Bad Chappelle Bits

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.

feel like that Acastor bit might have had a little more impact if it was even remotely funny

i’m not sure that’s his actual twitter account. his last name is spelled acaster. i love that bit fwiw. it’s true that it’s verging on anger/vitriol but it’s warranted frankly. and i love that he calls out gervais by name after pretending he’s not going to.

That whole Acaster stand-up show is remarkable, tbh. His shows on Netflix are very funny, but Cold Lasagne... is an excellent extended piece of work.

Yeah, James Acaster is one of my fav comedians working.

The bit is about catharsis not humour yeah and if that was his entire shtick it'd be tiresome but frankly all comedians do it these days (Chappelle special seems to be nothing but this from the descriptions I've read) so I won't begrudge him it. Plus it's genuinely important to have vocally anti-transphobic ppl in the public eye in the UK, for obvious reasons.

i’m not sure that’s his actual twitter account.

It's not, he's not on any social media.

It's not, he's not on any social media.

An exemplar for us all

lol just watched someone in a comment thread write an impassioned defense of Chappelle that began with "I haven't watched this yet, but..." and then responding an hour later with "oh god, I'm 45 minutes into this and it's awful, nothing I wrote above applies to this" so I guess this isn't landing the way he thought it would

As noted elsewhere, it's telling that literally no one is talking about the jokes. Assuming there are some.

As noted elsewhere, it's telling that literally no one is talking about the jokes. Assuming there are some.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, October 13, 2021 3:22 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I still think he's super funny even though I loathe the bigotry, but to each their own obv

what would you say were your favorite jokes from the special

I thought that everything hes done since his reboot bar the standup about george floyd has been on its way to grim rather than funny or clever, and the last one before this wasnt worth the watch

If this one is where people whod stand over that one are stepping off, im happier again with the decision to not bother

Acaster has not made me so much as grin, ever, maybe ive missed all his good stuff

xpost

idk, I liked a lot of it, Clifford, glory holes, the bathroom bill is stupid, "1980s gay face,"

Acaster has not made me so much as grin, ever

perhaps we're witnessing the evolution of observational humor into stand up comics just acting as general observers of society, like bloggers or print media columnists who occasionally venture upon an vaguely amusing witticism or two

I mean, people's whole "I watched all 70 minutes of this and sat stone-faced at the absolute dearth of jokes" thing is really suspect in the era where people listen to like seven Comedy Bang Bang knock-off podcasts a day