Chappelle talks: Why I walked away.

[Askia]

@Apos

But you, with your amazing blackdar, and like the author of the article who feels able to simply write out his inner mind, get to make up stuff to fill in all his thoughts and seemingly irrational behavior…

Come on…

**Apos. ** This is probably my spring head cold congestion talking, or my sore throat medicine talking, and my irritation being inside on such a nice, bright spring day talking, but please, a favor. I find myself livid as fuck reading your post, which is odd because it’s not all that ire-raising. So, in the future, when you quote me, Apos, please do not edit my thoughts mid-sentence to bolster your own points. If you must do, please have the integrity to use an ellipses (…) or, better still, an ellipses with a [snip] sign. My fill, unexpurgated comment was (and is) as follows:

@Askia

It’s clear you don’t get his problem, his rationales for walking away from it, or why he quit, summing it up as, “Dude went crazy.” Maybe that’s a good thing.

If I am bothering to actually watch the Chappelle/Lipton interview, and the Chappelle/Oprah interview, and listening to two seasons worth of his DVD commentaries, I suspect I’m gathering FAR more information, nuance and facts that allows more reasonable inductive behavioral insights than anything a “blackdar” scan would do. I agree my analysis is pretty amazing.

@Loopydude

I’m just thinking of the show, the final product of his “corporate paymasters’” meddling, apparently. He got to stand up in front of a classroom full of young children and exclaim “And that, kids, was the first time I sucked a dick for crack!”. There was a sketch where a guy punches out the bottom of a bag of popcorn, shoves his junk in it, and by the end of the bit his movie date’s head is bobbing up and down in it. He did a toe-curling satire with a blind, black white supremacist who’s every other word is “nigger”, meaning nigger. He had an effeminate gay Klansman in pink robes kindly ask some other “niggers” to pretty pleath leave the neighborhood. He’s got a sissy boxing match where one of the contenders is nicknamed “The Tyranical Teabagger!” He does a blatantly suggestive quasi-pornographic spoof of an R. Kelly video entitled “Piss On You”. [bolding mine.]

Nitpicking.

1. It was a classroom set full of child actors and a fake teacher. An important difference.

2. Visually, not really all that different from AIRPLANE! when the stewardess “blew” the deflating automatic pilot, 30 years before.

3. The “effeminate” gay Klansman bit was never aired in full.

4. The sissy boxing match was part of the same sketch and never aired in full.

5. Where you saw a “quasi-pornographic spoof” I saw “fully-dressed actors at all times doing a fully-scatological humor-referenced music video spoof” of R. Kelly. When I see porn I think sex. That’s not what happened.

Yeah, but Loop: conspicuously missing from his fully aired skits this year, and only seen briefly during a greatest misses episode, was a “time travelling haters” episode where the Haters (from the Haters Ball episode) went back in time to diss a slavemaster… and then Dave’s character wound up killing the dude with a brought from the future semiautomatic rifle and setting the slaves free. There’s no way his core base of black fans wouldn’t have been happy with seeing a smart-mouthed pimp blowing away a slave driver.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s a comedy piece with a slice of real black edginess to it, yet for some odd reason, Comedy Central killed it. I know it would have been successful as hell (at least with a segment of his audience), and you have to wonder why. Hmm.

I agree with your first part of your analysis. “Come back, Dave. We’ll do anything. YOU can do anything!” They of course want Chappelle back. There’s just no way Comedy Central would give him free unfettered creative reign to do so. They didn’t for Parker and Stone, or for Mencia, Spade, Colbert or Stewart.

Cartooniverse. There’re undeserved, unfair and unsubstantiated judgments being made calling someone “deeply freaked out,” “loses his mind,” “goes wonky,” “truly stressed,” “wonky,” just because they walked away from a payday based on an increasing discomfort with expectations of their performance and “dancing like a coon.”

I don’t understand why these characterizations against Dave always have to be framed in good mental health terms. What, a nigger can’t just get tired of the shit? A nigger can’t be paranoid at the shadiness? Shit just can’t feel ill?

