Dave Chappelle’s Obsession With Mocking Trans People Continues in New Netflix Special ‘The Dreamer’: ‘I Love Punching Down’
Dave Chappelle’s Obsession With Mocking Trans People Continues in New Netflix Special ‘The Dreamer’: ‘I Love Punching Down’
Dave Chappelle's comedy special "The Dreamer" has debuted on Netflix, and it's filled with jokes mocking transgender people.
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At the risk of saying something negative - no.
I watched the last one twice just to be sure there was subtext and it was pretty astounding the disconnect between article writers, commenters, and the actual comedy.
Did he say “I’m team terf”? He did. Yeah he did say that and that was fucked up. Agreed. (In whatever way context could be added, he was discussing the idea that one specific set of internal organs was currently capable of gestating a human. He said the terfs were saying that and he agreed with them on that point but he also discussed NC’s bathroom bill and talked at length about how it's a bad law. He also defended trans rights at some length. But the “Dave hates trans” article writers don’t include those points)
But the other 99.99% of the special was objectively pro-trans. Including “All trans people deserve love and respect”. The main point is you can’t get what he's doing from text. Standup has a bunch of moving parts: voice, inflection, setup, arc, theme, silliness, parody, jokes-within-jokes, and many other aspects that aren’t available in a text-only format like a comment or an article.
It seemed to me that he was making several really good points about being in a marginalized, oppressed minority, and the way the larger society talks about it. He used language to do that that wasn’t straight-on, direct, and clear because he’s a comedian who tells jokes and so his way of doing it is building an elaborate framework around a topic or topics, and by talking about them he’s getting across a larger message. It’s densely layered discussion underneath simple stories. He’s really good at it, fwiw, but that’s often immediately ignored and intentionally misrepresented to light him up for whatever the author wants to project.
I’m just saying if you watch his specials with an open mind, he's not anti-trans at all. And whenever it gets down to it, the people accusing him of it haven’t understood his show; often they haven’t watched it at all.
Now Ricky Gervais? Fuck. That guy’s seriously anti-trans, ignorant and malicious, and putting Chappelle in with him is just wrong. Thank you for coming to my TEDx talk.
What's interesting is that I can't even take this comment at face value, without further context. Is this a well-thought observation from the POV of a trans person who is intimately aware of their struggle in a broader context? Does this commenter understand the nature of comedy, or more specifically, Dave Chappelle, more deeply than I do? Can I add my opinion to this heated subject being a CIS male who is also a minority? Does any of the aforementioned even matter?
What I can say is that I've liked certain parts of his comedy. When it hits it's incredible. When it doesn't I feel like I'm watching 80s Eddie Murphy again.
While I believe that anyone and anything is fair game in comedy, I don't believe that how he's done it towards trans people has been in pursuit of comedy. In his previous specials it came across as shallow othering without the nuance that comes from actually seeing the subject as human. There's no payoff.
It just reminds me of my upbringing where gay (and queer) bashing for the sake of itself was normal. At this point in my life I'd rather continue distancing myself from that stuff than try to read between the lines.
Edit: to the OP, I'm not attacking your observation or character.
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But maybe we just aren't as clever as you are and don't understand it. Right? Or maybe you just don't want to admit your favorite comic is a piece of shit
So, to be clear, you never actually wanted anyone to try and explain their interpretation of the bit?
Imagine jumping to the defence of this guy 🤯🤮
He then addressed the controversy surrounding his anti-trans material, saying, “If you guys came here to this show tonight thinking that I’m going to make fun of those people again, you’ve come to the wrong show. I’m not fucking with those people anymore. It wasn’t worth the trouble. I ain’t saying shit about them. Maybe three or four times tonight, but that’s it. I’m tired of talking about them. And you want to know why I’m tired of talking about them? Because these people acted like I needed them to be funny. Well, that’s ridiculous. I don’t need you. I got a whole new angle coming. You guys will never see this shit coming. I ain’t doing trans jokes no more.”
He then said he was going to transition to joking about “handicapped” people instead because “they’re not as organized as the gays. And I love punching down.”
A few minutes later, Chappelle revisited the topic, saying, “To be honest with you, I’ve been trying to repair my relationship with the transgender community cause I don’t want them to think that I don’t like them. You know how I’ve been repairing it? I wrote a play. I did. Cause I know that gays love plays. It’s a very sad play, but it’s moving. It’s about a Black transgender woman whose pronoun is, sadly, n***a. It’s a tear-jerker. At the end of the play she dies of loneliness cause white liberals don’t know how to speak to her. It’s sad.”This joke is fucking hilarious
This just comes off as whiny. "I'm getting cancelled again by being given another special, boo hoo."
And then uses literally the "one joke" conservatives have about pronouns. There's nothing funny or creative about that joke. It's been told a billion times by conservative talking heads.
There's an entire subreddit dedicated to it. r/onejoke
Oh man, pronoun jokes, so original!
I mean, "she died of lonliness because liberals can't say the n word" is pretty funny. And being offended about the pronoun joke but not the nword is also his point, I think.
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And he's a fucking genius. Because, as far as I can tell, all of his trans jokes are really funny or nuanced. But his handicap jokes, some of them are just downright lame and insulting.
And everyone's coming after him for his trans jokes, not his handicap jokes.
You can't punch down on transpeople, their propaganda reach is massive. People are AFRAID to say the littlest bit negative about them.
That's why the handicap jokes. He wanted to show what actually happens when you punch down: nothing. No one gives a shit.
Anyway, that's my headcanon. Otherwise, some of these handicap jokes are completely inexcusable and don't live up to the standard set by his trans jokes.
You're the exact person they're talking about when they say you're completely ignoring all nuance just to be offended
Haha it’s actually pretty good!
I love punching down.
That is a great punchline. He’s not saying that he - Dave Chapelle loves punching down. He’s saying: “I am a bigot said John.”
You need to grow up.
Did you watch him say that or just read it and imagine his tone?
Dave fell off. I’ll always remember his older stuff fondly, but his “comeback” stuff is boring.
I think I agree*
*with a caveat. I watched his previous special as well to understand what people were saying. What Chappelle said in that special would not be problematic if said to a smaller audience. But a stand-up special to large audience, recorded to be put on Netlfix is not the stage to say where he said what he said: where it can be taken out of context easily and used in support of anti-trans arguments.
Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places but I have not seen nearly enough discussion of the idea that it’s okay to say things that are iffy in confined spaces, especially for the sake of discussion. The relationship between gender and biology, and then the relationship between biology and society, and then the relationship between gender and society are extremely complex concepts around which open discussion should be not just allowed, but encouraged. However, that encouragement should be limited to conversations with a limited audience, not ones broadcast to an untold number of people. Broadcast messaging should not reinforce harmful stereotypes and echo negative statements about people, especially marginalized people.
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Apologist gonna apologize.
Well put, far better than if I had tried. I do wish he wasn't using his platform this way but I can't help but feel it's misrepresented. I watched the first part of this special for context and a lot is lost just reading the plain text without his delivery.
If you think he shouldn't be joking about it at all then that fine, but I think anything can be joked about and he's trying way better than anyone else making jokes on the topic.
And I hesitated to express that because I truly to do think I'm a good ally and I definitely want to be.
Edit: I understand I'm not owed an explanation, but sometimes I do wish people would tell me why they downvoted. I'm open to being wrong and learning from it.
I'm not offended, and don't care if he makes lowest common denominator trans jokes. I just don't find the reactionary shtick to be funny.
No one will agree with you even though you're right.