes it clear it was a sucker punch on a smaller guy:
I took it like motherfucking Pacquiao, okay? Shit, man. Did it hurt? Yeah, it motherfucking hurt. People are all, “You guys are fighting all the time.” We’re not fighting. First of all, I know you can’t tell on camera. Will Smith is significantly bigger than me. We’re not the same size, okay? We’re not. This guy mostly does movies with his shirt off. You’ve never seen me do a movie with my shirt off. If I’m in a movie getting open heart surgery, I got on a sweater. Will Smith played Muhammad Ali in a movie. You think I auditioned for that part? He played Muhammad Ali. I played Pookie in New Jack City.
Rock proves he’s got a story to tell and he’s damn good at telling it. Using Freytag’s five-part model, he crafts a man-against-man storyline with a hero and a villain that could give the classics a run for their money. This ain’t your daddy’s stand-up comedy, folks. This is how the strong survive:
Many people go, “Chris, how come you didn’t do anything back.” “How come you didn’t do nothing back that night?” ’Cause I got parents. That’s why. Because I was raised, okay? I’ve got parents.
Chris Rock‘s got it all, artistic talent, comic genius, and a knack for getting what we call crave — attention. He waited a solid year before he felt comfortable channeling all that anger into something more than a revenge plot, turning it into pure, unadulterated limelight in Selective Outrage.
And if there were an Oscar for classical genius, Chris Rock would take it home. So if you’re looking for a good laugh and a damn good story, look no further than Selective Outrage, and remember it comes from love.
