Selective Outrage Review: Chris Rock Settles Old Scores as Netflix Breaks New Ground
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The post Selective Outrage Review: Chris Rock Settles Old Scores as Netflix Breaks New Ground appeared first on Consequence.
“Will Smith practices selective outrage,” Chris Rock said towards the end of his latest comedy special, the culmination of an evening’s worth of teasing hints and the final payoff for one of the biggest gambles in Netflix’s history.
Chris Rock: Selective Outrage was performed March 4th in front of a live audience at the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore, Maryland, and it was also simultaneously broadcast to millions of Netflix subscribers around the world. Netflix’s first-ever live event came at a time of uncertainty for the streaming platform. Once the dominant on-demand service, it has seen its market share slip to competitors like Disney+ and HBO Max. With the exception of Stranger Things, Netflix has struggled to develop blockbuster tentpoles on par with Marvel, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones. Buffeted on all sides by richer rivals with better-loved IP, the big red N has been thrust back into the role of scrappy innovator.
Selective Outrage proved that Netflix can build buzz around broadcast events, opening new avenues for their comedy specials, which were already a core offering, and perhaps paving the way for other kinds of programming that audiences demand to watch live. If another Stranger Things fails to emerge from the Upside Down, a few March Madness games or a night of NFL football would solve a lot of subscriber woes. But even as Netflix prepared for the future, the evening’s star was stuck in the past.
Almost exactly a year ago, Rock joked during the Academy Awards that Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, looked like “G.I. Jane 2″ with her shaved head. Smith then stormed the stage and struck Rock across the face, shouting, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!”
For months afterwards the 58-year-old comedian refused to address the slap publicly, saying he was “still kind of processing what happened.” But in the days leading up to the debut of Selective Outrage, reports suggested that Rock had been workshopping jokes about the assault. Whether Netflix leaked these stories, or merely popped champagne when they were published, we’ll never know, but either way, anticipation was high.
Selective Outrage opened with a moody black and white intro, showing Rock walking to the stage as some of his greatest hits (tossed salad, a few bad apples) played in voiceover. “I’m gonna try to do a show tonight without offending nobody,” he said by way of introduction. “You never know who might get triggered. You say the wrong thing, motherfuckers get scared. People always say, ‘Words hurt.’ Anybody that says ‘words hurt’ has never been punched in the face.”
The live audience leaned forward in their seats, ready to hear more about Rock getting socked. But this was merely a Smith psych-out, the first of many in the special. Rock remains a master storyteller, even if his jokes often wobbled, and when he wasn’t worrying away at the evening’s theme of selective outrage, he was building suspense for what we all knew was coming.
His chief target, he explained, was hypocrisy. “I have no problem with wokeness,” he said. “I’m all for social justice, for marginalized people getting their rights. The thing I have a problem with is the selective outrage. One person does something, they get canceled, somebody else does the same shit, nothing.”
He suggested that you know the type: “The kind of people who play Michael Jackson songs but won’t play R Kelly,” he said. “Same crime. One of ’em just got better songs!”
Rock went on an extended riff about the emptiness of corporate allyship and flopped with jokes about Elon Musk getting his dick sucked so often he has “negative cum.” One long segment went over the four ways to get attention in America: Show your ass, be infamous, be excellent (“But it’s hard,” he said, “It’s much easier to show your ass,”) and be a victim. He did manage a couple of quips between all the pontificating, but the section evoked some of the less-memorable rants from Dave Chappelle’s recent specials. It was more of a litany of things that bothered him, rather than a well-structured joke. If you squinted, you could just about make out the young smart-ass hiding behind the aging crank.
