Christmas Morning for Hot Takes

You know how after major sport championships or award shows or season finales, publications will do these “winners and losers” lists from said event? There were plenty of these lists after the Oscars but if any of these lists are honest, they’ll list in the “winner” category any entertainment writer, because that Will Smith–Chris Rock slapfest was a content bonanza for anyone who has a hot take in them.

 

At the highbrow end, the slap signaled guaranteed content for any writer on Substack who knows the term “toxic masculinity” to write 3,000-word thinkpieces on what was basically a televised bar fight. Possible thesis titles include:

• “More Alike Than Different: How Toxic Masculinity Unites Will Smith and Vladimir Putin”

• “Stand-Up Comedy’s Relationship With Health and Disability”

• “The Rorschach Slap: How Your Reaction to the Oscars Fight Defines You as a Person”

• “Everybody’s PTSD: How to Insert Yourself in Someone Else’s Drama and Make It All About You”

• “What We Talk About When We Talk About Chris Rock Making a Joke About Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Alopecia and Then Will Smith Punching Chris Rock”

These pieces make many of the same points over and over again with subtle variations, like a slight color adjustment in Photoshop. Each piece is a great way to fill editorial space. Each writer believes his piece is the defining one.

 

At the middlebrow end, you’ll have Jezebel or some other godforsaken website lecturing us that if we haven’t denounced Will Smith yet on social media, it means we tolerate all forms of violence. Or they’ll go Zapruder on Jada and Will’s facial expressions after the joke. Or they’ll do a thorough forensic analysis of Smith’s apology, breaking out the electron microscope to see if an apology that’s not meant for them expresses the proper contrition down to the atomic level.

 

At the lowbrow end, the slap gave writers the easiest, laziest possible way to fill content: Grab a bunch of Twitter reactions from celebrities and paste them into your content management system. These range from pithy, witty comments to deadly serious Gandhi-level denunciations of violence. Ooh, what did Chrissy Teigen say?! Then add a little of your own commentary, and you’ve got yourself an article, and some clicks.

 

Yesterday was Christmas morning for writers in this vein. It was probably the biggest content cornucopia since The Dress. The beauty of something like The Slap is, no take can be too hot, no opinion can be too far out of proportion to the event, and nobody can yammer too much about it. The mill needs its grist.