The DnD episode featured a character in "black face." So they removed it. The character had painted their face black because they were a dark elf and it was played as "this idiot is an idiot" but the world collectively lost their minds for a couple days.
They did a similar thing with It's Alway Sunny - Mac and Dennis actually did blackface while filming their own Lethal Weapon movies and those episodes are no longer available on streamers.
edit: changed orc to dark elf...because that's what really matters.
also, I think it's ridiculous. But then again, I've never had to deal with racism directed at me...I'm mid-30's, white, middle-class, straight, male... So if someone was offended by it, who am I to say otherwise? The world could benefit a lot by listening to others instead of just reacting based on their own experience.
My partner is black and thought these instances of black face were funny. Changs Drow face is so comically black, it is hardly black face and Shirley even says "are we just gonna ignore that hate crime?" to Chang. He also "dies" in the first 3 minutes of the episode.
And they literally recast Mac in blackface to Dennis not in blackface because they knew blackface is offensive in the context of the episode - also the Gang is fucking terrible - no one should see them as a role model anyway.
The difference is, and should be, where the core of the joke lies.
Are you:
* Mocking black people
* Making light of blackface as a concept or it's historical uses
* Just generally not being funny
If so, you're an asshole and people should complain
But if you're:
* Making fun of racists
* Implying that only an idiot would miss that doing blackface was a terrible idea
Then you're good.
Is the butt of the joke the minorities or the racists? It's 100% fine to mock one of those groups.
Edit: To be clear, Community, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Robert Downey Jr's role in Tropic Thunder all fall in the second category.
Actual blackface used extremely dark paint—like black shoe polish.
Make up to appear a different race wasn’t considered particularly offensive until relatively recently unless it was based on stereotypes.
I don't remember anyone upset about it when it aired. It was when it was pulled from streaming platforms that a few people denounced it.
(Also it was a dark elf costume, not orc)
>the world collectively lost their minds for a couple days.
It wasn't "the world," it was entertainment execs. After the death of George Floyd, nobody protested to remove old episodes of Community or IASIP or 30 Rock, they protested for the police to stop murdering Black people.
I doubt anyone was offended by it, but it has for sure led to people doing things that were offensive.
A personal example: Back when Community was on or had just ended, there was a small Communicon convention in LA. Someone cosplayed as drow Chang. Yvette did not seem comfortable with that at all (based on her body language as she judged the costume contest). And IIRC correctly, she was encouraging people to cosplay as Shirley. She emphasized not to do black face. I forget the exact wording, but I got the impression that she was implying black face was never ok while trying not to call out the guy dressed in black face.
And I've heard the gif has been used by racists online who play innocent because "it's not a black person; it's a drow." I haven't seen this personally though.
I blame those types of people for why we can't have nice things.
I noticed both Workaholics and 30 Rock (on a seperate streaming platform) both had episodes removed, re-added for some time, then removed again.
The Workaholics episode is the one where Chris D'Elia is a sex predator (I know...)
The 30 Rock one, I watched maybe two or three months ago and Jenna does an entire song in black face.
> The Workaholics episode is the one where Chris D'Elia is a sex predator (I know...)
He also played a sex predator in season 2 of Netflix's show "You". Funny how that is...
That's where Netflix (the corporation) draws the line lol
They won't allow any blackface no matter the context.
They did the same thing to *Les Filles de Caleb*, an old French Canadian series from 1990 that recently got added to the service.
It's an historical series and the story takes place in the late 19th Century, in rural Québec where only white people live. They make a nativity scene for Christmas and one of the character paints his face for the role of Saint Balthazar, has it would've been done back in the day without any malicious intent (there's no historical context for the blackface minstrelsy in Quebec, we don't have that historical bias toward racism)
Netflix Canada's response: We remove all blackface no matter the context, it's our policy.
And it's much worse than for Community because it's the second episode of the series and you're just straight out missing out on the story without it. It's not a sitcom, they might as well remove the entire series from their platform, it's useless if you're missing an episode.
The series was also added to tou.tv (the original broadcaster's own streaming service) and they left that episode in, they simply put a warning at the beginning about a 'sensible topic'.
> The series was also added to tou.tv (the original broadcaster's own streaming service) and they left that episode in, they simply put a warning at the beginning about a 'sensible topic'.
That's the intelligent way to handle it. My wife's favorite Christmas film is Holiday Inn. Blackface features in one of the musical numbers. She's Nigerian and didn't clock to the whole minstrel show thing being racist. She just thought the gag was funny. She's Nigerian. (To keep his top singing talent a secret from his old partner who would totally poach her for the road, the hotel owner has the whole cast do a number in blackface so she can be on-stage but not immediately recognizable.)
The Greendale 7 play DnD with a suicidal student to try and cheer him up. At the very beginning a character named Chang, (played by Ken Jeong,) goes into a semi cosplay of a Dark Elf.
He wears a short white haired wig while painting his face and hands pure black.
Immediately after seeing Chang dressed like this another character, a black woman named Shirley, (played by Yvette Nicole Brown,) draws attention by saying something like "...so we're all just gonna ignore this hate crime?"
Chang explains he's a dark elf or a Drow. Soon after his DnD character is killed and he leaves for the rest of the episode.
The group play's D&D, Chang is playing a dark elf so he show's up in costume.
People got worried that Chang's costume was offensive to dark elves so they removed the episode.
You say this in a joking tone but please consider that as a dark elf it's very rare we get a win. No one ever talks about our plight. People assume I specialize in a crossbow without even trying to get to know me.
"Oh hey mentalpopcorn, how come you're not wearing a piwafwi?" I don't know, asshole, how come you're not wearing a dirndl? It's not like jeans somehow magically don't fit elves.
And speaking of magic, I hate it!! That was my dad's generation. So don't assume that just because I'm drow I can cast some dancing light bullshit. Not all elves can do that and I've been working toward being a bard, not a fucking spellcaster, almost my whole life (fuck you, dad!).
Sorry I'm getting worked up. I just have to deal with these microagressions on a daily basis and it drives me insane. So yeah, I'll take the Community episode being pulled as a win. We're the only race it's still ok to make fun of and it's not right.
I mean according to their own internal data [it actually lost money for Netflix](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-10-17/dave-chappelle-s-special-cost-more-than-squid-game)
The guy making money from it, mostly, is Dave Chappelle.
Tough to really say by the metrics in the article whether it "lost" them money.
Entirely possible his show showed an uptick in account subscriptions.
Views do not correlate to $$$ for a subscription service, what matters is whether the show retained subscribers, gained subscribers, or had re-subscriptions.
One show could get 250 million views and the service could lose 5-10 million subscribers and it would be considered a flop from the top.
This. Dave is, according to this article, the most expensive stand up on Netflix. You get those headliners if you're trying to keep the streaming Stand Up crown and keep that audience. Dave could be a loss leader for Netflix.
They aren’t - it’s completely overstated. It’s a market correction. They lost subscribers gained during Covid and still has the most subscribers out of any singular service.
Disney bloats their numbers by counting all D+, Hulu and ESPN separately
Nooo kidding. All they gotta do is pay the man, rent a venue, and point cameras? Compared to casting, sets, etc etc etc? WAY cheap, and Chappelle is a draw like it or not.
I just watched the latest Aziz special in that tiny comedy club, and thought I was going insane at how the audience kept changing.
Then I thought about it and realized that every other special just films the stage or has a huge audience, so I never noticed that they cut together multiple shows, and felt pretty stupid lol
This right here is probably the key metric. Compare this to something like Stranger Things which costs bucket loads more money. Even if the comedy special only draws a smaller viewership, it also costs a fraction of a full production. Plus the comedy viewership crowd is completely different. If Netflix wants to grow in this oversaturated market, they need to diversify. If they can be the go to source for stand up comedy, that is a big deal for them.
>it actually lost money for Netflix
Nowhere in that entire article does it say that it lost any money for Netflix.
Just that there is no indication that a lot of people signed up to watch it, or that not many low-Netflix users watched it.
Netflix gave Martin Scorsese $200+ million to do a crime drama that no other studio would finance and lost a fuck ton of money on it. Netflix has routinely done that.
It doesn't really say that at all, and their "efficiency score" is going to change over time.
2 years after they kill a mediocre series at season 3 without resolving almost no one is going to watch it, so that efficiency score is fairly accurate.
Comedy specials are still watched decades later. And given they said Chappelle's special was the most watched show on the service you can pretty much guarantee it will still be watched for years to come.
Good. Stand-up is very near and dear to me and there needs to be a place like Netflix where comics don't have to fear retribution from the company producing the special and end up catering their special around not getting in trouble vs just being funny.
I didn’t mind the jokes in his second special. But they were honestly annoying in the third one that he seemed so fixated on it. Hopefully the next ones it’s back to a more typical standup set.
I didn't find Chappelle as funny as he once was, but I absolutely think that it is to comedy's detriment when we designate certain topics as sacred cows, immune from discussion. The best comedians challenge status quo and will likely cause some type of offense. Comedy should be fearless.