But Rock differs from Chappelle in a number of ways, including his attitude towards the trans community. Not that he’ll be Grand Marshall at the Pride Parade any time soon. He launched a few cheap jabs in Caitlyn Jenner’s direction, but he also reflected on how his family would react if his father came out as a trans woman, expressing his own support while anticipating resistance from his brothers. He sketched out the expected transphobia from his eldest brother, Andre, and imagined himself playing family mediator, shouting at Dre, “She’s your daddy!” Like Kendrick Lamar’s “Auntie Diaries,” the riff was problematic at best and probably hurtful to a number of people, though it strived to come from a place of openness and empathy.
Throughout the special Rock alternated between solid cracks and sputtering duds. He rolled his eyes at Meghan Markle, who he said shouldn’t have been so surprised by marrying into the Royal Family, the “Sugar Hill Gang of racism.” He said that America is in worse shape than Ukraine because “if the Russians came here now, half the country would go, ‘Let’s hear ’em out!'” and he took several shots at the January 6th Capitol insurrection.
“When did Snoop Dogg become Morgan Freeman?” Rock wondered at one point. “This n—- selling everything: beer, wine, tampons. I saw a commercial the other day, Snoop was selling reverse mortgages. Called them Doggages. I love Snoop. Last thing I need is another mad rapper,” he said slyly, another Smith tease. In Selective Outrage, Will Smith was like the shark from Jaws, getting bigger with every near-mention even as the full view had to wait until the end.
Rock was more engaging talking about his personal life, especially his daughter, Lola, who he conspired to get kicked out of school after she behaved badly and seemed on the verge of suffering no consequences. He also claimed that his role in the affair would come as a surprise to his family — “They won’t find out until they see that shit on Netflix.”
For better and worse, his jokes about dating could have come from thirty years prior, with the only difference that he is now in his late 50s. “I’m trying to date women my age, which is 10-15 years younger than me,” he said. “I didn’t get rich and stay in shape to talk about Anita Baker. I’m trying to fuck Doja Cat.”
Rock also claimed that women have more power than men, culminating in a bit on how Beyoncé was so beautiful she could have still married JAY-Z even if she worked at Burger King. “But if JAY-Z worked at Burger King,” he said with a smile. “That’s not a JAY-Z diss. I do not need another rapper mad at me.”
Finally, he had reached the Main Event. “Ya’ll know what happened to me, getting smacked by Suge Smith… People were like, did it hurt? It still hurts! I got ‘Summertime’ ringing in my ears!”
Rock continued, “I know you can’t tell on camera: Will Smith is significantly bigger than me. We are not the same size, OK? We are not. Will Smith does movies with his shirt off. You’ve never seen me do a movie with my shirt off. If I’m in the movie getting open heart surgery, I’m in 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! I played a piece of corn in Pootie Tang!”
“Will Smith practices selective outrage,” he said, and with the jokes out of the way, Rock really let loose. “I didn’t have any entanglements!” He suggested that Smith was really mad at Pinkett Smith because “his wife was fucking her son’s friend!”
“We’ve all been cheated on,” he continued. “None of us have been interviewed by the person that cheated on us on television. Why the fuck would you do that shit? She hurt him way more than he hurt me.”
He said, “Everybody called him a bitch. And who’d he hit? Me, a n—– he know he can beat. That is some bitch-ass shit… My whole life I root for this motherfucker, and now I watch Emancipation just to see him get whooped.”
Rock ended Selective Outrage by explaining why he didn’t fight back on the Oscars stage: “‘Cause I got parents. And you know what they taught me? Don’t fight in front of white people.” With that, he spiked the mic.
It was a fitting way for the evening to end: a mediocre joke, celebrated like an all-time quip, and instantly overshadowed by the spectacle of it all. No matter. Rock got his money, and he humiliated Smith as thoroughly as he himself had been humiliated. He’s almost as big of a winner as Netflix, who could, if they wanted to, livestream themselves laughing all the way to the bank. As for those of us who watched, we participated in a sordid bit of history tonight. Welcome to the new era of streaming, which turns out to be nothing more than celebrities squabbling on broadcast television.
Selective Outrage Review: Chris Rock Settles Old Scores as Netflix Breaks New Ground
Wren Graves
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