[Lochdale]

@Rubystreak

Is that what you think Chappelle was doing? Clearly not, since he felt that he was contributing to racism in a negative way, so he opted to stop. If he felt he was powerless over racism, then he would have just taken the money, eh? Instead, he exercised the power he did have, which I think it admirable.

This is after he just walked away from a contract, hid out in Africa and generally ignored the media and his fans for several months? Doesn’t pass the smell test.

[Rubystreak]

@Cartooniverse

-cough- Apparently some of us aren’t quite as white as we think we are.-cough-

This is just bad logic and I’m not sure why it’s persisting in this thread. Just because white people control most of the wealth doesn’t mean that all white people are wealthy, nor that white people do not suffer with poverty in this country.

I can’t figure out, from having followed this a bit, if there is a whole lotta something that Mr. Chappelle hasn’t even hinted at or if he just got deeply freaked out.

I don’t think he makes any bones about deeply freaking out. A lot of people can’t accept that he had a perfectly valid reason for freaking out and seek to discredit that reason.

Joey Baggadonuts wins 190 Mil in the Lottery, and loses his mind. Yanno…when people who don’t expect a huge payday get it, something sometimes goes wonky. Maybe he truly stressed, and cracked, and is now trying to line up reasons to justify.

What if he cracked and does have reasons to justify that you just won’t accept? Why are people trying so hard to come up with some other story instead of the one he has given? Because you don’t like the implications of his reasoning, it makes you feel defensive or indirectly accused of something and that makes you uncomfortable? I say that’s too bad.

I think Chappelle was trying to make social commentary and found himself reduced to a schtick, a vaudeville show. Yeah, he partially blames his audience, but I think he’s also taking responsibility on himself, consequently turning down the money and fame. That’s good enough reason for me.

Not everyone who is a performer is made of steel, right?

IMO it was pretty steely of him to forego all that money. YMMV.

[Rubystreak]

@Lochdale

This is after he just walked away from a contract, hid out in Africa and generally ignored the media and his fans for several months? Doesn’t pass the smell test.

What is your point? That going to Africa and blowing off the contract = crazy? that he was NOT exercising his personal power by ignoring the media and his fans? Is this not entirely within his right to do if he wants to? Do you think he “owes” the media and his fans to the point where he has to do something he thinks is wrong to please them?

Haven’t you ever, in your life, just had to walk the hell away from something because it was making you miserable? There are times when, if I had the resources to just flee, I would have. Instead, I just stop answering my phone and e-mail for a while, and take a break in my house by myself. Chappelle did not have that luxury.

Bottom line for me is, the man did what he felt he had to do. I don’t think I’m in a position to cast aspersions on his sanity nor second guess his motives, in contradiction to what he says, since his reasons seem valid to me.

[Guinastasia]

Question-who came up with the whole “Chapelle Theory” about how he was hearing Oprah talk to him from his TV set? Because if HE was the one who came up with it, I think that would qualify as “flipping his lid.”

[EllisDee]

I am almost positive I’ve seen him say that white people were a little too comfortable with the “anti-black” elements of his show. As in, random white people on the street that would come up to him in everyday life.

My interpretation of that interview was that he felt his show had become a sort of rallying cry for racism against blacks, and he felt this more and more as the show went on. And it scared him in a very visceral way.

IMO, he “snapped” when he realized that all the money in the world wasn’t worth being a rallying cry for society’s hatred of his race.

Sucks for us, but I say good for him.

[Rubystreak]

@Guinastasia

Question-who came up with the whole “Chapelle Theory” about how he was hearing Oprah talk to him from his TV set? Because if HE was the one who came up with it, I think that would qualify as “flipping his lid.”

Chappelle didn’t write it. It was “pieced together by… a retired public relations executive who wishes to remain anonymous.” Says so right on the first page of www.chappelletheory.com. I’d take this “theory” with an an entire mineful of salt.

