Dave Chappelle has released a new Netflix special, The Dreamer, which is full of jokes about the trans community and disabled people.
“I love punching down!” he tells the audience, in a one-hour show that landed on the streaming service today (31 December).
It’s his seventh special for Netflix and comes two years after his last one, the highly controversial release The Closer.
That programme was criticised for its relentless jokes about the trans community, and Chappelle revisits the topic in his new show.
He tells jokes about trans women in prison, and about trans people “pretending” to be somebody they are not.
His flavor of comedy is offensive comedy. That’s what made him successful. That’s why I like him. He tells jokes based on what his opinions are. I don’t recall him asking anyone to adopt his thinking.
I’m waiting for a white comic doing a racist special on black people and saying : “yeah, that’s just how I am, I’m not asking anyone to adapt my thinking”.
You’re not familiar with his work, are you ?
Only enough to know it’s not for me. But doing so much material about trans people and making fun of disabled people screams out personal issues, maybe some condition.
Love how he did jokes about black poverty and drug addicts for years and everyone was fine with it., but are suddenly pearl clutching about trans gags.
Anyone reveling in “punching down” is a piece of shit.
I’m not sure why people are surprised.
He’s always held these opinions, he just hid them among other opinions that weren’t as noticeable because he spread the hate around, and mostof the jokes were funny.
This is the same guy that got on his show, and had a segment where a white girl sang his words for him. If you can find the clip without using a service he profits from (I can’t right now, it’s only available in little “shorts” on YouTube), the whole thing is just him saying shit he doesn’t like, that would get his ass “cancelled” if he said them. And the longest segment is about gay sex being gross. Trans issues weren’t as visible back then, but the guy has always said this type of thing.
But for some reason, he’s stopped doing it to everyone, which is what made it acceptable. He didn’t spare any group, but he also didn’t target any single group more often than others, except perhaps black people. And it’s always acceptable to joke about your own group.
Now, he’s just being a douche. The jokes aren’t at all funny unless you find it funny to just bash people with no attempt at humor. It has gone far past the kind of abrasive, but exaggerated hate he used to use, but it isn’t something new.
But for some reason, he’s stopped doing it to everyone
That’s what always happens. It turns out when you’re an asshole to “everyone”, eventually you’re just an asshole to minorities.
It’s amazing how many snowflake comedians start crying about being cancelled and then go on to have numerous netflix specials about it. Almost like they were never actually cancelled in the first place but they learnt that if they said they were enough times, the terminally dim people who enjoy their material will pay money to see their bully fantasies played out on stage by an old rich guy.
‘cancelled’ is now simply “people were mean to me on shitter”. Their right to express vile horseshit is obviously intact.
Looks like he’s found a more wealthy audience to be relevant to.
Dave is just a weak, hateful little guy now
He found out that getting bad press is better than no press. Like the original thing that got him caught up in the headlines was crass but that’s sort of his humor. This one, he’s just being a gigantic penis about it and banking on the follow up outrage.
The thing is the anti-politically correct shtick only last so long. At some point it just becomes noise and then you have to up the ante which in turn alienates more people. Rise and repeat till it’s difficult to get a booking anywhere but FoxNews.
Like much of anything. It’s his career, far be it for me to tell him how to run it. But his comedy routine as of late has just turned resentful and aiming to get as many people to gasp “Oh my, he’s such a bastard!” And in reality it just comes off as a big yawn.
I watched both his and Gervais’ latest last night out of morbid curiosity. Both were profoundly unfunny. To be fair, Chappelle was marginally funnier than Gervais, whose act seemed like a barely-disguised checklist of right-wing talking points spouted off by a narcissistic man-baby who constantly laughs at his own “jokes” (and seemed like he had a laugh track or just poor audio editing) Chappelle, at least, elicited a few chuckles when he was willing to make himself or th, insanely wealthy (pretty lackluster running bit about the submarine implosion) the butt of the joke. His constant making “joking” about trans, gay, and bisexual people was just not funny.
I think that the root cause of their shifts is that they were always in life for themselves, looking up at the rich and powerful thinking “I want that”. So, when they were getting established, the underdog thing was useful. But, they never saw themselves as underdogs but the temporarily-embarrassed millionaires. Once the got their piece, they’re right there next to the boomers with the “fuck you, I got mine” attitude to court the favor of those that will reduce their need to give back to the society that they benefitted from. I’m pretty sure neither of them are actually discriminatory in their private lives (they both basically say as much); either they just absolutely lack scruples and are happy to play a shithead to make money and powerful friends or, their pride and ego doesn’t allow them to publicly acknowledge fault and not understanding that context and nuance matter (odd to think as they are professional wordsmiths).
