I don’t even know what you’re talking about here and I don’t care enough to go down the rabbit hole of dumb shit Tucker Carlson said.
I’m surprised, it’s all over the news because it’s a new low even for Fox. Here’s the minute long trailer:
Then, as is often the case with humor, that entertainment content platform wasn’t for you. Netflix casts a wide net with its content offerings. If you manage to escape, you’re small fish not worth the catching.
I very much doubt Netflix has much to fear in terms of loss of profit due to this kerfuffle.
I appreciate the effort but, “a new low for Fox”, is just another day On the Air at Fox. I’m exhausted of spending time thinking about the inanities from reactionaries on either extreme. Although, I suppose that’s not entirely true. I remain more discouraged by the inanities of those with whom I generally share socio-political sympathies and goals.
I wanted to elaborate on this a little more, because I think this gets right down to my issue with Chappelle’s special.
When he made that Space Jews joke, the punchline was, “isn’t it funny that some morons legitimately think this about the Jews?”. The humor comes from realizing just how stupid the idea is and it is humorous that some people are that stupid.
If his joke about a trans woman’s vagina being like plant based meat had a punchline that felt the same way - “isn’t it funny that some people are so bigoted that they actually feel this way” - that’d been one thing. But at no point was that the sense I (or others) got from his jokes. That’s why we are criticizing him.
I’m only part way through this video, and it is quite long, so I’m not putting it here to back up my argument or anything like that - I’m just sharing it because I found it interesting. This channel has a bunch of wonderful, in depth analysis of both how black men are portrayed by the media and how they consume media, and I always feel like I learn a lot when I watch one of his videos. Earlier today he put out a video on Dave Chappelle and his special, which delves into the whole situation with a lot more depth and nuance than I could possibly muster.
What made me link it here is a segment about 30 minutes in where he talks about “crossing the line twice”, which is where you make a joke that’s so offensive that it’s beyond offensive. He makes an excellent case as to why The Closer’s trans jokes don’t work on this level.
Netflix had been portraying itself as being pro-trans up until this point, releasing documentaries on the subject. Now they’ve made it clear they are anti-trans. They are losing subscribers. That may not be a net loss for them, but they still will have fewer subscribers than they would had they not done this. There just are not more bigots who would sign up specifically because of this than there are trans people and trans allies who will leave.
You keep on making the same bad argument. You argue that those of us against anti-trans bigotry can just not watch. But that doesn’t actually solve the problem. Ignoring bigotry lets it fester. At no point in history has any civil rights movement won by ignoring the problem.
Netflix is the same company who fired their CEO for singing the n-word in lyrics, then refusing to listen when they told him not to even mention the word. Notice what happened there: the concerned black people didn’t get suspended, then rehired, then the organizer fired. There concerns were taking seriously, even though not all white people agreed with them. Because, as always, it’s the minority that tells the majority that is bigoted.
But trans people don’t get the same thing. Trans people can say it’s bigoted, but they get special pleading about how bigotry is “creative freedom” and has to be allowed. Before, something racist the CEO said that the majority of subscribers wouldn’t even know about was enough to start an investigation. Now putting transphobic shit on your platform and defending it because money is okay.
This is a recurring trend. Other minorities matter more than black people. The same type of activism that was considered acceptable by black rights and gay rights organization is apparently horrible if trans rights people do them. And shit that Chappelle said that would be horrible if a white person said about black people are accepted. No one would be okay with a white comedian saying he was “team KKK” or that black women were trying to trick white men with their fake vaginas. No one could argue that Malcom X was being too touchy, or arguing that phrenology is real.
And it’s not like this is stuff the two guys didn’t know. Chappelle mentioned the polite letter he got explaining why some of his jokes were transphobic—then says he’s going to ignore it. And Sarrandos had already had to make several changes at Netflix because trans people kept citing an unsafe work environment. The trans workers didn’t just get upset about a single special. And, regardless, they’ve now been told and refuse to back down in any way. Both keep on digging deeper, firing the strike organizer or deliberately antagonizing trans people who want to talk with him.
They couldn’t get away with it for other minorities, but somehow we’re supposed to sit back and ignore it for trans people. That’s not going to happen. While boycotts are a part of fighting back, you don’t give up if the company still makes money anyways. You don’t give up if not enough people care.
Did anyone bring up Caitlyn Jenner’s recent comments?
Could you elaborate on this? I don’t follow the “crossing the line twice” concept. Is it offensive in the end or not?