[Askia]

@Lochdale

This is after he just walked away from a contract, hid out in Africa and generally ignored the media and his fans for several months? Doesn’t pass the smell test.

The way you describe it, of course not. BUT. He’s always been a private person who lives in Ohio on a farm. He’s never been heavily involved with the LA celebrity scene. He’s never been much of a media attention whore. Yet while he was in South Africa he was contact with Comedy Central and he did graft one interview with TIME magazine amidst reports he quit the show and specifically to refute early rumors he’d suffered a mental breakdown, and it was the reporter’s opinion that Dave was fine.

So, I wonder, Lochdale: what is it that you THINK you’re smelling? Come from whom? Leading you to believe what?

[Guinastasia]

@Rubystreak

Chappelle didn’t write it. It was “pieced together by… a retired public relations executive who wishes to remain anonymous.” Says so right on the first page of www.chappelletheory.com. I’d take this “theory” with an an entire mineful of salt.

Ah, I see. I haven’t really read the site, just heard excerpts.

[Lochdale]

@Askia

So, I wonder, Lochdale: what is it that you THINK you’re smelling? Come from whom? Leading you to believe what?

Personally, I think he buckled under the pressure. Nothing wrong with that. I think he just couldn’t or didn’t want to try and emulate what he had done. I would imagine the success of the show was as big a surprise to him as to anyone. I think that, initially anyway, he just lost it.

As I noted, he was as harsh on blacks as he was to whites. After a period of reflection perhaps he started to consider these issues but I just don’t believe that this was the sole reason or even the catalyst for him walking away.

And yes, his show was harsh on blacks which is what makes it comedy. You know, reflecting reality in funny situations. He was also fairly damning of whites as well. I’m still not sure I see how this leads to his stating that whites control everything etc. etc. Regardless, I just don’t buy that it was the reason for his leaving.

[BabaBooey]

@Rubystreak

I think the point you’re missing is that he did not want to do the Rick James thing, or the crackhead thing, or drop the word “nigger” all over the place anymore.

Have you seen any of his standups? It’s practically the same thing as his show, and to my knowledge CC has no control over his standups.

[pizzabrat]

@Ensign Edison

Thanks again, Ruby, face, & Askia, and anyone else patiently chipping away at this outrageous nonsense. Maybe in another couple years on the Dope I’ll be able to join these discussions without getting myself banned. Maybe if we all keep at it a few people…probably not the ones who say things like “they just need to fix their attitudes” and “systemic racism doesn’t exist, it’s all about what people think in their heads, and if they’re not thinking ‘I hate ni***rs’ then they’re not racists, but if they are thinking ‘I hate crackers’ then they are racists”, but maybe some of the ones reading…will start to see through the bluster to the chilling reality, which is that the position that black people are not held back by racism in this country is itself an inherently racist position.

That’s why we need a post rating system on this board. It can get depressing and maddening when threads get crowded with racist rhetoric like in this situation and we’re tempted to assume that theirs is the general consensus. There may be, actually, plenty of much saner lurkers reading who just don’t want to join in, but we’d never know it.

Anyway, the good thing about these threads is that they bait the more stubborn racists to expose themselves, allowing me to note who to ignore in the future (I’m not allowed whether I mean manually or digitally), and make reading the board a smithereen more enjoyable.

[Loopydude]

@Askia

1. It was a classroom set full of child actors and a fake teacher. An important difference.

Well, I got that they were child actors, but be they pros or not, they’re kids, and it’s one of those things that makes me think “I can’t believe their parents…”

@Askia

2. Visually, not really all that different from AIRPLANE! when the stewardess “blew” the deflating automatic pilot, 30 years before.

I found the notion there was supposed to be an erect penis in the popcorn pretty graphic for TV.