Reminder that Reid Hastings the Netflix founder is a prolific anti union and anti public school pact funder. He is a piece of shit outside of giving chappelle a platform
What’s a “public school pact”? I went to public school and no one ever informed me of any pact!
Fuck! When I saved that orphan from the nobles and someone chanted, “remember the pact” was that what they were talking about‽
I must’ve been sick that day.
Comedy is the last bastion for free speech. Our constitution’s first amendment protects free speech regardless of how sensitive your feelings are or how much it has triggered your fabricated anxiety issue.
Comedy is the last bastion for free speech
Really? There’s literally no other free speech in the entire country? Guess those idiots on newsmaxx aren’t still lying about jewish space lasers then.
With cancel culture being so sensitive, free speech is under attack. I disagree with NewsMax and Nazis, but they have a right to express themselves without being cancelled.
What does getting canceled have to do with the 1st amendment? You want the government to force companies to employ nazis?
I think you’ve missed the point or the intent of the first amenmdebt itself if you are asking that question.
As for your second question, that is a straw man argument.
I think you’ve missed the point of the 1st amendment if you think it has anything to do with private entities canceling people. And if you don’t want nazis to get canceled but think that it’s unrelated to employment, who exactly is canceling them?
Your argument about free speech and the first amendment is hopelessly convoluted with cancel culture.
Who was suggesting that the government censor him?!
My point exactly. Thanks to the Bill of Rights, the people have certain reserved and protected rights. These rights which we take for granted are not guaranteed in other countries and can lead to charges of blasphemy.
I’m pro trans but I do respect the first amendment. Be who you want to be. He has an audience who loves him… BUT… Hate should not be promoted in order to protect others… So I guess I’m mixed on this.
It is the first amendment which allows you to make your statement freely without fear of state-sponsored reprise.
Netflix offers choices for entertainment. I don’t like most of the content on Netflix, but I don’t think it should be canceled just because I dislike it.
The First Amendment shields you from government reprisal. It is not a shield from private critique or consequences.
Public cancellation or being cancelled by a sensitive sub section of the population threatens free speech.
No it doesn’t full stop.
Public “cancellation” is free speech by the public and it always will be
Public cancellation costs people their jobs, livelihoods, and even their lives because a sensitive, loud, and naive sub section of the population felt “triggered” by someone else’s right to free speech. This, in turn, makes others wary of the things they say and inhibits their free speech.
People are presumed guilty without due process and are forced to grovel and apologize for otherwise meaningless acts which elevated the anxieties of the super sensitive. This is a witch hunt and has happened before in the US in Salem and during the McCarthy era. Both periods are seen as sore spots in our history.
This is convenient when your opinion is with the majority. It a threat and unsustainable when your opinion is no longer the majority opinion.
“Full stop”.
… its … not ok… to … tell… jokes… about… certain… people ?
Punching down is the problem.
Also the whole “my brother is an asshole but if you call him that I’ll punch you” thing.
If he was making jokes about a community he was involved with at all, great. If it was a trans comedian making these jokes, (probably) great.
But this is just another old out-of-touch rich guy making fun about people who are already having a shitty time (on average).
Also, notice how anyone has yet to actually forbid him from doing it. He’s not being “cancelled/consequenced”.
A lot of people just find it extremely distasteful. (It hasn’t slowed him down in the slightest.)
If it was a trans comedian making these jokes, (probably) great.
Honestly, I’d be disappointed even more in a trans comedian. If, after transitioning, they went with such uninspired jokes when there’s a wealth of more humorous things to joke about in transition, I’d question their sense of humor.
Depends… on… whether… the… joke… is… malicious,… of… course.
in the quiet, the real quiet of it all, after the yelling and flaming on the internet, we have two types of thought. One that thinks that people have both the ability and the freedom to say what they think, out loud, and even to entire groups of people. And we have a group of people that thinks we are all safer and happier if we don’t let them. That group also thinks we have to agree (with them), they say one word a lot, ‘tolerance’ but curiously they mean that in one direction: the direction they identify with. In the same way, they falsely equate :“disagreeing with me” to “hating me”.
