Bad Chappelle Bits

OTM

next show he does the audience should conspire to just sit there, sigh, and check their texts the whole time he's on stage.

"I hope all the bad things in life happen to you and nobody else!"

I find him really overrated; some amusing ideas, but really doesn't know when to end a joke.

theres bootleg audio out there of his dallas set from a few weeks ago

Oh wait, I wanted to post that quote in a best-of thread

I'm rewatching all of the Chapelle Show right now (actually it's literally on at this v moment) and I guess I wasn't paying attention the first time around because I had no idea that Rick James coined the whole cocaine is a helluva drug thing. Watched a couple eps this morning and was dying at the Lil Jon stuff.

Kingfish: Dave Chappelle - "Killin' 'Em Softly"

I saw Dave Chappelle perform back in 2015, which, if my math is correct, was six years ago. I recall more than a few asides at the expense of trans people, not necessarily particularly mean, per se, as far as comedians go, but definitely making them the butt of (barely) jokes as he kind of rambled and ranted. It's honestly shocking to me that he's apparently *still* stuck on the issue. There are soooo many things to make fun of, so many jokes and so many subjects of jokes. Whether or not he is pushing back against PC cancel culture or whatever bullshit, what's the big deal? Just move on and find something else to talk about or make fun of, it's a big world out there. I still think Katt Williams (of all people, who incidentally was hanging around the venue back at that 2015 show) put it best: "Look, if these are the confines that keep you from doing the craft God put you to, then it probably ain’t for you."

I haven’t watched, honestly probably won’t. But hey! remember that time he quit his job and went to a different continent because he though a crew member “laughed wrong” at one of his sketches during taping?

I was Team Dave on that, and still am. But with his last few outings being some real tReNcHaNt middle age rich guy commentary on safe spaces, etc, pretty odd he doesn’t appear to grasp the irony here.

Anyway, he’s still one of the best to ever do it, even if i haven’t gotten more than a light chuckle out of any thing he’s done in well over a decade.

Time to Go to Bed, old man.

Watched the new one. Not sure repeatedly saying he's having his last word on it is going to work out so great. I dare not look at the Twitter conversation.

its like a scab he can't stop picking at. the more backlash he gets the more he feels the need to "have the final word" on it. he wants to make shitty trans jokes like its 1994, but since he's the "greatest of all time" (as he says in this special) if people don't find it funny then the problem is with them, not him. it's like Kanye West shit. he keeps whining about how you can't make trans jokes anymore, which I don't think is true - practically every comedian on the planet had a 5-minute routine about Caitlin Jenner - but his trans jokes are way more mean-spirited than funny. whining about pronouns and comparing transgender women to blackface just isn't gonna cut it in 2021. he also goes off about how nobody is "listening" to him but he also confuses gender and sex numerous times so obviously he isn't really listening either.

the special is garbage, don't bother with it. he does like 10 minutes of (bad) regular material and then spends the remainder talking about LGBTQ stuff. he calls trans people "annoying" like 700 times. he keeps pushing back against the accusation that he's "punching down" but literally ends the special by saying "You took the Oscars away from Kevin Hart!" and asks LGBTQ people to not punch down on "his people". it's a 75 minute special and there are almost no jokes in it. the only punchline I remember is "Space Jews". dude needs to write better material.

At least for part of his audience (assholes), the trans jokes hit. You can't really say that for the rest of his weak material. Might as well become a terf comic.

Whatever he's doing is the opposite of soundbites, as far as weaving stories and threads. 8:46 is still one of the strongest things to come out of the summer of 2020.

he calls trans people "annoying" like 700 times.

truth bombs

it's so weird. I saw the same tour Josh referenced and that was the first time I actively noticed him being antagonistic towards the transgender community, and really the first time I felt uncomfortable/alien while watching something Chappelle did. I've mentioned in other threads, but the audience was *very* dudebro and white, and I knew we were in trouble when Dave said "let's give the gay community a hand" and I started clapping and maybe two other people did, and everybody else gave stares a la Phil Leotardo.

but once Dave started making the jokes "well HER dick is out" and talking about "why I gotta change my pro-nouns", they all started rolling, and it was just an ugly feeling. he got off of the topic and back into what he does best but at the time I didn't think this was going to become, like, his new hobbyhorse. I hoped he'd like walk it back or at least just....not make those awful jokes again, and now it's like....a staple of his comedy.

it's so incredibly infuriating that a guy who did that George Floyd special last year and also produced some of the most rib-shattering laughs of my lifetime now has the proverbial comedic taste of battery acid to me. I just wish he'd hang it up, possibly actually apologize later and repair at least some of the damage, but just fucking off and retiring would be enough for me now as a start.

instead he's going to continue on in this vein and still be the biggest standup on the planet (please no one come in here and mention Russell Peters is big in Australia or what have you)

who

One thing that irked me was the bit about DaBaby…”you can kill a black man, but you better not say shit about gay people”…like does he not remember Michael Richards? Didn’t he do a pretty famous bit about that? I mean I get that this is a comedy special so of course he’s gonna say absurd shit but it’s all underpinned with this subtext of “the gay community is doing so much better than the black community” which he spends the next hour on. Like none of those parallels work

as a trans woman who loved his shit so much in the past, it’s been a fucking bummer of a time watching this happen. wish I didn’t feel like it was practice for a lot more to come. fix yr heart, Dave.

I mean he had disgraced Louis CK perform at one of his shows, so this should all come as a non-surprise.

