A slapstick heard around the world. An Oscar moment for posterity’s junkyard. Was it fine for Will Smith to get pissed off at funnyman Chris Rock for joshing his wife Jada who has a hair fall problem? Sure. No one likes his mate to be dissed in public. But was slapping Rock the right thing to do? Nyet. Thankfully for Willie, it was Chris Rock and not The Rock whose cheek got the palm print.
But Hollywood wasn’t having any of it. With wokeophobic distaste, the stars thought Will was the real alien in MIB on Oscar night. Because it is alien in American showbiz to lose your shirt (or tux) over a biff. Bad taste, yelled macho Will. Jest a minute. Assaulting people onstage ain’t kosher was the general consensus among Hollywoodsters afterwards.
Humour is a cruel sport. It is true that not everyone can take a joke. But that’s the price of putting yourself out there. It is the bill you pay for being a superstar, whether you are a prime minister, president, tycoon; or in short any public dandy on a pedestal. It is the public who placed you on it, so don’t expect the pigeons to lay off the guano. Or get the tomato pulp off your pin stripe and the rotten egg stink off your starched linen. But there are places where a poke in a powerful rib can get you free food, yoga at dawn and communal laundry therapy at government expense; Indian and Russian comedians are proof. Stone walls do not a prison make, but make a joke and official hearts will turn to stone.
Cities, even small ones in America, Europe and the UK are full of bars, pubs, nightclubs and even theatres where people make a living laughing at people. The more powerful the subject the more off colour the witticism. Comedian Nick Hall’s joke about Trump, when he was the US President goes like this, “After being advised to put trade tariffs on China and aluminium, Donald Trump said he’d heard of China but which continent was Aluminium on?” With all the shindig over the educational qualifications of our leading political lights, not even Vir Das would get away with one like that. Check this out. It made my ribs hurt. Canadian comic Norm Macdonald ribbed actor Bob Saget, “Bob has a beautiful face, like a flower. Yeah, CAULI-flower!” Imagine Munawar Faruqui saying something like that about Kangana Ranaut. He would be given life imprisonment for hurting the sentiments of vegetable sellers!
Now, the West is different. It is where democracy grew, flourished, expanded and became its best transshipment, sometime in the middle decades of the last century. But white- skinned equality exporters hadn’t counted on one thing—the erstwhile natives can be sensitive. The flip side of being cocky is politically correct. In the same America and Britain, the youth and Millennials cherish PC. Like caste being India’s open secret, racism is the West’s blot. The Don Quixotes everywhere on their funny soapboxes tilting at the windmills of social conscience should know that once the joke is on them, it is no laughing matter. Culture is a constant process of osmosis. Filters change and are changed. Humour becomes a subversive weapon when societies turn thin skinned and punitive. When the time comes when it isn’t safe to joke in public, it just means society is evolving. Weird, isn’t it?
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com