I don’t know about the segment, but “crossing the line twice” is when you cross the line into being offensive, but then exaggerate it so far that it becomes funny again instead, due to being so absurd. The TVTropes article on it focuses on violence, where you’ll see something that is so over-the-top violent that it becomes clear it is parodying the concept. (Without looking, one movie that does this is Robocop.)
The comic I first think of who does that is Jimmy Carr. His normal schtick is saying offensive things in this way that winks at the camera, making it clear he doesn’t believe them. But one thing he’ll sometimes do is make a joke, apologize for it, but then the apology is a fakeout: he’d apologizing for the wrong thing, and says something more offensive, but also so absurd no one can think he means it seriously. Though his demeanor and delivery also helps.
Chappelle I would say doesn’t have that. He has always presented himself as the type of comic who gets at uncomfortable truths (usually about race) and makes them funny. So, when he turns style on trans stuff, it comes off as if he thinks he’s speaking the uncomfortable truth about trans people.
Also, Jimmy Carr genuinely apologizes whenever his jokes are deemed to have actually gone too far, showing he cares. He doesn’t make himself out to be the “real victim.” That to me is the major difference between bigot and not. Bigots always try to make it seem like they are the one who was wronged, rather than caring about whether they might have accidentally been bigoted.
Here you go:
I would have offered “Hot Fuzz” as an example of comically extreme violence.
For jokes that go so impossibly far into offensive territory as to cross back into being funny, the winner has to be The Aristocrats.
Gervais’ drunk driving joke is another good example - as is most of the stuff that Anthony Jesselnik does.
Thank you both.
Mrs. solost and I watched a new Ricky Gervais comedy special on Netflix, and it was awfully, nastily transphobic. So bad, in fact, that I wondered why I haven’t heard more controversy about it. I searched ‘Gervais transphobic’ here on SMDB to see if anybody else commented, and found this older thread, which seemed like as good a place as any to post about this.
I did find the article below online. Apparently it’s no surprise Gerviase is transphobic-- he’s said transphobic stuff before and defended Chappelle’s transphobic comments. I knew he was kind of a ‘shock’ comic, but I had no idea. To me he was the guy who created the English Office, and I’ve watched After Life (a Gervais series also on Netflix) and his earlier series ‘Extras’, which I enjoyed very much.
Anyway, in this latest comedy special he tries to insulate himself to some degree-- he starts off with a “women aren’t funny” joke, and says “I deal in a lot of irony. Of course the old myth that women aren’t funny isn’t true!” Then he doubles down on the “women aren’t funny” joke and when he gets a laugh says, see, you laughed at the bad part because you know it’s wrong. Good job spotting the irony!
He also says some of the things he jokes about he doesn’t really believe, he’s just playing a character. And at the end, after spewing a lot of transphobic nastiness, says “of course I support LGBTQ rights and the right of everybody to be whatever gender they feel they are”. Or something to that effect. But it just comes across as a schoolyard bully hurling insults and saying “just kidding” afterward.
He used to retweet this nasty transphobic twitterer all the time, someone pretending to be trans and posting all kinds of slippery slope bullshit, so I stopped following Ricky.
Funny you mention this, I watched that same standup show last night. The trans stuff WAS pretty cringey, but at least unlike Chappelle he hit on it once at the beginning and once at the end, and the rest of the routine was pretty enjoyable. Unlike Chappelle’s last standup where I barely remember him talking about anything else.
The cringiest bit was when he was railing against virtue signalling. Erm, what do you think you’re doing by getting on a stage and telling eeveryone how against virtue signaling you are? Smh.
I DO find it odd that so many Netflix specials are about this topic. I guess it drives controversy which drives views, and the Almighty Algorithm, Blessed Be Its Name, is all about that. But eventually the stench of the transphobes will rub off on Netflix if they’re not careful.
Also, what was with all the “oh no Louis CK is cancelled” jokes? Is he? I thought he was back now. How much bitching and moaning are you gonna do on the topic of a multimillionaire suffering a minor career speed bump?
And he wasn’t “cancelled” for anything he said on stage.
Yeah, if you’re worried about what happened to Louid CK, you should stop whipping your dick out around strangers.
Or even around non-consenting colleagues and friends. His primary misbehavior AFAICT was not harassing strangers but taking advantage of quasi-“social” and “professional” settings to indulge his exhibitionism etc. at the expense of people who didn’t like it but were afraid of his retaliating if they objected to it.
In short, celebrities all, the universal default should be just keeping it in your pants except in situations where you obviously have a genuinely consensual use for it.