The London Therapist

We have all seen it by now. An act of violence by one man towards another that came out of nowhere and stunned everyone. It was shocking and had a feeling of surrealness – was this is even happening? Was this a joke gone wrong?

It turns out it was real. Chris Rock made a joke at the expense of Will Smith’s wife. Will Smith initially seemed to laugh along but then something changed and he walked onto the stage and slapped Chris Rock. Chris Rock did not retaliate but seemed stunned. Will Smith yelled at him to not talk about his wife. Chris Rock said he wouldn’t talk about his wife but continued to look stunned. This happened in front of everyone. A live audience and a television audience and no one did anything. Next came all the social media memes and the hot takes. Some saying Chris Rock deserved it. Some condemning Will Smith. Some even blaming Will Smith’s wife for what happened as though she has him under her control. Many, many people laughing at it.

So what does any of this have to do with trauma?  

Turning to Will Smith first. In his recent autobiography, Will Smith wrote about how he watched his father physically abuse his mother when he was a little boy – he was helpless to protect her from the assaults she suffered. He writes:

“When I was nine years old, I watched my father punch my mother in the side of the head so hard that she collapsed…I saw her spit blood. That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am.”

“Within everything that I have done since then — the awards and accolades, the spotlights and the attention, the characters and the laughs — there has been a subtle string of apologies to my mother for my inaction that day. For failing her in that moment. For failing to stand up to my father. For being a coward.”

His father’s abuse of his mother has clearly had a profound effect on Will Smith and there can be no doubt that his helplessness in the face of violence as a child would have led to a trauma response in him. So when he realised that his wife was being belittled in public he might have wanted to protect her in a way he couldn’t protect his mother. He reacted – very badly – and acted violently toward Chris Rock. He was not seeing the situation for what it was – which was a joke that landed very badly. He was seeing things through the lens of trauma – it was as though Chris Rock was his father who was abusing his mother (his wife) and he needed to act to protect her and make it clear this was not acceptable.

I am not excusing Will Smith’s violence – I am hoping to provide an explanation for what happened. Will Smith is beloved to many people – he is funny, and relatively clean-living – at one point, refusing to swear in his music lyrics and generally not degrading/objectifying women in his music videos/movies.

It was therefore especially shocking that a “nice guy” like Will Smith did this to Chris Rock so publicly on a day that he went on to win an Oscar. It compounds the tragedy of it all that Will Smith’s achievement is completely overshadowed by what I am interpreting to be a response to prolonged trauma.

With Chris Rock, the tragedy of trauma continues. Chris Rock barely responded after being slapped by Will Smith and seemed stunned afterwards. It has emerged that Chris was bullied, racially abused and sexually assaulted as a child.

“I was a [n-word] and I got my fucking ass beat and I got physically fucked up and sometimes some sexual shit happened,” he added. “I wasn’t raped, but rape-ish.”

His response of shock and not responding to Will Smith – of disbelief that this was happening in front of everyone (not a single person stepped in to help him) – is consistent with someone who has been abused as a child.

Childhood abuse can lead to something called complex PTSD, which can lead to a whole range of symptoms – one being that the abused child believes that they are bad and they deserve to be abused – this is categorically not true, and no child in the world should be abused – however, the abuser makes the child feel that they deserve it for being such a “bad” child. No one helped Chris after he was slapped, amplifying the abused child’s feeling that they are forsaken and no one will come to rescue them.

This would explain why Chris didn’t respond to being hit by Will and also why he said he wouldn’t say anything about Will’s wife when Will was yelling at him.

Seeing everything through this lens of trauma makes all the memes, hot takes and jokes about the incident doubly painful, as they ignore and mock the agony that both men are in.

Because trauma is agony. It changes our perception of everything. Traumatised people do not see the world as it really is. When trauma is triggered, everything is seen through the lens of the traumatic event, the horrifying thing that caused the traumatisation. A lot of work is needed to undo it all.