Mark Manson, the self-help guru who co-wrote Will Smith‘s autobiography ‘Will’, has opened up about his thoughts on the actor’s highly publicised slap of Chris Rock at the Oscars ceremony last Sunday.
In a nutshell
Smith shocked viewers and audience members when he rushed on stage at the Oscars to slap Rock after the comic made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head. In addition to slapping Rock, Smith also yelled at him, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!”
Now Mark Manson, who knows the actor well from the time they worked together co-writing Smith’s memoir, has given his thoughts on the controversial attack.
In a post on his website MarkManson.net, Manson said that for readers of the book Will, they would not be surprised by Smith’s actions on Sunday.
“The book had extensive discussion of his deep insecurities around failing to protect the women in his life. We talked about the culture of violence of his neighbourhood and family growing up.
“We wrote candidly about his relationship to fighting and how, particularly when he was young, he had a propensity to start physical altercations unnecessarily. We discussed his relentless perfectionism and how he sometimes achieved that perfectionism through intimidation and fear of those around him.
“Maybe you all missed the memo, but you were put on alert months ago.”
Manson, who hasn’t seen or heard from Smith since their book tour ended last November, went on to say “Literally on page one of the book, it says: ‘What you have come to understand as ‘Will Smith,’ the alien-annihilating MC, the bigger-than-life movie star, is largely a construction—a carefully crafted and honed character—designed to protect myself. To hide myself from the world. To hide the coward’.”
Culture of celebrity worship
Manson said it was important to understand the slapping incident on Sunday and the controversy following it as part of the broader culture of celebrity worship.
“Every time something like this happens, you see people dogpile on the offending celebrity with a gleeful moral righteousness, Manson said, “‘OMG WiLl, I uSeD tO hAvE sO mUcH ReSpEcT fOr YoU.’ Really? The guy who pretends to blow up aliens for a living?”
Manson said that people should look out for co-dependency, something that happens in relationships when one person is idolised to the point where the other person can’t see their flaws.
“Co-dependency pretty much always leads to dysfunctional relationships and heartbreak,” Manson explained.
“Yet, people do this with the celebrities they love all the time. For some reason, we decide that just because a guy can shoot a basketball well, we expect him to be a great businessman, a great father, a great husband, a great community leader, to have informed and nuanced political views (that also match our own), to have upstanding ethics and little-to-no emotional dysfunction.”
“Oh, and he has to do all this while never complaining.”
Back to Will Smith
Manson said that for his part he can accept and tolerate Smith’s shortcomings “as disappointed as I am with what he did”.
He added that he had seem Smith’s generosity from up close. “I have studied the decades’ worth of wonderful things he has done for the people in his life, his community and his industry,” Manson said.
“I’ve been around him enough to know that his heart is in the right place and he’s embarrassed by what he did.
“In our Twitter-driven world, I believe we’re over-optimized for moral judgment and under-optimized for forgiveness.
“Moral judgment comes easy and is rewarded with retweets and clicks. Forgiveness is difficult and doesn’t go viral.”
from WordPress https://ift.tt/7vcP8nO
via IFTTT
0 Comments