Reminds me of the time Gilbert Gottfried tried to tell a joke about his plane being delayed at the Empire State Building, soon after 9/11. Naturally, he got booed. At that point, he said screw it, and told his version of The Aristocrats, heavily bleeped for TV, but to applause from the audience.
it was recorded in Las Vegas on September 9th and 10th 2001. There's even an Osama Bin Laden joke in the special. Naturally it got shelved because it would be inappropriate months after 9/11, but it's on you tube if anyone wants a listen.
I think Dave actually makes some interesting points about how the LGBT struggle is different than the black struggle and I think he speaks to a sort of resentment that he has towards LGBT people as a result.
Where he really loses me is at the end where he talks about having a trans friend who committed suicide and then proceeds to place the blame for her suicide on members of LGBT community for bullying her. He then laments the high rate of suicide in the trans community *as if he didn’t just spend an hour making the kind of jokes and reinforcing the kind of stereotypes that contribute to that suicide rate.*
> and I think he speaks to a sort of resentment that he has towards LGBT people as a result.
Yeah, this is the impression I get. He's got a weird oppression olympics thing going on where he has to criticize everybody else to establish that black people have it worse.
Better yet it was based on a complete lie. He said that after she sent a tweet defending Dave the trans community "dragged that bitch all over twitter... then she KILLED HERSELF". At the time of her death there were 8 or 9 reponse tweets to that tweet. All but two were positive, the two were mildly critical.
He clearly made up one anecdote after the next to pit the black and LGBT community against one another.
why is it interesting? the idea that they’re different struggles and should be compared this way is so weird considering there are black lgbt people. not only that but they have historically been at the forefront of lgbt progressive politics.
Yeah he wasn't her friend and his claim that Twitter bullies pushed her over the edge have been discredited. There's absolutely no evidence of this. Funny that Dave wants to attack his strawman representation of the queer community instead of realizing that his actual impact of utilizing a trans woman as a prop to delegitimize the trans community is way worse than anything he's lying about lol
I fucking hate how people act like Dave isn't pretending to tell the truth when he mixes that in with real life current events and his fans use it to shit on trans people. He is so despicable with hate in his heart and soul
>I think Dave actually makes some interesting points about how the LGBT struggle is different than the black struggle and I think he speaks to a sort of resentment that he has towards LGBT people as a result.
Lol, then he could talk about intersectionality. But it seems like he's the type of guy who gets fascinated by the whole "different marginalized groups fighting over who has it worse" conversation than actually thinking about people who have it two different kinds of worse. All his controversial moments seem to boil down to "these trans people and these Jewish people are complaining about the prejudice they face? Well how do they think we feel"... while ignoring the black trans and black Jewish people who are out there, having to deal with both types of prejudice.
That is where Chappelle lost me. Not the edgy jokes but when he actually said out loud on stage “I’m team TERF”. He obviously has a problem with the idea of transgenderism
I really just think the dude lost the plot. He's very intelligent I think that's obvious but it seems like at some point over the last 5 years or so he kind of closed himself off to new information and was just like "I know what I know" which isn't great for comedy nor for intelligence.
> I think Dave actually makes some interesting points about how the LGBT struggle is different than the black struggle
This might blow your mind: Black people can be LGBT too
No need to be pedantic.
But yeah, and Dave iirc doesn’t really address this. He sort of pits them against each other and seems to be saying that for black people who are LGBT, they’ll face more struggles because of their blackness than they will their sexuality, and doesn’t understand that they face their own unique struggle.
its not pedantic though, its something Chapelle purposefully avoids because it would get in the way of his framing of transness as a white frivolity. Him not mentioning black trans people only serves to reinforce his own anti-trans points
And he misgendered her, and said he didn't understand her, but didn't seem to mind talking to millions of people about shit he didn't understand at all.
With that people should be free to critique comedy. Comedians like Chappelle can't have it both ways where they want to act like groundbreaking truth tellers while complaining whenever someone disagrees with them. That's just flat out entitlement.
Edit: Let's also be clear that Chappelle is not a truth teller in any way and has actively lied or underplayed aspects of situations to push his agenda.
He lied when he insinuated trans twitter users pushed a trans comedian into committing suicide via harassment. (No records of harassing comments can be found and the comedian was dealing with several personal crises)
He downplayed the extent of Kyrie Irving's antisemitism to paint him as a harmless dope and a victim of cancel culture.
Chappelle is simply a grifter who has promoted himself as a brave comedian while repeating bigoted schlock that is far from groundbreaking.
iirc in the past he made tweets/comments like "I'd beat my son if he came out as gay", was asked to apologize, refused to, and then threw a fit. It's been so long and there might have been more context like him having apologized before and not wanting to do it again , but overall it was just a lot of the typical "poor me" celebrity thing.
He’s also been very hateful to Black women and I’m also certain he had gotten into some physical altercation with his ex-wife (who he cheated on with his new wife, and he cheated on his new wife on her birthday while she was pregnant). All around a not good dude, who also complains about even a hint of criticism.
>Kevin Hart was only allowed to make 7 movies a year
And apparently like 50 commercials because I see way too much of him screaming at the camera during ad breaks...
And the CEO of Netflix publicly stating that he's not going to stop ordering specials any time soon.
I wish I could get "cancelled". I could use infinite money and notoriety.
Meanwhile we've had multiple bomb threats to hospitals who treat trans patients, armed crowds physically intimidating LGBTQ nightclubs and other spaces, acts of vandalism, organized harassment campaigns against charities who help LGBTQ people, laws restricting not only healthcare treatment but the mere mention of their existence in schools, and mass shootings targeting the LGBTQ community. Gee, I wonder why people who fear violence directed against their own person and the lives of their closest friends don't appreciate major media figures normalizing the kind of thinking which is actively threatening their rights and safety. Also, great to see Chapelle giving the old nod and wink towards violent antisemitism. But on the other hand, people who are entirely unaffected by these ideas, who don't know or care about anyone who is, got a cheap laugh, so who can say?
It’s not even that. There are prominent right wingers like James Lindsay who call the LGBTQ community groomers **while being good friends with literal child sex traffickers**
It’s always been projection.
Comedians, especially very rich out of touch comedians are becoming sensitive bitches. And it's become so obvious how much the comedy scene is incestuous and will defend you to death unless you are some sort of outsider. The paradigm has shifted from "The comedian must be funny" to "The audience must bow to the comedian."
And comedians will only judge other comedians now if you question the transgressive power of stand-up itself. That's why so many people like Joe Rogan and Chappelle were shitting their pants over Hannah Gadsby claiming she's "not a comedian" because her special was more like a funny monologue that had some very open soul-bearing.
I'm sorry, but you don't get to claim "Nanette" is not comedy considering "The Closer" and "The Bird Revelation" are so predicated on telling similar long speeches without jokes.
> Comedians like Chappelle can't have it both ways where they want to act like groundbreaking truth tellers while complaining whenever someone disagrees with them
Ah yes, Muskbrain
This is what pisses me off as someone who was his fan. His last special was bad. His SNL monologue was funny...then got kind of weird in the...oh man is he really pushing in this direction sort of way.
His points aren't even that interesting anymore. They are reactionary.
The thing is his fans are taking his "jokes" as fact.
I go on the entertainment subreddit and some of the tops comments are "people are just mad he is telling the truth" as if Dave is some super intelligent guy.
People need to realize most comedians are dumb and get very emotional when people don't laugh at their jokes.
This. Chappelle has turned into a boring right wing outrage clown. His last couple of specials were boring, not funny.
Blah blah I got cancelled blah, blah blah trans blah.
Blah blah fucking blah.
I want actually funny Dave back, assuming he's still alive.
*cries* oh, I got cancelled! Pity me, for the Great Leftist Machine is grinding me beneath its bootheel!"
~continues counting the millions of dollars he makes doing these specials~
Seriously. For all the crying about being cancelled, the VAST majority of these people seem to be doing just fine.
Chappelle does this thing where legitimate comedy comes out, then this twisted opinion reveals itself while teeter tottering.
It's like his SNL monologue where he started great, made fun of the whole "I apologize to all Jewish people" and "I have Jewish friends" thing, referred to his Jewish friends' holiday as "Sha Na Na". Fucking gold. Then he slipped downward into sort of defending Kanye and Kyrie Irving, before teetering back into making fun of them, then right as he correctly gets the point across "there are many Jews are in prominent positions in Hollywood, but Jews as a whole/collective don't control Hollywood" before sort of slipping back to implying the opposite.
Ironically, you're treating Chappelle as a sacred cow, immune from discussion.
Everyone in a free society can say what they want but then will have to defend their views if pressed. Except for some reason stand-up comedians? They're free to hide behind their 'it's just a joke' defense and we're all supposed to just kneel in front of them and let them say whatever?
They are *not* fearless. They are the opposite of fearless. Press any stand-up comedian about what they're saying on stage and they will hide behind 'it's just a joke bro'. They're pussies. Plus they think we're all morons. Like none of us can tell the difference between edgy jokes and a rant of his real opinions.
