Bad Chappelle Bits

Laughed myself silly to Cold Lasagne and his Netflix specials, and his Taskmaster series, and even his notorious Bake-Off episode.

The Acaster bit about the British Museum is funny but not much else imo

I watched the special last night. Oddest statement was "Everyone accepted Caitlyn Jenner when she changed her name but no one accepted Muhammed Ali when he changed his name from Cassius Clay!" uh wat

It actually was a huge thing tbh

Text: Everyone accepted Caitlyn Jenner when she changed her name.

Subtext: I live inside a bubble and do not know it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali_vs._Ernie_Terrell

i watched the chapelle special just so no one could accuse me of not *listening* to dave chapelle as he often emphasizes in this special where he can use google well enough to learn what “terf” means but not “punching down”? exhausting. the special is not majority trans material but that’s the entire subject of the last thirty minutes and it’s fundamentally the thesis of the special so who can remember how funny the race material was (pretty funny! he used to be better though, or i used to laugh at this stuff more, who can say) or how i chuckled through his send up of “times up” bc no major reckoning with sexual abuse should be led by rich white movie stars, i’m with you there dave, also whoever called the cops on him is a cop, the lgbtq community is full of cops but fucking every community has cops in it bc society is horrible. and all of this is just a launching pad for him to say that he’s “team terf,” that he agrees with jk rowling, whose words i can’t imagine he’s dwelled on extensively, that “gender is a fact”, that he can’t even make a good point about bathroom laws without talking about how freaked out he would be at the sight of trans genitals, when i use a men’s bathroom still even though i’m a woman bc i can’t tell which one i might be harassed in *more*, that this is branded as “truth telling,” as edgy, boundary-pushing comedy when it’s just the same shit over and over again with no progression whatsoever to the talking points, god, who cares, who cares if dave chapelle loves pussy so much he can’t accept the idea of a woman without a pussy even though, of course, as the final twenty minutes reveal, he was dear friends with one, and, of course, as the final minute reveals, he is absolutely cool misgendering her because she would’ve found it hilarious. but, unfortunately, she is not here to enjoy his hilarious trans jokes, and i am, and to me they are not tremendously different from
ppl denying and denigrating my existence bc i have the temerity to call myself a woman, they’re just like, delivered with a smirk, couched in regular degular jokes so the normies keep laughing all the way home about these shitty trans ppl who won’t leave dave chapelle alone and keep telling him he’s “punching down,” and his attempt to actually reckon with this is 100 percent reactionary and like he’s digging his heels in to things he knows are wrong but he refuses to change his mind about, and it’s extra excruciating bc the bathroom bit… is so close to the fucking problem, just
stop caring so much! let ppl use the bathroom they want! stop determining someone’s womanhood based on whether they bleed or not, there are women who don’t bleed and men who do. this is a fact, this is the truth, what dave chapelle told me is not the truth, and what good is an art form, what good is being the GOAT at an art form, if you’re not going to tell people the truth (with joeks of course)

xpost I mean, he's not wrong about Ali but he's falsely setting it up as a black vs LGBTQ thing, when it's prolly more of a 1966 vs 2021 thing, cf. Yasiin Bey and Yusef Islam

i’m glad he said he’s not gonna tell trans jokes anymore, good for him, shame he had to talk about trans issues for 30 minutes and still be wrong about them to get to that point

The question is not is he going to stop, it's why has he been repeatedly making trans "jokes" at all for the past 5 or 6 or 7 years? Again, by way of Katt Williams, the whole world is ripe for ridicule, so compulsively returning again and again to the same very specific subject at the expense of a very specific group of people at the very least betrays such a lack of creativity as a comedian it's downright embarrassing. Setting aside whether or not you should be allowed to make fun of certain groups, if you won't or can't even find a funny or funnier alternative among literally countless other subjects, then that says it all.

Again, he was talking about this shit at the 2015 show I saw. Black community vs. LGBTQ, trans rights, etc. For a guy that's had several specials since then, let along stand up sets, it's curious it remains a mainstay of his shows.

its b/c he got criticized for it and like all middle-aged standups he cannot take any form of criticism without tripling down

xpost I mean, he's not wrong about Ali but he's falsely setting it up as a black vs LGBTQ thing, when it's prolly more of a 1966 vs 2021 thing, cf. Yasiin Bey and Yusef Islam

― licorice in the front, pizza in the rear (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, October 14, 2021 11:19 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the false binary shit rankles so much, have some fucking historical perspective, the kind you clearly display in so much of the work that isn’t about trans ppl

xp Or, probably even less savorily, he believes that the focus on LGBTQ rights is costing advancements in Black rights.

