Chris Rock Slaps Back
Photo from IMDb.
Emily Hokanson
It’s been a year and Chris Rock has slapped back. Hard.
The long awaited response is finally out in the open. Last Saturday Netflix aired its first live stand-up special, Selective Outrage, with Chris Rock as the act.
The special has been getting many mixed reviews. Some are saying that Chris Rock seems obsessive and is dragging out the whole conundrum. But others were rather pleased with the show saying it was one of the best stand-ups Chris Rock has done.
Rock opened the show shading the Smiths with the line, “I’m gonna try to do a show tonight without offending nobody.”
After this line, Rock focused on several other topics, some of which include abortion, cancel culture, and my personal favorite, the comparison of dating prospects between Jay-Z and Beyoncé if they worked at Burger King.
But the main event wasn’t until the last few minutes of the show. At first it seemed that there wasn’t going to be any more direct mention of the Smiths, but then Chris Rock went on a rampage.
It all started with Rock saying he got smacked by ‘Suge Smith,’ a reference to notoriously violent record executive Suge Knight. It’s one of his most talked about lines from the show and even Suge’s son expressed his love for the joke in a recent TMZ interview.
He then went on to say a number of lines directed at both Will and Jada Smith. One of the most talked about was his mention of Jada’s public affair with 30-year-old August Alsina. The crowd went wild over this.
Rock then finished his performance with the line, “You know what my parents taught me, don’t fight in front of white people,” a response to why he didn’t hit Will Smith back at the Oscars.
Overall, the show seemed to have the entire crowd laughing and on their feet by the end of it. But Rock seemed more raw than usual. Arguably this show seemed more sloppy and less precise.
The other shows I’ve seen of Chris Rock didn’t compare to this one. This was a side of him no one has seen before. The way his rage became directed at Jada Smith makes you wonder just how personal these “jokes” were.
Rock was so in the moment he even botched one of his lines. Rock was explaining his feud with Will and Jada Smith when he made a joke about the 2016 Oscars, which the Smiths boycotted because Will didn’t get nominated for the sports drama Concussion. But Rock accidentally named the 2022 film Emancipation. During the show he admitted he said the wrong joke and went on to deliver the joke the way he’d intended.
Since the airing of the special, Netflix has edited that mistake out of the show. Why they did has not been answered yet.
Mixed reviews continue to pour in. Many are appalled by Rock referring to Jada Smith as the B-word (but never by her actual name) and others find the feud top-notch comedy. Regardless of the reviews, Chris Rock will be getting a $40 million dollar payday for his hour-long performance, according to a report in The Guardian article.
One thing that can be said with certainty about the show is Chris Rock did keep Jada’s name out of his mouth.
