Ok, I searched and I couldn’t find a thread on this, really. I’m not sure I’ll make for the best person to start one off. I’m not Trans, or Black, or Jewish, and I’m not an expert in comedy or social commentary; but, Dave Chappell has been really disappointing me lately.
I was a pretty big fan of his. I loved ‘Half Baked’, (in the right context), Chappell Show was, in my opinion, pretty brilliant. I’m not someone who says that you can’t make jokes about anything, that’s what people like to broadly claim is going on. Just because you can joke about Trans people, doesn’t mean that the specific joke has to make any real sense, when you actually dissect it. It seems to me he thinks Trans advocacy is creeping up on Black advocacy, or perhaps saying it’s less legitimate somehow. I DON’T know if that’s the case, as it’s been a while since I’ve seen the special.
His latest defense of Kanye was the same…
He’s said something to the effect of ‘don’t blame black people’.
Jon Stewart was very correct in saying that ‘canceling’ someone doesn’t help the problem. Jerry Seinfeld also had quite an intelligent response, by basically saying that it’s not a conversation he’d have in that venue, but advocated for his right to say it.
Possibly because you misspelled his name. There was fair bit of discussion in this thread:
I have no strong feelings either way, other than agreeing that Chappelle can be very funny. Until about a week ago, I only vaguely knew who he was, and I don’t think I’d seen any of his performances. I was intrigued by the controversy over his latest hosting of Saturday Night Live, so had a look at his latest special, The Closer. Then I watched several of the previous ones. I was impressed.
No question about two things. He’s very funny, and he’s definitely very edgy and constantly pushing the envelope. But honestly, I think those that find him to be bigoted against trans people or others have either not seen his act, are taking isolated comments out of context, or are just misunderstanding or hypersensitive. I just don’t see true bigotry, and I do see a lot of compassion and empathy under the edgy humour. The one thing I’ll acknowledge is that he’s much too prone to immediately compare the grievances of other minorities with the grievances of Black people, which isn’t really relevant when said minorities do have real grievances.
My problem with Chappelle is he seems to think he is entitled to respect and adulation no matter what he says. People aren’t required to like or respect him, even if he thinks he deserves those things. People aren’t required to find him funny, brilliant or insightful.
Also he quit his show because he couldn’t stand to watch white people laugh at jokes about black people. But somehow he doesn’t seem to understand why other people would be bothered by the same kind of behavior against their marginalized group. I’ll never understand how a guy who quit his show because he couldn’t take a joke reinvented himself as mr ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’
I didn’t get the sense that Seinfeld was advocating for his right to say it, he just said it was well-executed, and didn’t want to talk about it in that interview (was my read).
I’d have to see it again. From what I remember, he did a lot of talking about trans people, not really telling or setting up a lot of jokes. Did you think pretty much all of his observations were true? would you consider yourself a “TERF”, for example?
What I think is that his jokes were just jokes, and his actual observations – and he does get serious once in a while – are inclusionary and empathetic. He’s been pretty explicit about his support for the trans community.
For instance, near the end of one of his performances (I’ve watched a bunch of them now, but I think this was from The Closer) he talked about a trans woman in his audience who was convulsed with laughter at his jokes about trans issues. He talks about how later on he met her and became friends with her, and ultimately invited her to open his next show.
In a fairy tale movie, her opening act would have been fantastic. But Chappelle was brutally honest about a bunch of things. First of all, her act sucked. She was terrible. But she didn’t slink off into the sunset, she sat right there and enjoyed his show, laughing as much as anyone. She was a hit at the after-show party. So Chappelle suggested that he’d like her to open his next show again the next time he was in San Francisco, but he’d give her tips to improve her performance.
Shortly after that Chappelle was eviscerated on social media for his trans jokes. His new friend, certainly in a position to know, vigorously defended him, and was then herself brutally slammed on social media.
Chappelle ends his set by saying that this individual later killed herself. Whether it was the bashing on social media or other troubles in her life, we will never know, but he pays tribute to a lost friend.
Does that sound like the rantings of a transphobe?
And BTW, suggesting that my appreciation of Chappelle makes me a “TERF” is extremely offensive.
Dave Chappelle is hilarious. Is he bigoted? I thought it was commonly advocated that everybody is bigoted to some degree so I am not clear on the relevance of his so-called bigotry. Ultimately, people are going to have to get over the idea that a sanitized world where nothing that one could claim is offensive is ever uttered or written is actually a good world.
If he was sincere about supporting the trans community, maybe he could start by shutting the fuck up about the trans community? His dead friend prop aside, seems most trans people don’t really appreciate being the butt of his comedy specials.
Guess it’s hard to hear them over the sounds of those Netflix paychecks getting cashed. Has any of that explicit support translated into charitable donations? I didn’t find anything on a cursory Google search, but I admit I didn’t look that hard.
That’s the self-serving version Chapelle likes to tell on stage. It’s worth keeping in mind that Chapelle knew Dorman for less than a year, and only met her a few times. After Chapelle made her death into the closer for his million dollar TV special, her family (who actually knew her) released a statement explicitly blaming her suicide on a life time of severe depression caused by childhood sexual trauma, and not on social media drama. Which Chapelle exaggerated in the first place.
Using the death of an acquaintance to dishonestly paint the trans community as complicit in her passing?