Also, don't forget his "give Trump a chance" SNL monologue.

tbf he did say he regrets saying that but I can't remember if it's because he realized how dumb it was or if it was another one of those "you didn't understand, what I was trying to say was..." things. post George Floyd & 1/6 he's been pretty critical of the MAGA crowd but I guess he never dedicated an entire Netflix special to it

about half way through this new special, wow this is fucking bad.

hateful and just plain unfunny. like honestly this is way worse than anything bill burr has ever done. lazy as shit.

You made it further than I did, but I had the same feeling - lazy ass, Bill Burr level "pushing buttons" shit. Offensive and hateful to boot.

But cue a million tweets and reddit comments about "you just don't get his levels" and "he's just showing the hypocrisy".

And if you criticize him, you're violating his freedom of speech

”you can kill a black man, but you better not say shit about gay people” is the one that actually raises my blood pressure, like....you've seriously never heard of violence against LGBTQ+ community, ESPECIALLY against transgender folks? They're being killed too, asshole!

like perhaps, Dave, you might recognize that this is why we would like for you to not contribute to these negative views of said community.

nicole said it best

the bit in the end where he talks about Daphne Dorman (a trans comedian he was friends with who killed herself a month after getting a shoutout in "Sticks and Stones") looked like an opportunity to pull himself out of the tailspin but it wound up being pretty gross as well. first of all he suggests that her suicide may have been a result of how the trans community treated her after she defended Chappelle. he doesn't quite say it but he implies it pretty strongly. at no point does he examine *why* having an association with him would've caused that sort of backlash, other than the usual "they're annoying/humorless/sensitive/triggered" shit. secondly he pretty explicitly says that she's one of the "good ones" and that she "isn't part of their tribe, she's part of my tribe" and you'd think that someone who's spoken so eloquently about race issues in the past would know exactly what coded language like that means.

wait til dave finds out about the existence of lgbt black people

...and what's happening to them.

Yeah no I'll skip on this one... this shark has jumped

who

a comic who is bigger than Dave Chappelle iirc

It felt like there's like 40 minutes of material about trans people, which: What is your weird compulsion to keep talking about this?! Fucking stop!

I think half of that material was actually really kind and sweet and empathetic and vocally anti-discrimination (ie., the stuff about why the North Carolina bathroom bill is awful) and like 90% of the Daphne Dorman stuff, and he honestly could have just performed that material as sort of a mea culpa

But, yeah, for the rest he just keeps drilling down on the "gender is assigned to you at birth" and "trans ppl need our love but they are still icky" and all the lazy pronouns/letters jokes. And it's like, why do you even need to show that ugly side of yourself to a national audience over and over and over again?

"It's not fair that these people got compassion quicker than me" is a real shitty hill to die on.

That said, I'd still watch 10 more of these

Jaclyn Moore’s interview about this is really good

https://t.co/tPv95rJCPD

Jaclyn Moore is the fucking best, I love her

Lol

https://medium.com/@AkilahObviously/stevie-wonder-wasnt-the-weirdest-part-79792d04f7d5

Let the record reflect that I wanted to title the essay “At Lease Use Lube If You’re Going to Insist On Riding Us This Hard.” My editor went with a different approach. https://t.co/NifTKmo470

— Saeed Jones (@theferocity) October 11, 2021

^^ From that piece:

Watching Chappelle contort himself to justify ashy ideas about gender, queerness and identity is harrowing, because the only thing more brutal than someone saying hurtful shit is someone saying hurtful shit moments after making you laugh, moments after cracking you up in a way that’s both fun and deeply needed, moments after you making you feel like you all got free together. America has only gotten better at trying to kill me. Laughter is no joke, which makes the betrayal, years in the making at this point, all the more devastating. I feel like a fool to have rooted for Dave Chappelle for so long. Things were easier when the men who wanted to hurt me just said so at the jump.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/11/22720724/netflix-suspends-trans-employee-tweeted-dave-chappelle-the-closer

[Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos] said that Chappelle’s last special, Sticks & Stones, is Netflix’s “most watched, stickiest, and most award winning stand-up special to date.”

He added:
“Several of you have also asked where we draw the line on hate. We don’t allow titles on Netflix that are designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe The Closer crosses that line.”

Netflix suspends trans employee who tweeted about Dave Chappelle special https://t.co/BBtrKhwetF pic.twitter.com/GsZTPM3d5h

— The Verge (@verge) October 11, 2021

cancel culture strikes again

Jinx.

This shameful moment might have been more appropriate for a Netflix thread. TPB is still going strong, just sayin’.

This part was entirely clear:

The tweet thread went viral, quickly spiraling into a conversation about free speech and cancel culture. Netflix then suspended [the tweeter] Field along with two other employees for trying to attend a director-level meeting they weren’t invited to.

*was not entirely clear

They suspended the employee who tweeted about the special, for trying to crash an executive level meeting. The headline couldn't have been "Netflix employee suspended for trying to attend a director-level meeting", because who would have clicked on it?

most award winning

Hmmmm.

this is a good piece on it

https://www.readthepresentage.com/p/dave-chappelle-transgender

I can't really identify with the social issues surrounding this but I can talk about how weirdly unfunny nearly all of Chappelle's LGBTQ material is; it's pretty much all bad South Park bits. always the worst part of his set outside of all the lengthy retellings of the time a woman or queer person was mean to him. though these are often the same bit

Yes strong exposition of the "one joke" there. This bit they linked is really good:

A very good two minutes from @JamesAcastor. pic.twitter.com/Ca05RsFwOB

— Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) October 7, 2021

Although it doesn't address the 'oppression Olympics' aspect of Dave's latest show, which from what I saw on Twitter sadly seemed to be getting the most traction.