In all this, I keep flashing back on this episode: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jan/11/richard-pryor-great-meltdown-racist-hollywood-bowl

Which, nearly half a century ago, seemed to have had an exponentially smarter capacity for spitting out uncomfortable/bitter truths and cutting to the bone than anything I've seen described in this latest Netflix special.

Its comfortable, lazy stuff without much insight without much wit without much humour

In other words, bad comedy.

That Richard Pryor goes a bit beyond “uncomfortable truths”:

Motherfuck women’s rights. The b*tches don’t need no rights. What they need to do is pay the people on welfare.

I mean, his anger in that moment was for sure an uncomfortable truth.

(Compared to DC's documented years if not decades stewing about how good the LGBTQ community allegedly has it.)

Not just anger, but alienation.

Sometimes, as at the Hollywood Bowl, Pryor slammed into the fact that he wasn’t in Peoria any more and that he had lost that community; that no matter how large his estate in the San Fernando Valley, he would continue to feel out of place; that no matter how high he rose in Hollywood’s pecking order, his sensibility would never match up with that of its right-thinking, liberal precincts. The debacle at the Bowl left him reeling, besieged. As the controversy raged on, Pryor did not calm the waters by issuing an apology.

Instead, he continued to act out the polarities of his Hollywood Bowl performance in his own life. In the week following the gay rights benefit, he made two impulsive and startling commitments. The first was to his on-off lover Deboragh McGuire, whom he proposed to and married within the space of a few days. The second was to an experimental piece of gay theatre – a monologue by a little-known actress named Kres Mersky that nowadays would be labelled performance art, and queer performance art at that – which he included in his primetime TV show in total defiance of NBC. As part of his segue into that monologue, Pryor camped it up as Little Richard, with the high pompadour, glittering cape, and leering lusciousness that were the trademarks of Little Richard’s gender-bending style. In that costume, Pryor blew air kisses to his audience with a twinkle in his eye.

In my opinion, he is punching on LGB and more specifically trans people because doing so has been extremely lucrative for him (and by extension Netflix).

that even managed to make me feel bad about watching it

I mean, guessing his actual motives is admittedly Chappelle Fan Fiction, but I wager that nearly two decades being hailed as America's Great Truth Teller Revealing Our Great American Truths, he's just not used to having to respond to pressure with admitting he's actually in the wrong here? It all could have been deaded like three specials ago even if he just gave an insincere apology and moved on

Zinoman:

The first time Dave Chappelle wanted to quit a TV show, he didn’t do it. After shooting the pilot of his soon-to-be-forgotten 1996 ABC sitcom, “Buddies,” an amiable comedy about an interracial friendship, the network fired his co-star Jim Breuer, which led Chappelle to tell his manager he wanted to quit.

He was talked out of it, and the show got poor reviews and was canceled after five episodes. When I interviewed one of the co-creators, Matt Williams, several years ago for an e-book about Chappelle, he told me he wished he had built more conflict between the leads. “Then you could capitalize on the charisma of Chappelle,” he said. “But he was different then. He was impish. He was playful, innocent. No danger.”

As controversy boils over Chappelle’s latest special, “The Closer,” I have been thinking about what lessons he might have learned from this early failure. At Comedy Central, he famously did quit and returned with a new mystique. In his current incarnation, he leans hard into conflict, and part of his enduring popularity is his ability to manufacture a sense of danger.

In his last special, “Sticks and Stones,” Chappelle took aim at the audience and cancel culture, made many jokes about transgender people and defended Kevin Hart, who had lost the job of hosting the Oscars because of protests over old homophobic tweets. Chappelle earned backlash, negative reviews and the sympathies of the right-wing media, which has become invested in issues of comedy and free speech in the Trump era.

OK, so what did Dave Chappelle do for his next act? Take aim at cancel culture, mock trans people and bring up the same trans friend he mentioned in the last special. By the time he defends Hart again (even if losing the Oscars was the worst injustice known to man, does it deserve two specials’ worth of protest?), you might be feeling a sense of déjà vu.

A few days before “The Closer” premiered, Chappelle predicted he would be canceled; a few days later, he appeared at the Hollywood Bowl at the premiere of his new documentary and talked again about being canceled. The fact that no one thinks Dave Chappelle will be canceled, whatever that means to you, is beside the point.

This rollout was a performance of danger. Of course, what is dangerous is an open question. “The Closer” courts outrage with dopey attacks on #MeToo, and jokes linking Asian people to Covid, but mostly with the subject he has been fixated on for years: transgender people.

When Jaclyn Moore, a showrunner for the Netflix series “Dear White People,” announced she would no longer work with the company while it produces “dangerously transphobic content,” the statement was a reference to the numbers of hate crimes against transgender people and the statistics about mental health and suicide.