Dave Chappelle is the Clarence Thomas of comedy.
Anybody who’s followed Chris Rock since the 90s will be familiar. It starts out as an “edgy” black comedian with an overwhelmingly white audience. It ends with your core audience using you as a black voice, that one black friend, who justifies regressive politics. I don’t know if Dave is in on the joke, laughing all the way to the bank. Either way, he’s playing the clown.
I thought the whole reason he abandoned his successful show was in part a refusal to shuck and jive. Kinda disappointing that he’s putting on a minstrel show now.
ITT: People who suck out all of the context and humor out of a joke and then insist it was never funny (even though the dude sells out arenas and everyone laughs and he’s widely considered by comedy fans and other comics to be a living GOAT). Comedy is democratic. You can’t say the stand up comedian is this or that, because he is telling jokes.
You can’t say the stand up comedian is this or that, because he is telling jokes.
Yes you can lol
He wasn’t hired to read a script. He wrote and rehearsed the jokes he chooses to tell
I’m not sure how many of you watched this based on the comments here
But his jokes really were not transphobic in this special at all
Watch the thing with context and see
Thank you
Context is everything. It’s a very well written special especially if you consider the last two.
He’s a comedian. If you don’t like it, don’t listen. It’s not hate speech, just comedy. These headlines are trash
Nah, we need to provide rage bait for overly sensitive people
Look, rage bait is literally what social media runs off. Well, that and cute animal pictures.
The upside to Lemmy is that there is less rage bait in general, but we aren’t immune to it.
Could you give some context? I’m definitely not going to watch it based on just a “take my word for it” argument. He’s been known to toe the line and get rude when people call him out on it. At this point I have to assume he is being transphobic simply because that’s been a problem for him in the past.
OK. You’re entitled to your biases and unfounded opinions as much as the next person. Doesn’t mean we need to respect them.
Today in bizzaroworld, asking for context demonstrates bias and unfounded opinion.
Did you miss the part about how he’s not going to watch it himself but already has an opinion based on his own assumptions?
Sounds to me like there’s no context to be had and you’re just getting called out for lying. 🤷
Did you miss the part where you told him asking for context meant he was biased? And they’re only assumptions if this was the first time this comedian had ever done a netflix special making trans people the butt of his jokes. Once someone has form for it, and we know he’s done it again, they’re no longer assumptions, they’re a reasonable inference.
I gave him some context above and he’s full of shit. The new program is very transphobic and not just mildly.
Here’s the complete transcript of the show
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/dave-chappelle-the-dreamer-transcript/
It’s awful and not even remotely funny, just offensive. I think he lost his marbles and drank too much conservative koolaid.
You’re wild he’s hardly conservative
Did you watch it or just read it?
I didn’t say he is conservative, just that he drank their koolaid. He’s mirroring their talking points and rethoric, pandering to the Conservative crowd, and not in a sarcastic way at all.
What do you mean by “just read it”. Are you implying the transcript is wrong?
I do believe that a transcript leaves out tone, intonation, and that sort of context to the words that are printed and said.
He basically says, as most comedians have, that you should be able to make fun of everyone.
He says (paraphrasing here) Im not making fun of trans people, they have a lot of representation, I’ll punch down on handicapped people instead
It’s not about handicapped or trans people, it’s about the fact that no matter what you joke about, someone will be offended, and you can’t live your life not offending everyone
Also, most of the special was about his dreams as a child, and how other people are dreamers too
He also goes on to give Lil Nas X a lot of props in the special, which if he hated lgbtq people, he probably wouldn’t.
The bits about trans people, which were few and far between, were mostly about how people.took and misconstrued his jokes about trans people in previous specials.
I’ve seen all of them, not once do I think he was specifically targeting and being dismissive of trans people
You can make fun of people without discriminating against them. Dave has pretty consistently made fun of everyone.
He makes fun of himself and his wife for being black and Chinese in this. I don’t see everyone screaming that he’s racist against black or Chinese people
fuck this “making jokes about everyone” defense. why do all these “I mAkE jOkEs aBoUt eVeRyOnE” Mf’ers ALWAYS make jokes about minorities and punch down? if your “comedy about everyone” is literally 90% about you asserting power and dominance over minorities, you’re just a hack. the power of comedy is so great. you can do so much with it. why use it to make people feel small who feel small all their life
I saw “the closer” and what you just wrote about it is full-on bullshit. Before that one maybe you could pass him off as actually joking, but not after that one.