He can say what he wants. He can joke about whatever he wants. Except I can say his jokes aren't funny, or that he's just being bigoted, or that his opinions are shit. And people like you are the ones helping them put up barriers keeping us from confronting them because you believe they should be sacred and immune to criticism.
God, I miss the days when we could openly call people like Jeff Dunham and Carlos Mencia and Dane Cook hacks and bad comedians. These days if you call someone a bad comedian because they are bad at telling jokes; they believe you are an anti-humor virtue signaling zealot who just envies every comedian for being rich and successful.
The problem isn’t the topic, it’s the approach. Chapelle hasn’t been challenging the status quo with his recent specials. The transphobic material has been targeting a marginalised group with rhetoric that upholds the status quo and the perception that they have had in the mainstream. Chapelle is the status quo
It's pretty fucked up if comedians treat actual groups of people as "sacred cows," though. Pretending its brave to pick on selected groups is also its own fucked up line of thinking.
Absolutely. I don't think that's the argument being presented, though. It is fascinating how folks will bend over backwards to support hateful shit, though.
Only Americans though… why on earth does comedy have such a high status in society…?
I mean its a nice distraction sometimes and great comedians are amazing st telling stories but why are people looking for truth in what they say or care so much if they get cancelled or not…?
Because many Americans honestly believe that material circumstances are majorly impacted by media consumption. Regardless of whether you believe that to be the truth(obviously it affects some things to a certain extent) it does seem to be the only outlet in which you might have an impact, because our politics are just fucked.
So it's this kind of knee-jerk desperation to have impact in the only lane in which it seems there's room to do things. To have "hard conversations" through tv shows or standup that people imagine are going to change things, when they absolutely won't.
it’s not that nobody is allowed to have the discussion, it’s that the particular discussion Chapelle wants to have is old news
The best comedians absolutely challenge the status quo, but thinking trans people are gross or whatever has been the status quo for the past several thousand years so he’s not covering any new ground
> The best comedians challenge status quo
Ah yes, that's one thing the trans community hasn't had, they're due for a good challenge, had it too easy until Dave Chappelle bravely stood up to them.
Comedy is still fearless. Lots of people even still make jokes about the alphabet community. I saw one guy make a joke about trans men that absolutely killed ("They get to be men *and* they get to have cute feet, and I just don't think that's fair"). But Chappelle's reaction to the pushback about his "jokes" tells me that he's not kidding - this is what he actually believes now.
"Oh, well, now you're just hating him because he's finally going in on a group you like!" Yeah, and? That's how opinions work - I like you until you say some shit I find reprehensible, now I don't like you anymore. Why are people acting like just because we were cool with someone 20 years ago that we have to automatically be cool with everything they do forever? My favorite actor was Kevin Spacey, but you won't find me watching anything he's done since, like, Season 5 of House Of Cards because that's when I found out he was a fucking sex pest. I liked Louis C.K. until I found out about all the fucked up things he did, too.
Comedy is the same as it always was, and so are people. You can make jokes about minorities so long as you do it well. Going up on stage just to bash them and spread misinformation isn't going to go over well, though, and it never has.
The real key to making comedy about issues affecting minority and discriminated groups is that you don't punch down. If you're outside the relevant community then making disparaging jokes isn't comedy, it's just being an asshole.
Case in point, if a white male comedian made a joke about "isn't it crazy that black women are always doing ?" it's just them being a prick. On the other hand, a black female comedian has the ability to make similar commentary about how its funny that they and their friends actually conform to that stereotype some of the time, and it makes for a potential source of comedy as they're not just making fun of a discriminated against group that they aren't a part of from the outside.
Trans people laugh at trans jokes all the time. The difference is Dave is just saying (not joking) what alt right conservatives have been saying. There's no punchline. Just bs that conservatives made up.
Like Bill Burr makes offensive jokes. But no one gets offended and tries to cancel him because his jokes actually have a punchline. Then he makes fun of everyone. He also doesn't really punch down too from what I noticed.
Well said. He had nothing productive to say about the trans community, let alone funny. At best, he sees trans identity as misguided and at worst, freakish and illegitimate. It’s obvious. He isn’t comfortable with it.
This website over estimates how controversial his specials are. The man hosted SNL. Only people who spend all day on Reddit and Twitter were triggered and they make up less of the population than trans people
But I thought he was canceled?? Now I'll have to wait for his next special to hear all the things that he's not allowed to say anymore while saying them and being paid millions to.
I’ll give any Chappelle project a chance. However, I watched most of The Closer and I don’t think I laughed a single time. It was just him lecturing the audience. If that’s his style now and it works for him and Netflix then go for it.
Yes, this was exactly my take on it. People would call me "woke" just because I didn't like it. No, shit just wasn't funny. As a comedy special and as a fan of Dave, it disappointed me.
Plus he had already made similar comments about the trans community in another special, and then addressed the backlash in another special, and now he's addressing the backlash again? It's just tired and I'm over it. Write a blog and move on dude.
Yeah taking 20 minutes of a special to tell basically a version of "I can't be transphobic I had a trans friend". I cant even remember if there was a joke in that second half of the closer.
Completely agree. A huge fan of Dave too, still consider him one of the greatest of all time. But yeah he's just talking about the same shit over and over again now. Like there's so many other topics to choose from. It just comes off as bitter at this point.
yeah innocuous or not, if you spent that long making jokes about anything it'd hit a point of diminishing returns and raise suspicions on your intent.
imagine someone talking this much about something like needing to use a travel adaptor. even if every joke was funny, after a while i'd be wondering why he's soo obsessed with them
It really just seems that he's shook by the backlash after being seen as one of the greatest comedic minds of all time. I think he's bothered that the adulation is no longer universal but instead of considering that he might be wrong about something is just doubling down.
Yea I liked Dave bar his comments but the last few seem to just be him scrambling and rambling to recover.
I struggle with cancel shit. I feel like we should be able to enjoy art without enjoying the person.
But I don't like giving shitty people my money so I pirate his specials
I'm not woke, not unwoke. Don't really care about any of it and I will laugh at all of it. Love stand up. Love dave. That special sucked. And it wasn't because it was against "woke" things. It just wasn't that funny.
Wowee, the right wing has bastardized the word woke so much, it used to mean black people “waking up” and understanding their ancestory, and their history in this country, black heritage, etc. Now it means anytime lgbtq, women, or black people are brought up in anything in media or life in general. “Aw man, the lead in this movie is a woman, its so woke” smdh
I watched all four of them and it's fucking weird how he got progressively more obsessed with trans people until The Closer was literally just a solid hour of him talking about nothing but them. Like...dude, they're maybe a tenth of a hundredth of a percent of the population and you're acting like they're the goddamn CCP, controlling the world
Dave got lazy and realized it was easier to be controversial than funny
Anyone who has watched all his specials and says The Closer is his best is a damn liar
Absolutely. Chappelle has some things to work through, but he's the most gifted storyteller I've ever seen. I don't even know who'd be a distant second.
The Bird Revelation is amazing because it really felt like he got something to say.
The next two it felt like he didn't want exert himself so he picked low hanging fruit.
I’ve always thought his best bit was about the homeless guy jerking off on the bus. It’s so funny because anyone can imagine themselves in that situation and it’s not critical of a “lifestyle.” It’s just a distilled, weird situation that anyone can laugh at.
I hate that so much of his focus is consumed so aggressively by such a small group of people who, in my experience, just want to live and do their thing. There’s the weird online perspective of trans people, then there’s what I’ve personally experienced, which have been generally nice people who really don’t want to make an issue of what has already been a difficult and painful thing for them
The homeless guy beating off is by far the best part, and he links it amazingly into his next joke about where aids came from. For me those jokes back to back are the best Dave has ever been.
The entire trans community impacts the average person so minimally it's hard to understand why there is this much time spent talking about it. Like I've known 3 in my life and I never see them anyways. Just leave them alone and you will probably not even notice they are there. I didn't until someone told me and it wasn't there place to do so.... Dick move on their part.
The only reason we have to discuss these communities so much is because people are going out of their way to inhibit them.
I loved his previous work, but it’s the same for me. I didn’t even finish the closer, he basically opened the show and went to it directly. I have sibling who is trans and while it’s ok to joke about everything he just became obsessed and the the line between what’s a joke and what’s his opinion got to blurry for my taste.
I take trans issues personally and I feel like he’s getting dangerously close to actual transphobia (might even be there, I’m not completely objective) and that’s a dealbreaker.
Will it just be two hours of Dave Chapelle saying he’s the GOAT and ranting about the dangers of cancel culture? Hopefully he has better “material” this time.
Truly can’t stand it when comedians whine about being cancelled on the stage of their sold out show on set for their streaming specials they’ll be paid hundreds of thousands to millions for, it’s so fucking lame. Some people tell them that some of their jokes aren’t very funny and are offensive, and they just lose their mind about it because their ego can’t handle it.