There is a tendency these days to quickly conflate language and violence in discussions about controversial art, especially comedy. A punchline, even an offensive one, is not the same as a punch. And yet, it’s hard to imagine that anyone who has attended middle school (or seen a Martin Scorsese film) would not understand that jokes can contribute to a culture of bullying and abuse.

In defending Chappelle, Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive of Netflix, waded into the issue of the consequences of cruel jokes by arguing that he doesn’t believe there is a relationship between art and harm. It’s a rickety platform to stand on when your company consistently puts out work that hopes to raise awareness, increase representation or move the culture. If art can do good for the world, then isn’t it possible the reverse could be true?

The fallout from “The Closer” is in some ways the most interesting thing about the special. A group of trans employees has planned a walkout on Wednesday to protest. And anger within Netflix led to a rare and fascinating leak of internal viewing numbers, revealing just how little we understand success in the era of minimal transparency by entertainment companies. According to Bloomberg, based on Netflix’s measurement of efficiency, which balances a show’s reach with its price tag, Bo Burnham’s “Inside” (which earned the comic $3.9 million) performed significantly better than “The Closer” (which cost $24.1 million).

Chappelle remains a gifted yarn-spinner who shifts from gravitas to irreverence as deftly as anyone. But judged purely by originality and construction of jokes, he’s a star in decline. There are some startlingly hack jokes, like a well-worn one about Mike Pence’s sexuality, and others about pedophilia and Covid that badly need the shock of offensiveness to make an impact.

Why has he been so fixated on transgender people for so many years now? It may be that he believes deeply that gender is a fact. Maybe he passionately wants to let us know he’s “Team TERF,” as he says in “The Closer” — an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Neither of those points come with punch lines. It could also be that he sees pushing these hot buttons as the easiest way to make a big fuss.

One of the major developments in comedy over the past decade has been the rise of comics animated by opposition to left-wing dogma and cancel culture. I have seen struggling comics boost their careers by pivoting right — or, more precisely, anti-left. There’s no question that there is a market for it. While he has lost some fans, Chappelle is a hero to this group now. In middle age, Chappelle acts less like a comic and more like a pundit. He’s far more comfortable than most of his peers in going long stretches without jokes. His recent monologues about George Floyd and the way streaming services have not compensated him for showing his sketch show were both righteous and largely without humor.

In 2006, after he left “Chappelle’s Show,” which made better arguments that jokes should be able to punch in any direction than anything he says in these specials, he proclaimed in an interview, “I feel like I’m going to be some kind of parable.” Then he said he was going to be either a legend or a tragic story.

Give Chappelle credit for this: In a climate in which people seem to get more excited about culture wars than culture, he has figured out a way to be both.

Still, I suspect the long-term impact of the last few specials will not flatter his reputation. Comedy moves fast. And right now, there are more funny transgender stand-ups getting hours ready at comedy shows in the city than ever before. The legacy of “The Closer” might be less in the jokes it makes than in the ones it inspires.

In defending Chappelle, Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive of Netflix, waded into the issue of the consequences of cruel jokes by arguing that he doesn’t believe there is a relationship between art and harm.

somebody tell this guy what propaganda is

How did it cost $24 million to make that special

dave’s fee

Damn that’s like 8 million a punchline

in the wake of norm macdonald’s death i saw some quote from him that was like, if the audience doesn’t find my jokes funny, that’s their fault, because i’m the comedy expert. i guess they all believe that

“why are y’all booing, i’m right”

i’m sure the specials do pretty well. there’s a big audience for chappelle and a big audience for bigotry. netflix executives keep saying their objective is to “please their audience” so by definition the chappelle special works for them. and they try to get out of the fact that it’s bigoted by saying hey, we have all this pro-trans content too. we have a diverse universe of content. it’s a pathetic defence. “we serve lots of food here. only a little bit of it is deadly poison. and in fact the poison is pretty popular.”

One of the major developments in comedy over the past decade has been the rise of comics animated by opposition to left-wing dogma and cancel culture. I have seen struggling comics boost their careers by pivoting right — or, more precisely, anti-left.

This is happening over here too.

i’m sure the specials do pretty well. there’s a big audience for chappelle and a big audience for bigotry. netflix executives keep saying their objective is to “please their audience” so by definition the chappelle special works for them. and they try to get out of the fact that it’s bigoted by saying hey, we have all this pro-trans content too. we have a diverse universe of content. it’s a pathetic defence. “we serve lots of food here. only a little bit of it is deadly poison. and in fact the poison is pretty popular.”

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, October 16, 2021 12:23 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's insidious in two ways. One is that the controversy surrounding the special is so obviously a marketing tool, turning what I think is important discussions about comedy and bigotries into something that just serves the bottom line of Netflix shareholders (and Chappelle's future cheques). And also since the marketing tool IS the discussion, it's inescapable. I have been working 70 hours weeks and other than The Squid Game, The Closer is the only other 'content' I've heard about these past few weeks, and no matter what you think of Chapelle or this special, all of his ideas are transmitted regardless of seeing the special.