@Askia

3. The “effeminate” gay Klansman bit was never aired in full.

4. The sissy boxing match was part of the same sketch and never aired in full.

Am I being whooshed? I saw the episode. I know it was an outtakes episode. Did the commentary on the DVD say CC killed these sketches? The way DC intros them, the impression I got is they had their moments, but overall just didn’t work well enough as comedy. It’s been a while since I saw it, so maybe I’m misremembering something. If IIRC, I missed the first five minutes of the episode when he usuall does the opening monologue, so maybe he explained then that the management had scrapped those ideas.

@Askia

5. Where you saw a “quasi-pornographic spoof” I saw “fully-dressed actors at all times doing a fully-scatological humor-referenced music video spoof” of R. Kelly. When I see porn I think sex. That’s not what happened.

Well, I added the quasi for a reason. Something that screams watersports strikes me as kinda porno. I guess it’s a matter of…er…taste.

@Askia

Yeah, but Loop: conspicuously missing from his fully aired skits this year, and only seen briefly during a greatest misses episode, was a “time travelling haters” episode where the Haters (from the Haters Ball episode)…Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s a comedy piece with a slice of real black edginess to it, yet for some odd reason, Comedy Central killed it. I know it would have been successful as hell (at least with a segment of his audience), and you have to wonder why. Hmm.

Interesting. I thought the shooting fell flat. I wasn’t offended in the slightest, which was perhaps part of the problem, because shooting a slave master didn’t seem edgy to me at all. It seemed like a bit too cheap and obvious a laugh, actually, and not up to par for Chappelle’s normally very original and clever satirical sensibilities. I just thought the time-traveling Haters was too goofy a concept (which DC seems to have acknowledged to some extent). Charlie Murphy’s weird tics while in character were mocked as an aside, and I had to agree that in the context of that skit, they didn’t quite work. And the other guy running away screaming was just…well, it wasn’t funny, it was just silly. When Chappelle stated he guessed only he got the joke, I tended to agree, and thought for really very standard comedic reasons the skit was a bit of a mess. Again, maybe CC killed the right skit for the wrong reasons, I dunno, but this one especially struck me as a throw-away.

@Askia

I agree with your first part of your analysis. “Come back, Dave. We’ll do anything. YOU can do anything!” They of course want Chappelle back. There’s just no way Comedy Central would give him free unfettered creative reign to do so. They didn’t for Parker and Stone, or for Mencia, Spade, Colbert or Stewart.

I kinda wish we’d gotten the opportunity to see. It’s not hard for me to imagine that Chappelle would have been given, if not total control, more than any other CC headliner, for no other reason, perhaps, than for the cynical one, because he was the most lucrative of the bunch.

[Lochdale]

@pizzabrat

That’s why we need a post rating system on this board. It can get depressing and maddening when threads get crowded with racist rhetoric like in this situation and we’re tempted to assume that theirs is the general consensus. There may be, actually, plenty of much saner lurkers reading who just don’t want to join in, but we’d never know it.

Anyway, the good thing about these threads is that they bait the more stubborn racists to expose themselves, allowing me to note who to ignore in the future (I’m not allowed whether I mean manually or digitally), and make reading the board a smithereen more enjoyable.

Wow, this is one extremely smug comment. So if someone doesn’t think that racism is the sole cause of problems in America they themselves are racist?

[pizzabrat]

As far as the biggest problem with the black community, it’s overanalyzation. Can we not be the country’s lab rats for just one generation (and then the rest of the generations after that). Why is “the Negro problem” still a relevant concept?

[Lochdale]

@pizzabrat

As far as the biggest problem with the black community, it’s overanalyzation. Can we not be the country’s lab rats for just one generation (and then the rest of the generations after that). Why is “the Negro problem” still a relevant concept?

One reason might be that black leaders are constantly making reference to it? That it is often the sole plank of the the black Congressional Caucas?

Anyone in their right mind would want blacks to do as well as whites, asians, latinos etc. it just hasn’t happened yet.