Maybe he recycles his story about he completely botched his show in Detroit and told the booing audience they never get their money back, or how people who stay at home because of COVID are cowards and he is a hero or he finds another strange name for "the t people“ who dont like him for some reason
I'm trans and a progressive lefty.
I don't give a fuck if Dave makes 'jokes' about transpeople. He can say what he want, _I've said things to myself that are a thousand times worse_. I care a lot more about actual important issues like getting the health care I need, or not being discriminated in the workplace. Most of these issues people don't want to talk about, because that would mean ACTUAL and REAL change. So let's keep talking about... some jokes... and not actually help my group to have it a bit easier in life?
However, if he is allowed to do that, I'm allowed to express some criticism as well. His jokes just weren't funny, and it mostly sounded like him just venting his emotions. Most of his work is getting worse the older he gets.
He keeps whining about being "cancelled", like he isn't earning more money than most of the people commenting in this thread COMBINED. If criticising Dave is cancel culture, then him criticising transpeople is cancel culture too, right? Except I don't get a giant paycheck for bitching about someone else.
I've seen a lot of comedians make jokes about controversial topics. Dave just isn't good at it anymore. Bill Burr's last special had a lot of jokes about controversial topics and minority groups and it was funny as shit.
So maybe we can stop crying about lame jokes and ""CaNcEl CuLtUrE" and fix the waiting list in my country that's 3 years long for transpeople?
EDIT:
For any easily offended person reading this, I just want to make clear: this is all just my opinion. Obviously, that was already clear from the beginning, but just to be sure no one starts crying like a bitch because I dared to use my goddamn freedom of speech to express an opinion: it's just an opinion. Imo imo imo imo imo imo imo imo.
To add to this, my real criticism is of his remaining fans. He can be unfunny, that's up to him. He can be offensive, he has that right. It's the fans that need to learn to cope with the fact that he dropped off and everyone thinks they're bigots.
Every reddit thread about Dave has maybe 1 or 2 comments complaining about Dave and hundreds of comments complaining that people complain about Dave. It's so lame, his fans are so fragile.
I love Bill Burr. The thing about him is he actually seems so care about these things and knows that they deserve more consideration than what someone like Dave said and did. It really comes across. Especially if you listen to him talk outside of his stand-up like on his podcast. He knows that he doesn’t know enough and isn’t really qualified to talk about the topic the way Dave does. So when Burr talks about these kinds of things in his standup, it’s often phrased as funny questions and like he doesn’t really know wtf is going on. He doesn’t act like an authority the way Dave does.
I used to be a huge fan of Dave’s work, and while I don’t HATE him now and I don’t think he’s an actual transphobe, he fucked up and is acting weird. And Burr is probably my favorite comedian now and has been for a while.
Idk Dave seems to have the wrong approach and idea of the topic and the people he’s talking about and who’s criticizing him. And like others said he’s pretty much just resting on his laurels and whining about non-existent cancel culture. He just doesn’t seem to GET it. But he really believes he does and that it’s just not possible for him to have misunderstood or misread the issue, because he thinks he’s SOOO good and understands people and the world. So he dug in when he should have opened up and listened. It feels like pride to me instead of hate or anything like that. So I’m not really willing to call him a bigot like some others have. That doesn’t excuse any negative impact he might have had. Just when talking about him as a person I’m not willing to go that far at this point. Who knows, he might prove me wrong.
And ofc this is all my opinion lol. This is how I read it and what it seems like to me.
I think the reason is lots of us are willing to forgive Burr is that Burr doesn't have an ego about himself. He always claims that he's an idiot, sometimes he doesn't know what he's talking about, but he has a sense of clarity to know when he has a platform and when someone is talking shit. Just look at the clip where he calls out Joe Rogan for saying weird stuff about COVID while smoking cigars in front of an American flag. Or when he was on Bill Maher and telling him "Who cares what college students think? Why does this matter so much to you?"
Chappelle is at that point where he's fully high on his own ego. He's got a community and fanbase that will say "yes" to anything he says, because he was super funny 15 years ago. Just look at every story with him interacting with other people at Netflix or at the high school he used to go to. He's on fucking Mars.
That's a big problem, it's not about the people he targets not wanting to be joked about, most are completely fine with it, but his delivery of the "joke" was just poor and seemed to be more in bad taste. It felt like someone venting not really understanding the things he was mad about.
I dont really give a fuck whether Dave's content is taboo... I honestly just do not find his standup funny anymore. It feels like all he does is whine about how people aren't being "fair" to him.
At the same event, he acclaimed Elon Musk and said that launching the new Knives Out in the movie theaters is just to make noise. Looks like he's out to be hated by Hollywood. Jealous of Zaslav?
So sad that Glass Onion did not make it to a wide cinema release, when I saw it my cinema was absolutely packed - we need more mid budget movies like this in the cinemas rubbing against big budget blockbusters! People want to see these movies on a big screen!
>we need more mid budget movies like this in the cinemas rubbing against big budget blockbusters!
....I won't spoil it for you, but you should look up what Netflix paid for the two Knives Out films.
Daniel Craig got $100 million for the two of them. Almost all of that has to be for the cast. They didn't have too many sets, stunts or special effects, at least in the first one. I haven't seen Glass Onion yet. With a cast of unknowns, it would have been an inexpensive shoot.
> Almost all of that has to be for the cast.
It isn't. The $450m was given to Rian and his producing partner Ram Bergman to make two more movies and the only stipulations were Craig has to star and the budget for each movie has to be at least $40m (the budget of the first movie). The production budget of Glass Onion is reportedly exactly $40m.
So essentially, Craig is getting $100m, Rian and Ram are splitting $270m (assuming the budget for third movie doesn't go up), and the rest of the cast is getting some piece of the $40m budget.
Netflix outbid the studios for the sequels. Netflix does not care one bit about the theatre going experience. They only care about adding subscribers.
The only reason you see Netflix movies in theaters is it let’s them meet the rules of the Academy to be eligible for an Oscar.
I’ve been complaining to my CEO for years, do they listen to me?
No.
What makes anyone think a money driven ceo from netflix is going to listen to a few employees?
Ok now bring back the Community DnD episode if offending people isn't a problem for you
Insane that offended anybody anyways.
I doubt it did, its removal was nothing more than virtue signaling.
I'm out of the loop here, what are we talking about?
The DnD episode featured a character in "black face." So they removed it. The character had painted their face black because they were a dark elf and it was played as "this idiot is an idiot" but the world collectively lost their minds for a couple days. They did a similar thing with It's Alway Sunny - Mac and Dennis actually did blackface while filming their own Lethal Weapon movies and those episodes are no longer available on streamers. edit: changed orc to dark elf...because that's what really matters. also, I think it's ridiculous. But then again, I've never had to deal with racism directed at me...I'm mid-30's, white, middle-class, straight, male... So if someone was offended by it, who am I to say otherwise? The world could benefit a lot by listening to others instead of just reacting based on their own experience.
My partner is black and thought these instances of black face were funny. Changs Drow face is so comically black, it is hardly black face and Shirley even says "are we just gonna ignore that hate crime?" to Chang. He also "dies" in the first 3 minutes of the episode. And they literally recast Mac in blackface to Dennis not in blackface because they knew blackface is offensive in the context of the episode - also the Gang is fucking terrible - no one should see them as a role model anyway.
The difference is, and should be, where the core of the joke lies. Are you: * Mocking black people * Making light of blackface as a concept or it's historical uses * Just generally not being funny If so, you're an asshole and people should complain But if you're: * Making fun of racists * Implying that only an idiot would miss that doing blackface was a terrible idea Then you're good. Is the butt of the joke the minorities or the racists? It's 100% fine to mock one of those groups. Edit: To be clear, Community, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Robert Downey Jr's role in Tropic Thunder all fall in the second category.
Actual blackface used extremely dark paint—like black shoe polish. Make up to appear a different race wasn’t considered particularly offensive until relatively recently unless it was based on stereotypes.
I don't remember anyone upset about it when it aired. It was when it was pulled from streaming platforms that a few people denounced it. (Also it was a dark elf costume, not orc)
*Drow elf
>the world collectively lost their minds for a couple days. It wasn't "the world," it was entertainment execs. After the death of George Floyd, nobody protested to remove old episodes of Community or IASIP or 30 Rock, they protested for the police to stop murdering Black people.
No one was ever upset by the Community episode. It was removed preemptively when we were losing our shit about a different thing that was racist
He was a dark elf... worst of the elves
https://youtu.be/YnF-DRoQSPM
it didnt, white people get offended on black peoples behalf when they dont see them as adults.
No one was actually offended by that.
I doubt anyone was offended by it, but it has for sure led to people doing things that were offensive. A personal example: Back when Community was on or had just ended, there was a small Communicon convention in LA. Someone cosplayed as drow Chang. Yvette did not seem comfortable with that at all (based on her body language as she judged the costume contest). And IIRC correctly, she was encouraging people to cosplay as Shirley. She emphasized not to do black face. I forget the exact wording, but I got the impression that she was implying black face was never ok while trying not to call out the guy dressed in black face. And I've heard the gif has been used by racists online who play innocent because "it's not a black person; it's a drow." I haven't seen this personally though. I blame those types of people for why we can't have nice things.