I have been a proponent of the notion that if you are not the audience then the best thing you can do is to tune out, but you can't, because Netflix and Chappelle want to make as much money as possible by being everywhere to market their content. Unless you black out from media altogether, you gotta participate in the discussion. I can only imagine how hurtful it can be to trans people who don't want to participate. I mean I don't want to participate in it and I find it exhausting and it does not even concern me. Then Chappelle has the supreme bad faith of calling himself 'canceled' when he got what is possibly the biggest platform a comedian as ever had.

Chapelle actually reading the "dictionary definition" of feminism like a fuckin fedora reply guy was a particularly pathetic moment

Maybe I shouldn’t mention it but whenever I get into the car it seems that one of the Comedy Channels is on and I end up hearing what suspiciously sounds like an (anti-)#MeToo comic and I get (more) depressed or angry.

Unless you black out from media altogether

from like, all media? or just streaming video services? because the latter is actually not that hard. it's pretty easy to avoid big corporate-suit media if you want to, but you have to actually want to.

what are these Comedy Channels in the car? is this a Sirius thing?

Yes. I don’t know which is worse, tbh, the Comedy Channel or the Politics Channel, or whatever it’s called, which seems to be the other alternative, at least when I play Russian Roulette with the ignition key.

As if there weren’t enough reasons to ban cars

OTMFM. Whip it on me, wins!

An editorial that ran in Variety in July 1945. pic.twitter.com/zA66lRhElO

— Kliph Nesteroff (@ClassicShowbiz) October 18, 2021

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/the-power-of-dave-chappelles-comedy-netflix-the-closer

In 2005, Chappelle walked away from a reported fifty-million-dollar contract with Comedy Central for two additional seasons of “Chappelle’s Show,” his sketch-comedy series. Years later, he explained that he’d been conflicted about the effect of his brand of racial humor, which relied heavily on enacting stereotypes in order to ridicule them. He had begun to wonder whether his audience got the second, more subtle layer of his work, or whether it was entertained purely by the stereotypes. Chappelle, as he told David Letterman, was attuned to nuances in his work that it would have been more convenient (and more lucrative) to ignore. There was always the risk, in riffing on the racial absurdities of American culture, of reinforcing rather than undermining them. The absence of concern of this kind about “The Closer” is striking, and suggests that Chappelle’s line about being rich and famous is more significant to the controversy than has been noted. Onstage, he refers to himself as the man who walked away from fifty million dollars, but the credibility he derived from that act sixteen years ago is now being deployed defensively and cynically, as if to place above suspicion any possible motive for telling denigrating jokes about trans people. He is also the man who walked into a reported sixty-million-dollar Netflix deal.

In 2005, it meant something for a Black man to reject an enormous pile of money in the name of integrity. The past two weeks reiterated a contrasting point: that Black men, too, can be invested in the prerogatives that wealth purchases. Earlier this year, Netflix removed old episodes of “Chappelle’s Show” from the platform at the comedian’s request, forgoing the revenue it would have reaped, after he called the contract that allowed Comedy Central to profit from the show more than a decade and a half after its release exploitative. Sarandos has dismissed requests from trans employees that “The Closer” be removed.

Days after “The Closer” aired, Chappelle performed at a sold-out event at the Hollywood Bowl, before an audience that included Nas, Lizzo, Stevie Wonder, Brad Pitt, and Tiffany Haddish. He remains powerful and influential, despite the protests from a comparatively small community of activists and their supporters. The turbulence around “The Closer” will, in all likelihood, amount to just another speed bump in Chappelle’s path. In gliding through this situation, he has emphasized a fact about power that was never particularly noteworthy. Because the one thing that has not been cancelled is the check.

^ jelani cobb almost always worth a read imo

His concerts are rallies now, apparently. This is on the level of Lenny Bruce reading his trial transcripts from the stage.

http://www.instagram.com/p/CVde5tAFT4H/

wow

much canceled

so persecute

this motherfucker can afford bodyguards to tackle someone who even steps on his shoes, meanwhile he whines like this when his comments actually lead to getting transgendered people outright murdered.

"his comments actually lead to getting transgendered people outright murdered"

Citation?

Lmao “AM I CANCELLED??” the man is beyond parody

Funny to think there’s an entire generation of teens who only know ~this~ version of Chappelle, it’s kinda like the way I grew up hearing a ton about Michael Jackson but not really getting why he was so goddamn famous

*lead*, not *led*.

They're the type of comments that over time lead to incitement of violence

He got a really positive review in The Economist this week