When a man runs on stage and attacks Dave Chapel during a live standup routine, everyone will always mention the name Will Smith. The comedian performed a routine on May 3 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles as part of the Netflix is a Joke festival. Police later said the man who attacked him was carrying a knife blade and a pistol spear. Less than six weeks had passed since the Oscars when Smith approached another comedian, Chris Rock, on stage and hit him. Rock had joked with Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
Coincidentally, Rock attended Chappelle’s concert in LA and appeared on stage after the attack to reveal the obvious joke, “Was that Will Smith?” He, like all comedians aspire, just said what we all think. The incident seems to have confirmed the worst fears expressed since the Oscars – that Smith’s brazen slap could encourage imitation violence. And that comedians would be less safe on stage: say what you want, but endure the physical consequences.
Cathy Griffin was one of the comics who shared this concern, recently writing, “Now we all have to worry about who wants to be the next Will Smith in comedy clubs and theaters.” to wonder angrily who will come for them during their next performance. “Comedians are really crazy,” he said. “I feel like everyone feels like the next one.” An invisible barrier seems to have been broken that night at the Oscars. And yesterday a man went through the gap.
Of course, Rock is a comedian, and the things that comedians say on stage rarely have to be taken literally. He did not equate Smith’s attack with an attack by an armed stranger, but rather made a comical comparison to make him laugh. Any serious comparison between the two incidents would run the risk of downplaying the attack on Chappelle and misrepresenting Smith’s actions. But while it would be unfair to hold Smith accountable for someone else’s crime, that doesn’t mean the two incidents are unrelated. Both are symptoms of the same disease: a culture that is angry, unstable, and at odds with itself. Too often now, violence seems to be the only answer and the only form of communication. And the boundaries between violence and performance are too often blurred.
The attack on Chappelle is difficult to analyze for several reasons. Phones were banned during performances at the festival run by Netflix, so information about the attack was spread through numerous post-hoc reactions on social media. The exact details of the incident and the motives of the alleged attacker have not yet been clarified. And then there is the comedian himself, eternally igniting the flames. Chappelle drew a lot of controversy in recent years, largely from his jokes about transgender people, and Tuesday night was no different: in response to his attack, his striking phrase was “he was a trans man.” Significantly, he chose to make such an alleged joke in the chaotic aftermath of the incident – that he implicitly chose to position the act of violence, albeit jokingly, in response to his own rhetoric. (The man arrested for the alleged crime, 23-year-old Isaiah Lee, is a gender.)
On each side, the culture is becoming more reactionary. The phrase that is often applied to the contradictions in which Chappelle gets involved is “cultural war” – “war” is the main word. But transphobia itself is a form of violence; look at the statistics on the number of trans people who are victims of hate crimes, who suffer from sexual or other forms of violence, who experience homelessness or die from suicide, and you will see that violence is as real and tangible as any other form . Jokes like the ones that Chappelle became famous for – aimed at trance people, described by many as transphobic – inform wider discussions and attitudes around trance people about how their rights and bodies are viewed by others. For many, these arguments are war, and it is clear who owns all the ammunition.
There is also something eerily performative in the way the attack on Chappelle went and how Chappelle and Rock managed to joke about the incident just minutes after the fact. It was a horror as a celebrity show. Maybe this is what is needed to really overcome nowadays.
But no matter how you cut it, the incident portends bad for the safety of live performers. We can say this now without the risk of hyperbole. Precautions probably need to be reviewed. (Perhaps comedy needs more reform than music, which has more experience with crowd violence and security breaches.) But it goes deeper than that. It was a shocking reminder of how ingrained violence is in our society. The Oscars’ fateful slap may not have been the beginning – but it would never be the end.
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