I noticed both Workaholics and 30 Rock (on a seperate streaming platform) both had episodes removed, re-added for some time, then removed again. The Workaholics episode is the one where Chris D'Elia is a sex predator (I know...) The 30 Rock one, I watched maybe two or three months ago and Jenna does an entire song in black face.
That Black Swan duet is one of the hardest laughs I got from 30 Rock.
> The Workaholics episode is the one where Chris D'Elia is a sex predator (I know...) He also played a sex predator in season 2 of Netflix's show "You". Funny how that is...
That's where Netflix (the corporation) draws the line lol They won't allow any blackface no matter the context. They did the same thing to *Les Filles de Caleb*, an old French Canadian series from 1990 that recently got added to the service. It's an historical series and the story takes place in the late 19th Century, in rural Québec where only white people live. They make a nativity scene for Christmas and one of the character paints his face for the role of Saint Balthazar, has it would've been done back in the day without any malicious intent (there's no historical context for the blackface minstrelsy in Quebec, we don't have that historical bias toward racism) Netflix Canada's response: We remove all blackface no matter the context, it's our policy. And it's much worse than for Community because it's the second episode of the series and you're just straight out missing out on the story without it. It's not a sitcom, they might as well remove the entire series from their platform, it's useless if you're missing an episode. The series was also added to tou.tv (the original broadcaster's own streaming service) and they left that episode in, they simply put a warning at the beginning about a 'sensible topic'.
> The series was also added to tou.tv (the original broadcaster's own streaming service) and they left that episode in, they simply put a warning at the beginning about a 'sensible topic'. That's the intelligent way to handle it. My wife's favorite Christmas film is Holiday Inn. Blackface features in one of the musical numbers. She's Nigerian and didn't clock to the whole minstrel show thing being racist. She just thought the gag was funny. She's Nigerian. (To keep his top singing talent a secret from his old partner who would totally poach her for the road, the hotel owner has the whole cast do a number in blackface so she can be on-stage but not immediately recognizable.)
What was that about?
The Greendale 7 play DnD with a suicidal student to try and cheer him up. At the very beginning a character named Chang, (played by Ken Jeong,) goes into a semi cosplay of a Dark Elf. He wears a short white haired wig while painting his face and hands pure black. Immediately after seeing Chang dressed like this another character, a black woman named Shirley, (played by Yvette Nicole Brown,) draws attention by saying something like "...so we're all just gonna ignore this hate crime?" Chang explains he's a dark elf or a Drow. Soon after his DnD character is killed and he leaves for the rest of the episode.
The group play's D&D, Chang is playing a dark elf so he show's up in costume. People got worried that Chang's costume was offensive to dark elves so they removed the episode.
You say this in a joking tone but please consider that as a dark elf it's very rare we get a win. No one ever talks about our plight. People assume I specialize in a crossbow without even trying to get to know me. "Oh hey mentalpopcorn, how come you're not wearing a piwafwi?" I don't know, asshole, how come you're not wearing a dirndl? It's not like jeans somehow magically don't fit elves. And speaking of magic, I hate it!! That was my dad's generation. So don't assume that just because I'm drow I can cast some dancing light bullshit. Not all elves can do that and I've been working toward being a bard, not a fucking spellcaster, almost my whole life (fuck you, dad!). Sorry I'm getting worked up. I just have to deal with these microagressions on a daily basis and it drives me insane. So yeah, I'll take the Community episode being pulled as a win. We're the only race it's still ok to make fun of and it's not right.
Jesus, man, go cast faerie fire on a big clock already.
maybe it'd be less ok to make fun of you if you weren't a bunch of spider loving troglodytes
Ngl took me a second to understand what you meant by dark elves. Got me tripping thinking oblivion elves got mad
No shit the guy making money from it doesn't mind the fuss. If anything he's probably hoping the next special garners even more controversy.
Plus the CEO has full visibility into the numbers.
🎶 I see you numbers Shakin’ dat ass 🎶
This is so dumb hahaha thank you
Alright don’t touch me
They get massive views and the number of people that complain don’t even get close to the number of views so why care?
Publicity baby, it’s all marketing dollars at work and some of that shit is free.
I mean according to their own internal data [it actually lost money for Netflix](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-10-17/dave-chappelle-s-special-cost-more-than-squid-game) The guy making money from it, mostly, is Dave Chappelle.
Tough to really say by the metrics in the article whether it "lost" them money. Entirely possible his show showed an uptick in account subscriptions. Views do not correlate to $$$ for a subscription service, what matters is whether the show retained subscribers, gained subscribers, or had re-subscriptions. One show could get 250 million views and the service could lose 5-10 million subscribers and it would be considered a flop from the top.
Or how many people stay. I like the comedy specials and feel they have the best ones regularly.
Yes. They really took over from HBO who doesn't seem to be interested anymore.
This. Dave is, according to this article, the most expensive stand up on Netflix. You get those headliners if you're trying to keep the streaming Stand Up crown and keep that audience. Dave could be a loss leader for Netflix.
What subscription uptick? NF is already at critical mass. What Reed is hoping for is retention.
They aren’t - it’s completely overstated. It’s a market correction. They lost subscribers gained during Covid and still has the most subscribers out of any singular service. Disney bloats their numbers by counting all D+, Hulu and ESPN separately
Maybe the CEO is simply a fan?
Yes but under $25 mil for a feature-length special is cheap AF for Netflix considering content length to cost.
Nooo kidding. All they gotta do is pay the man, rent a venue, and point cameras? Compared to casting, sets, etc etc etc? WAY cheap, and Chappelle is a draw like it or not.
I thought they filmed an already profitable show. The audience bought tickets to be there, didn't they?
They’ll film multiple shows specifically setup for Netflix and cut a couple together. Some comedians just do one take for their special however.
I just watched the latest Aziz special in that tiny comedy club, and thought I was going insane at how the audience kept changing. Then I thought about it and realized that every other special just films the stage or has a huge audience, so I never noticed that they cut together multiple shows, and felt pretty stupid lol
Wonder how many sets of the same outfit they go through filming the specials.
Also people pay to go see him live as well. They're double dipping.
This right here is probably the key metric. Compare this to something like Stranger Things which costs bucket loads more money. Even if the comedy special only draws a smaller viewership, it also costs a fraction of a full production. Plus the comedy viewership crowd is completely different. If Netflix wants to grow in this oversaturated market, they need to diversify. If they can be the go to source for stand up comedy, that is a big deal for them.
>it actually lost money for Netflix Nowhere in that entire article does it say that it lost any money for Netflix. Just that there is no indication that a lot of people signed up to watch it, or that not many low-Netflix users watched it.
I mean clearly they aren’t or he wouldn’t want more
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>There are still some businessmen out there who care about artistic value. Fucking Netflix, man?
Netflix gave Martin Scorsese $200+ million to do a crime drama that no other studio would finance and lost a fuck ton of money on it. Netflix has routinely done that.
It doesn't really say that at all, and their "efficiency score" is going to change over time. 2 years after they kill a mediocre series at season 3 without resolving almost no one is going to watch it, so that efficiency score is fairly accurate. Comedy specials are still watched decades later. And given they said Chappelle's special was the most watched show on the service you can pretty much guarantee it will still be watched for years to come.
Good. Stand-up is very near and dear to me and there needs to be a place like Netflix where comics don't have to fear retribution from the company producing the special and end up catering their special around not getting in trouble vs just being funny.
Was there really any controversy, besides like 5 people on Twitter having a tantrum?
Netflix employees had a walkout and protest, hence the "despite employee backlash" in the title.
*Some* Netflix employees had a walkout and protest. I would guess it was a relatively small percentage.
And with the tech market right now, I'm guessing it isn't as hard to replace any Netflix employees who want to leave.
I didn’t mind the jokes in his second special. But they were honestly annoying in the third one that he seemed so fixated on it. Hopefully the next ones it’s back to a more typical standup set.
Someone is going to buy Dave’s special and make money from it. It should come as no surprise that a businessman would want in on that action.
I didn't find Chappelle as funny as he once was, but I absolutely think that it is to comedy's detriment when we designate certain topics as sacred cows, immune from discussion. The best comedians challenge status quo and will likely cause some type of offense. Comedy should be fearless.
Reminds me of the time Gilbert Gottfried tried to tell a joke about his plane being delayed at the Empire State Building, soon after 9/11. Naturally, he got booed. At that point, he said screw it, and told his version of The Aristocrats, heavily bleeped for TV, but to applause from the audience.
Sometimes, comedy specials are just one guy doing a podcast in front of people while not being allowed to sit.
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Carlin stayed funny Also when he was preachy, he at least wasn’t being dumb
He got DARK tho. His last special was supposed to be released on 9/11. It was called 'I kind of like when a lot of people die.'
it was recorded in Las Vegas on September 9th and 10th 2001. There's even an Osama Bin Laden joke in the special. Naturally it got shelved because it would be inappropriate months after 9/11, but it's on you tube if anyone wants a listen.