Personally, even if it’s not transphobic, it’s pretty lame to make that your topic for the entire special.
It really wasn’t at all That’s why I don’t get this article or the reactions from people in the comments about this article.
That wasn’t the main topic for the entire thing it was a fairly small part
Because everybody loves to act offended.
Because rage sells ads. Period. And most people are sheep who need to belong to a flock.
But as it was happening… I was very disappointed. Because I wanted to meet Jim Carrey, and I had to pretend this n*gga was Andy Kaufman… all afternoon. It was clearly Jim Carrey. I could look at him and I could see he was Jim Carrey.
Anyway, I say all that to say… that’s how trans people make me feel.
That’s extremely transphobic and not even an attempt at being funny.
Edit:
“Give me your fruit cocktail, bitch, before I knock your motherf*cking teeth out. I’m a girl, just like you, bitch. Come here and suck this girl’s dick I got. Don’t make me explain myself. I’m a girl”
Also very transphobic, and there’s more.
Here’s the complete transcript of his new program.
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/dave-chappelle-the-dreamer-transcript/
What the fuck this is awful how can you even defend this
It does seem better to read the full transcript rather than the whole thing (I have more reading time than watching time) but still not so tasteful. He even says he doesn’t want to offend the transgender community anymore, then makes a joke about misgendering himself at a sentencing so he can be the strong man in a women’s prison.
“Give me your fruit cocktail, bitch, before I knock your motherf*cking teeth out. I’m a girl, just like you, bitch. Come here and suck this girl’s dick I got. Don’t make me explain myself. I’m a girl”
that’s a bruh moment, lol
Yeah, these aren’t jokes which are trying to push a controversial topic mainstream or create a framework for mutual understanding through humor. These are literally just narratives of hate which underpin anti-trans fear politics and actual violence against trans people
When you pull out specific lines without the entire context of the joke, you can make literally anything sound bad.
I posted the complete context. I just left a bit of how much he loves Jim Carrey.
Read yourself and judge later instead of making up your mind before the fact. You’ll see it doesn’t change for the better but gets worse if you read the whole thing. The part I pasted is pretty much the opener, so you won’t have to dig deep.
They posted the transcript of the entire special. There is literally nothing they left out.
A transcript can miss the tone, intonation, body language, facial expressions, and all those other cues that give an entirely different interpretation of the words being said cant it? All those other cues make a difference in what is being said. As humans we react to facial and body expressions a huge amount in order to understand the context of a situation
You are just trying to get people to rage watch it.
The transphobia is obviously, clearly there. It won’t stop being fucked up and shitty because he giggled after he said it.
Oh, so he said it in a funny voice. I’m still not going to watch it.
The Independent knew what they were doing.
They take a couple of his lines completely out of context, put it in a headline, and people can’t wait to post a comment about how much they hate him.
I wonder how many of you have been given your opinion of him and never actually watched him?
I will definitely admit this latest special was “meh”. But man, I’m pretty confident most of the commenters here have strong opinions of this special without ever watching it.
This thread reads like a bunch of Boomers were given a headline that “Biden paid for coke that Hunter snorted off hookers butt, in the Whitehouse.”, and couldn’t wait to post how much they hate Biden and that he’s a criminal, or whatever.
okay, so you watched him and i didn’t (got rid of netflix a few years ago).
did he make a bunch of jokes about trans people and people with disabilities? what’s the context you got that i need to more accurately understand this performance?
edit a word
I’m not going to defend or attack him.
I would have to do half his routine for the context to work and I am not interested in doing that.
But just think, for a moment, about all the stupid shit boomers say, believe, and respond to, from just a headline. When they do it, you get frustrated and angry for them going off, half cocked, over nonsense.
Then realize, you are responding the same way. Not the same beliefs, mind you, but letting yourself get riled up about what someone else said about a third person.
Crap like this article is written solely for people to have an emotional response to it. They are monetarily motivated to do it. Revenue is driven by Internet traffic and ad clicks.
The reason data is so valuable is because they know what you react to. They see what generates that visceral response and then generate/tailor content because it drives viewers and clicks.
Take it a step further and you can see how it is used to generate political support and sales.
Don’t let yourself get manipulated by an online article.
I am NOT telling you to like Dave Chappelle or that he’s a good guy. I am telling you that the responses here, on this post are exactly why it is being done. Both his standup AND the way the article is written.