[Apos]

@Askia

**Apos. ** This is probably my spring head cold congestion talking, or my sore throat medicine talking, and my irritation being inside on such a nice, bright spring day talking, but please, a favor. I find myself livid as fuck reading your post, which is odd because it’s not all that ire-raising. So, in the future, when you quote me, Apos, please do not edit my thoughts mid-sentence to bolster your own points. If you must do, please have the integrity to use an ellipses (…) or, better still, an ellipses with a [snip] sign. My fill, unexpurgated comment was (and is) as follows:

Oh NO!! Now your full quote only appears TWICE in one thread. Please, please, include it a third time so that any future readers that only scan random sections of the thread can re-read your entire paragraphs as many times over as your integrity demands!

Now, back in reality, I don’t even recall why I only included part of what you said, but most likely it was simply because I don’t need to quote your entire post in order to reference it. Your “unexpurgated” version contains nothing of any relevance at all to what I responded to, and your ire is just a silly way to make a scene.

Look. The implication here is that CC was somehow forcing Chapelle to do the sort of uncomfortable race humor he did on his show. I find that implausible in the extreme: it’s not like their was any sort of clause saying “Dave must reinforce negative stereotypes OR ESLE NO MONEY FOR YOU” that he bravely fought against. And working a comment in a comentary track about the time traveling haters into some grand conspiracy about them forcing him to make fun of black people against his will just doesn’t work.

He signed a contract (which is more than just about the money you get: it’s also a commitment) and then disappeared. That is not integrity. Integrity is telling your partners, your co-cast members, and so on, that you have recognized problems with what’s been going on, and you want to change, and then working to get out of the contract up front and in person. It’s not vanishing into the blue without a word, leaving countless people and their careers hanging in the wind. From everything I’ve seen, CC would have bent over backwards to ignore the contract and renegotiate things to suit him anyway. He was and is far more free to do whatever he wants than the vast majority of people in showboz, black or white.

And yet none of this whole rationale even really appears until a year later. Other fellow actors like Charlie Murphy aren’t told what the hell is going on, putting them and their careers in limbo. If Chappelle had come out and said “people, something about what we’re doing is fucked up and we need to reevaluate what we’re doing and why and I’m not working on this this way anymore” that would be one thing. I could completely get behind that. But he vanished. THAT is what screams “irrational” and “cracking under pressure” rather than proud stand.

[Askia]

@Apos

Oh NO!! Now your full quote only appears TWICE in one thread. Please, please, include it a third time so that any future readers that only scan random sections of the thread can re-read your entire paragraphs as many times over as your integrity demands!

Okay.

Now, back in reality, I don’t even recall why I only included part of what you said, but most likely it was simply because I don’t need to quote your entire post in order to reference it. Your “unexpurgated” version contains nothing of any relevance at all to what I responded to, and your ire is just a silly way to make a scene.

Your summation of Dave Chappelle’s problems as “Dude went crazy,” was pretty irrelevent, and that deserved pointing out.

I agree the way he took his stand wasn’t a well-thought out plan of unassailable integrity, but I still admire the means by which he walked away from the show. I’m also quite sure insiders weren’t exactly surprised by what ultimately went down.

[Lochdale]

@Askia

I agree the way he took his stand wasn’t a well-thought out plan of unassailable integrity, but I still admire the means by which he walked away from the show. I’m also quite sure insiders weren’t exactly surprised by what ultimately went down.

Heh, nice link.

I’m surprised you say that you still admire him. It’s appears that he has left a number of people in the lurch including his co-writer, Charlie Murphy and a number of employees at CC.

A contract is a contract. There was no suggestion of duress so I’m sorry, I don’t admire someone who walks out on their word.

[you_with_the_face]

@pizzabrat

There may be, actually, plenty of much saner lurkers reading who just don’t want to join in, but we’d never know it.

I hope so. I certainly feel like a lone voice of sanity in this thread. Makes me wonder why the sane lukers don’t speak up more.

Anyway, the good thing about these threads is that they bait the more stubborn racists to expose themselves, allowing me to note who to ignore in the future (I’m not allowed whether I mean manually or digitally), and make reading the board a smithereen more enjoyable.

True that.