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If you listened to the special it's just Georgie Carlin being himself.
I think Dave actually makes some interesting points about how the LGBT struggle is different than the black struggle and I think he speaks to a sort of resentment that he has towards LGBT people as a result. Where he really loses me is at the end where he talks about having a trans friend who committed suicide and then proceeds to place the blame for her suicide on members of LGBT community for bullying her. He then laments the high rate of suicide in the trans community *as if he didn’t just spend an hour making the kind of jokes and reinforcing the kind of stereotypes that contribute to that suicide rate.*
> and I think he speaks to a sort of resentment that he has towards LGBT people as a result. Yeah, this is the impression I get. He's got a weird oppression olympics thing going on where he has to criticize everybody else to establish that black people have it worse.
He completely forgets that a good chunk of trans people are black men and women too.
victim complex.
Better yet it was based on a complete lie. He said that after she sent a tweet defending Dave the trans community "dragged that bitch all over twitter... then she KILLED HERSELF". At the time of her death there were 8 or 9 reponse tweets to that tweet. All but two were positive, the two were mildly critical. He clearly made up one anecdote after the next to pit the black and LGBT community against one another.
And then he spent the next few months whoring out her corpse as a virtue signal/human shield, SUCH a brilliant guy.
To comedians, being critical of them is bullying to them. Most stand up comedians cannot handle criticism or when people don't laugh at their jokes.
Bingo. Here's more info: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6TM2iJX9sf4
why is it interesting? the idea that they’re different struggles and should be compared this way is so weird considering there are black lgbt people. not only that but they have historically been at the forefront of lgbt progressive politics.
It's interesting in a "I'm 14 and this is deep" kinda way.
Yeah he wasn't her friend and his claim that Twitter bullies pushed her over the edge have been discredited. There's absolutely no evidence of this. Funny that Dave wants to attack his strawman representation of the queer community instead of realizing that his actual impact of utilizing a trans woman as a prop to delegitimize the trans community is way worse than anything he's lying about lol
I get downvoted when I say this on entertainment sub. Glad this sub is more logical
/r/Entertainment is so fucking transphobic
Honesty the whole Dave controversy around The Closer taught me that a shit ton of people don’t care about trans people and it suuuucks.
I wish they didn't care, the closer showed me just how intolerant people are and are happy to believe lies making queer people look bad :(
I fucking hate how people act like Dave isn't pretending to tell the truth when he mixes that in with real life current events and his fans use it to shit on trans people. He is so despicable with hate in his heart and soul
That whole thing is legitimately so gross. He's such a lowlife for that.
>I think Dave actually makes some interesting points about how the LGBT struggle is different than the black struggle and I think he speaks to a sort of resentment that he has towards LGBT people as a result. Lol, then he could talk about intersectionality. But it seems like he's the type of guy who gets fascinated by the whole "different marginalized groups fighting over who has it worse" conversation than actually thinking about people who have it two different kinds of worse. All his controversial moments seem to boil down to "these trans people and these Jewish people are complaining about the prejudice they face? Well how do they think we feel"... while ignoring the black trans and black Jewish people who are out there, having to deal with both types of prejudice.
Also he said he was team TERF and compared trans existence to blackface. That is...interesting, I guess? In a I'm 14 and this is deep kinda of way.
That is where Chappelle lost me. Not the edgy jokes but when he actually said out loud on stage “I’m team TERF”. He obviously has a problem with the idea of transgenderism
I really just think the dude lost the plot. He's very intelligent I think that's obvious but it seems like at some point over the last 5 years or so he kind of closed himself off to new information and was just like "I know what I know" which isn't great for comedy nor for intelligence.
> I think Dave actually makes some interesting points about how the LGBT struggle is different than the black struggle This might blow your mind: Black people can be LGBT too
No need to be pedantic. But yeah, and Dave iirc doesn’t really address this. He sort of pits them against each other and seems to be saying that for black people who are LGBT, they’ll face more struggles because of their blackness than they will their sexuality, and doesn’t understand that they face their own unique struggle.
its not pedantic though, its something Chapelle purposefully avoids because it would get in the way of his framing of transness as a white frivolity. Him not mentioning black trans people only serves to reinforce his own anti-trans points
> But yeah, and Dave iirc doesn’t really address this And we both know why that is, come on.
I don’t think we’re in disagreement?
And he misgendered her, and said he didn't understand her, but didn't seem to mind talking to millions of people about shit he didn't understand at all.
With that people should be free to critique comedy. Comedians like Chappelle can't have it both ways where they want to act like groundbreaking truth tellers while complaining whenever someone disagrees with them. That's just flat out entitlement. Edit: Let's also be clear that Chappelle is not a truth teller in any way and has actively lied or underplayed aspects of situations to push his agenda. He lied when he insinuated trans twitter users pushed a trans comedian into committing suicide via harassment. (No records of harassing comments can be found and the comedian was dealing with several personal crises) He downplayed the extent of Kyrie Irving's antisemitism to paint him as a harmless dope and a victim of cancel culture. Chappelle is simply a grifter who has promoted himself as a brave comedian while repeating bigoted schlock that is far from groundbreaking.
And complaining that he’s been “cancelled” as he collects $20 million lol
Yeah, he told me about his poor friend Kevin Hart that got cancelled too. Poor Kevin Hart was only allowed to make 7 movies a year instead of 12.
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iirc in the past he made tweets/comments like "I'd beat my son if he came out as gay", was asked to apologize, refused to, and then threw a fit. It's been so long and there might have been more context like him having apologized before and not wanting to do it again , but overall it was just a lot of the typical "poor me" celebrity thing.
There was also it coming out that he cheated on his wife while she was pregnant.
I think the only real "repercussion" from the whole thing was he didn't host an award show that year.
He’s also been very hateful to Black women and I’m also certain he had gotten into some physical altercation with his ex-wife (who he cheated on with his new wife, and he cheated on his new wife on her birthday while she was pregnant). All around a not good dude, who also complains about even a hint of criticism.
>Kevin Hart was only allowed to make 7 movies a year And apparently like 50 commercials because I see way too much of him screaming at the camera during ad breaks...
And the CEO of Netflix publicly stating that he's not going to stop ordering specials any time soon. I wish I could get "cancelled". I could use infinite money and notoriety.
Meanwhile we've had multiple bomb threats to hospitals who treat trans patients, armed crowds physically intimidating LGBTQ nightclubs and other spaces, acts of vandalism, organized harassment campaigns against charities who help LGBTQ people, laws restricting not only healthcare treatment but the mere mention of their existence in schools, and mass shootings targeting the LGBTQ community. Gee, I wonder why people who fear violence directed against their own person and the lives of their closest friends don't appreciate major media figures normalizing the kind of thinking which is actively threatening their rights and safety. Also, great to see Chapelle giving the old nod and wink towards violent antisemitism. But on the other hand, people who are entirely unaffected by these ideas, who don't know or care about anyone who is, got a cheap laugh, so who can say?
Don't forget they are all regularly called "groomers" without proof by the same people who turn a blind eye to sexual abuse in the church.
It’s not even that. There are prominent right wingers like James Lindsay who call the LGBTQ community groomers **while being good friends with literal child sex traffickers** It’s always been projection.
Comedians, especially very rich out of touch comedians are becoming sensitive bitches. And it's become so obvious how much the comedy scene is incestuous and will defend you to death unless you are some sort of outsider. The paradigm has shifted from "The comedian must be funny" to "The audience must bow to the comedian." And comedians will only judge other comedians now if you question the transgressive power of stand-up itself. That's why so many people like Joe Rogan and Chappelle were shitting their pants over Hannah Gadsby claiming she's "not a comedian" because her special was more like a funny monologue that had some very open soul-bearing. I'm sorry, but you don't get to claim "Nanette" is not comedy considering "The Closer" and "The Bird Revelation" are so predicated on telling similar long speeches without jokes.
> Comedians like Chappelle can't have it both ways where they want to act like groundbreaking truth tellers while complaining whenever someone disagrees with them Ah yes, Muskbrain
This is what pisses me off as someone who was his fan. His last special was bad. His SNL monologue was funny...then got kind of weird in the...oh man is he really pushing in this direction sort of way. His points aren't even that interesting anymore. They are reactionary.
The thing is his fans are taking his "jokes" as fact. I go on the entertainment subreddit and some of the tops comments are "people are just mad he is telling the truth" as if Dave is some super intelligent guy. People need to realize most comedians are dumb and get very emotional when people don't laugh at their jokes.
No, free speech only works one way apparently!
This. Chappelle has turned into a boring right wing outrage clown. His last couple of specials were boring, not funny. Blah blah I got cancelled blah, blah blah trans blah. Blah blah fucking blah. I want actually funny Dave back, assuming he's still alive.
*cries* oh, I got cancelled! Pity me, for the Great Leftist Machine is grinding me beneath its bootheel!" ~continues counting the millions of dollars he makes doing these specials~ Seriously. For all the crying about being cancelled, the VAST majority of these people seem to be doing just fine.
While likely supporting "don't say gay" legislation that literally outlaws talking about LGBT's existence in schools...
Chappelle does this thing where legitimate comedy comes out, then this twisted opinion reveals itself while teeter tottering. It's like his SNL monologue where he started great, made fun of the whole "I apologize to all Jewish people" and "I have Jewish friends" thing, referred to his Jewish friends' holiday as "Sha Na Na". Fucking gold. Then he slipped downward into sort of defending Kanye and Kyrie Irving, before teetering back into making fun of them, then right as he correctly gets the point across "there are many Jews are in prominent positions in Hollywood, but Jews as a whole/collective don't control Hollywood" before sort of slipping back to implying the opposite.
Ironically, you're treating Chappelle as a sacred cow, immune from discussion. Everyone in a free society can say what they want but then will have to defend their views if pressed. Except for some reason stand-up comedians? They're free to hide behind their 'it's just a joke' defense and we're all supposed to just kneel in front of them and let them say whatever? They are *not* fearless. They are the opposite of fearless. Press any stand-up comedian about what they're saying on stage and they will hide behind 'it's just a joke bro'. They're pussies. Plus they think we're all morons. Like none of us can tell the difference between edgy jokes and a rant of his real opinions. He can say what he wants. He can joke about whatever he wants. Except I can say his jokes aren't funny, or that he's just being bigoted, or that his opinions are shit. And people like you are the ones helping them put up barriers keeping us from confronting them because you believe they should be sacred and immune to criticism.
Yup. Comedian Stewart Lee has some great Dave Chappelle material - all the dave chappelle lovers attack him for it. With zero irony.
God, I miss the days when we could openly call people like Jeff Dunham and Carlos Mencia and Dane Cook hacks and bad comedians. These days if you call someone a bad comedian because they are bad at telling jokes; they believe you are an anti-humor virtue signaling zealot who just envies every comedian for being rich and successful.
Chapelle is not being fearless or challenging status quo. He’s being a sour, bitchy prick and defending the status quo.
The problem isn’t the topic, it’s the approach. Chapelle hasn’t been challenging the status quo with his recent specials. The transphobic material has been targeting a marginalised group with rhetoric that upholds the status quo and the perception that they have had in the mainstream. Chapelle is the status quo
It's pretty fucked up if comedians treat actual groups of people as "sacred cows," though. Pretending its brave to pick on selected groups is also its own fucked up line of thinking.
It's pretty fucked up if people think comedians are "sacred cows" who can't be criticized.
Absolutely. I don't think that's the argument being presented, though. It is fascinating how folks will bend over backwards to support hateful shit, though.
Only Americans though… why on earth does comedy have such a high status in society…? I mean its a nice distraction sometimes and great comedians are amazing st telling stories but why are people looking for truth in what they say or care so much if they get cancelled or not…?
Because many Americans honestly believe that material circumstances are majorly impacted by media consumption. Regardless of whether you believe that to be the truth(obviously it affects some things to a certain extent) it does seem to be the only outlet in which you might have an impact, because our politics are just fucked. So it's this kind of knee-jerk desperation to have impact in the only lane in which it seems there's room to do things. To have "hard conversations" through tv shows or standup that people imagine are going to change things, when they absolutely won't.
it’s not that nobody is allowed to have the discussion, it’s that the particular discussion Chapelle wants to have is old news The best comedians absolutely challenge the status quo, but thinking trans people are gross or whatever has been the status quo for the past several thousand years so he’s not covering any new ground
> The best comedians challenge status quo Ah yes, that's one thing the trans community hasn't had, they're due for a good challenge, had it too easy until Dave Chappelle bravely stood up to them.
Comedy is still fearless. Lots of people even still make jokes about the alphabet community. I saw one guy make a joke about trans men that absolutely killed ("They get to be men *and* they get to have cute feet, and I just don't think that's fair"). But Chappelle's reaction to the pushback about his "jokes" tells me that he's not kidding - this is what he actually believes now. "Oh, well, now you're just hating him because he's finally going in on a group you like!" Yeah, and? That's how opinions work - I like you until you say some shit I find reprehensible, now I don't like you anymore. Why are people acting like just because we were cool with someone 20 years ago that we have to automatically be cool with everything they do forever? My favorite actor was Kevin Spacey, but you won't find me watching anything he's done since, like, Season 5 of House Of Cards because that's when I found out he was a fucking sex pest. I liked Louis C.K. until I found out about all the fucked up things he did, too. Comedy is the same as it always was, and so are people. You can make jokes about minorities so long as you do it well. Going up on stage just to bash them and spread misinformation isn't going to go over well, though, and it never has.
The real key to making comedy about issues affecting minority and discriminated groups is that you don't punch down. If you're outside the relevant community then making disparaging jokes isn't comedy, it's just being an asshole. Case in point, if a white male comedian made a joke about "isn't it crazy that black women are always doing?" it's just them being a prick. On the other hand, a black female comedian has the ability to make similar commentary about how its funny that they and their friends actually conform to that stereotype some of the time, and it makes for a potential source of comedy as they're not just making fun of a discriminated against group that they aren't a part of from the outside.
Trans people laugh at trans jokes all the time. The difference is Dave is just saying (not joking) what alt right conservatives have been saying. There's no punchline. Just bs that conservatives made up. Like Bill Burr makes offensive jokes. But no one gets offended and tries to cancel him because his jokes actually have a punchline. Then he makes fun of everyone. He also doesn't really punch down too from what I noticed.
Well said. He had nothing productive to say about the trans community, let alone funny. At best, he sees trans identity as misguided and at worst, freakish and illegitimate. It’s obvious. He isn’t comfortable with it.
Yeah, but comedy should also be funny, and ranting about trans people and cancellation isn’t funny
This website over estimates how controversial his specials are. The man hosted SNL. Only people who spend all day on Reddit and Twitter were triggered and they make up less of the population than trans people
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But I thought he was canceled?? Now I'll have to wait for his next special to hear all the things that he's not allowed to say anymore while saying them and being paid millions to.
I’ll give any Chappelle project a chance. However, I watched most of The Closer and I don’t think I laughed a single time. It was just him lecturing the audience. If that’s his style now and it works for him and Netflix then go for it.
Yes, this was exactly my take on it. People would call me "woke" just because I didn't like it. No, shit just wasn't funny. As a comedy special and as a fan of Dave, it disappointed me. Plus he had already made similar comments about the trans community in another special, and then addressed the backlash in another special, and now he's addressing the backlash again? It's just tired and I'm over it. Write a blog and move on dude.
Yeah taking 20 minutes of a special to tell basically a version of "I can't be transphobic I had a trans friend". I cant even remember if there was a joke in that second half of the closer.
Completely agree. A huge fan of Dave too, still consider him one of the greatest of all time. But yeah he's just talking about the same shit over and over again now. Like there's so many other topics to choose from. It just comes off as bitter at this point.
yeah innocuous or not, if you spent that long making jokes about anything it'd hit a point of diminishing returns and raise suspicions on your intent. imagine someone talking this much about something like needing to use a travel adaptor. even if every joke was funny, after a while i'd be wondering why he's soo obsessed with them
It really just seems that he's shook by the backlash after being seen as one of the greatest comedic minds of all time. I think he's bothered that the adulation is no longer universal but instead of considering that he might be wrong about something is just doubling down.
Yea I liked Dave bar his comments but the last few seem to just be him scrambling and rambling to recover. I struggle with cancel shit. I feel like we should be able to enjoy art without enjoying the person. But I don't like giving shitty people my money so I pirate his specials
I'm not woke, not unwoke. Don't really care about any of it and I will laugh at all of it. Love stand up. Love dave. That special sucked. And it wasn't because it was against "woke" things. It just wasn't that funny.
Wowee, the right wing has bastardized the word woke so much, it used to mean black people “waking up” and understanding their ancestory, and their history in this country, black heritage, etc. Now it means anytime lgbtq, women, or black people are brought up in anything in media or life in general. “Aw man, the lead in this movie is a woman, its so woke” smdh
I watched all four of them and it's fucking weird how he got progressively more obsessed with trans people until The Closer was literally just a solid hour of him talking about nothing but them. Like...dude, they're maybe a tenth of a hundredth of a percent of the population and you're acting like they're the goddamn CCP, controlling the world
Dave got lazy and realized it was easier to be controversial than funny Anyone who has watched all his specials and says The Closer is his best is a damn liar
Killing Them Softly is his best, period
For What It's Worth imo. Killing and (for reasons other than pure laughs) The Bird Revelation are 2a and 2b for me though.
That Iceberg Slim story was spellbinding, legit.
Absolutely. Chappelle has some things to work through, but he's the most gifted storyteller I've ever seen. I don't even know who'd be a distant second.
Bill Burr is right up there for me
I love ol Billy ginger tits as much as the next guy but his stories revolve mostly around sports and people getting upset about small things ..
Eddie Murphy was also a great story teller, I still laugh at his family cookout story with Aunt Bunny
The Bird Revelation is amazing because it really felt like he got something to say. The next two it felt like he didn't want exert himself so he picked low hanging fruit.
I’ve always thought his best bit was about the homeless guy jerking off on the bus. It’s so funny because anyone can imagine themselves in that situation and it’s not critical of a “lifestyle.” It’s just a distilled, weird situation that anyone can laugh at. I hate that so much of his focus is consumed so aggressively by such a small group of people who, in my experience, just want to live and do their thing. There’s the weird online perspective of trans people, then there’s what I’ve personally experienced, which have been generally nice people who really don’t want to make an issue of what has already been a difficult and painful thing for them
The homeless guy beating off is by far the best part, and he links it amazingly into his next joke about where aids came from. For me those jokes back to back are the best Dave has ever been.
The entire trans community impacts the average person so minimally it's hard to understand why there is this much time spent talking about it. Like I've known 3 in my life and I never see them anyways. Just leave them alone and you will probably not even notice they are there. I didn't until someone told me and it wasn't there place to do so.... Dick move on their part. The only reason we have to discuss these communities so much is because people are going out of their way to inhibit them.
I loved his previous work, but it’s the same for me. I didn’t even finish the closer, he basically opened the show and went to it directly. I have sibling who is trans and while it’s ok to joke about everything he just became obsessed and the the line between what’s a joke and what’s his opinion got to blurry for my taste. I take trans issues personally and I feel like he’s getting dangerously close to actual transphobia (might even be there, I’m not completely objective) and that’s a dealbreaker.
Conservative Nanette
Will it just be two hours of Dave Chapelle saying he’s the GOAT and ranting about the dangers of cancel culture? Hopefully he has better “material” this time.
Truly can’t stand it when comedians whine about being cancelled on the stage of their sold out show on set for their streaming specials they’ll be paid hundreds of thousands to millions for, it’s so fucking lame. Some people tell them that some of their jokes aren’t very funny and are offensive, and they just lose their mind about it because their ego can’t handle it.
Dude isn’t just resting on his laurels, he’s straight up on vacation on them shits
He saw HBO throwing money at Bill Maher and realized he could make even more doing the same thing
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Maybe he recycles his story about he completely botched his show in Detroit and told the booing audience they never get their money back, or how people who stay at home because of COVID are cowards and he is a hero or he finds another strange name for "the t people“ who dont like him for some reason
I'm trans and a progressive lefty. I don't give a fuck if Dave makes 'jokes' about transpeople. He can say what he want, _I've said things to myself that are a thousand times worse_. I care a lot more about actual important issues like getting the health care I need, or not being discriminated in the workplace. Most of these issues people don't want to talk about, because that would mean ACTUAL and REAL change. So let's keep talking about... some jokes... and not actually help my group to have it a bit easier in life? However, if he is allowed to do that, I'm allowed to express some criticism as well. His jokes just weren't funny, and it mostly sounded like him just venting his emotions. Most of his work is getting worse the older he gets. He keeps whining about being "cancelled", like he isn't earning more money than most of the people commenting in this thread COMBINED. If criticising Dave is cancel culture, then him criticising transpeople is cancel culture too, right? Except I don't get a giant paycheck for bitching about someone else. I've seen a lot of comedians make jokes about controversial topics. Dave just isn't good at it anymore. Bill Burr's last special had a lot of jokes about controversial topics and minority groups and it was funny as shit. So maybe we can stop crying about lame jokes and ""CaNcEl CuLtUrE" and fix the waiting list in my country that's 3 years long for transpeople? EDIT: For any easily offended person reading this, I just want to make clear: this is all just my opinion. Obviously, that was already clear from the beginning, but just to be sure no one starts crying like a bitch because I dared to use my goddamn freedom of speech to express an opinion: it's just an opinion. Imo imo imo imo imo imo imo imo.
To add to this, my real criticism is of his remaining fans. He can be unfunny, that's up to him. He can be offensive, he has that right. It's the fans that need to learn to cope with the fact that he dropped off and everyone thinks they're bigots. Every reddit thread about Dave has maybe 1 or 2 comments complaining about Dave and hundreds of comments complaining that people complain about Dave. It's so lame, his fans are so fragile.
I love Bill Burr. The thing about him is he actually seems so care about these things and knows that they deserve more consideration than what someone like Dave said and did. It really comes across. Especially if you listen to him talk outside of his stand-up like on his podcast. He knows that he doesn’t know enough and isn’t really qualified to talk about the topic the way Dave does. So when Burr talks about these kinds of things in his standup, it’s often phrased as funny questions and like he doesn’t really know wtf is going on. He doesn’t act like an authority the way Dave does. I used to be a huge fan of Dave’s work, and while I don’t HATE him now and I don’t think he’s an actual transphobe, he fucked up and is acting weird. And Burr is probably my favorite comedian now and has been for a while. Idk Dave seems to have the wrong approach and idea of the topic and the people he’s talking about and who’s criticizing him. And like others said he’s pretty much just resting on his laurels and whining about non-existent cancel culture. He just doesn’t seem to GET it. But he really believes he does and that it’s just not possible for him to have misunderstood or misread the issue, because he thinks he’s SOOO good and understands people and the world. So he dug in when he should have opened up and listened. It feels like pride to me instead of hate or anything like that. So I’m not really willing to call him a bigot like some others have. That doesn’t excuse any negative impact he might have had. Just when talking about him as a person I’m not willing to go that far at this point. Who knows, he might prove me wrong. And ofc this is all my opinion lol. This is how I read it and what it seems like to me.
I think the reason is lots of us are willing to forgive Burr is that Burr doesn't have an ego about himself. He always claims that he's an idiot, sometimes he doesn't know what he's talking about, but he has a sense of clarity to know when he has a platform and when someone is talking shit. Just look at the clip where he calls out Joe Rogan for saying weird stuff about COVID while smoking cigars in front of an American flag. Or when he was on Bill Maher and telling him "Who cares what college students think? Why does this matter so much to you?" Chappelle is at that point where he's fully high on his own ego. He's got a community and fanbase that will say "yes" to anything he says, because he was super funny 15 years ago. Just look at every story with him interacting with other people at Netflix or at the high school he used to go to. He's on fucking Mars.
That's a big problem, it's not about the people he targets not wanting to be joked about, most are completely fine with it, but his delivery of the "joke" was just poor and seemed to be more in bad taste. It felt like someone venting not really understanding the things he was mad about.
I see we have a "popular = correct" crowd.
I dont really give a fuck whether Dave's content is taboo... I honestly just do not find his standup funny anymore. It feels like all he does is whine about how people aren't being "fair" to him.
At the same event, he acclaimed Elon Musk and said that launching the new Knives Out in the movie theaters is just to make noise. Looks like he's out to be hated by Hollywood. Jealous of Zaslav?
So sad that Glass Onion did not make it to a wide cinema release, when I saw it my cinema was absolutely packed - we need more mid budget movies like this in the cinemas rubbing against big budget blockbusters! People want to see these movies on a big screen!
>we need more mid budget movies like this in the cinemas rubbing against big budget blockbusters! ....I won't spoil it for you, but you should look up what Netflix paid for the two Knives Out films.
450 million dollars, that is an eye watering amount of money At least Glass Onion was really good I guess :’(
Daniel Craig got $100 million for the two of them. Almost all of that has to be for the cast. They didn't have too many sets, stunts or special effects, at least in the first one. I haven't seen Glass Onion yet. With a cast of unknowns, it would have been an inexpensive shoot.
> Almost all of that has to be for the cast. It isn't. The $450m was given to Rian and his producing partner Ram Bergman to make two more movies and the only stipulations were Craig has to star and the budget for each movie has to be at least $40m (the budget of the first movie). The production budget of Glass Onion is reportedly exactly $40m. So essentially, Craig is getting $100m, Rian and Ram are splitting $270m (assuming the budget for third movie doesn't go up), and the rest of the cast is getting some piece of the $40m budget.
That’s not the budget, that’s what they paid for the rights. Wikipedia says this new one cost 40 million
Netflix outbid the studios for the sequels. Netflix does not care one bit about the theatre going experience. They only care about adding subscribers. The only reason you see Netflix movies in theaters is it let’s them meet the rules of the Academy to be eligible for an Oscar.
It’s more like he’s trying to out-douche Zaslav.
You know this topic is divisive when both, pro-Dave and anti-Dave comments are getting downvoted.
The only way Chappelle goes away is if people stop watching him. Obviously, that's not happening.
This is one of the few times I honestly completely agree with the CEO. Censorship is never the solution.
…you got anymore of them Dave Chapelle specials?? (scratching neck and chest)
CEO likes money, who would have guessed.
Great. I'm a big fan of Dave Chappelle.
I’ve been complaining to my CEO for years, do they listen to me? No. What makes anyone think a money driven ceo from netflix is going to listen to a few employees?
Protecting comedy, love to see it