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Early in “The Dreamer,” Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix particular, the target audience reacts deliriously to the primary of his many jokes about LGBTQ folks. Surveying the uproar he’s created, Chappelle exclaims, “Here we go!”
Actually? Right here? Once more?
Why again and again antagonize a minority crew that already encounters each and every type of discrimination and has begged him to forestall?
Since his 2015 “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” the famed comic has constantly used his Netflix specials to poke a laugh at the ones he calls “the alphabet people.” With each and every next particular — from "The Age of Spin" in 2017 to “Sticks and Stones” and “Equanimity” (additionally each 2017) to 2020’s “The Closer” — Chapelle has forged aspersions in this group. Each and every efficiency harks again to the former performances’ controversies. To eat Chappelle’s artwork is to be ate up by way of the controversies caused by way of Chappelle’s artwork!
And controversies there are! For just about a decade, the virtuoso comedian has been embroiled in numerous scrums and working battles with the LGBTQ group. In “The Dreamer,” Chappelle displays no signal of give up, let by myself expansion or knowledge born of revel in.
As a substitute, he is going all in. He is going all out, he doubles down on a battle he obviously relishes. However it leads me to invite: Why again and again antagonize a minority crew that already encounters each and every type of discrimination and has begged him to forestall?
I haven't any definitive solution, simply hunches. However all of my hunches lead me to the similar conclusion: Chappelle’s anti-LGBTQ provocations are converting his comedy, his target audience, and perhaps even Chappelle himself.
Let’s start with the comic story that were given us stepping into “The Dreamer.” The overdue Norm MacDonald, we're advised, had invited Chappelle to the filming of the film "Man in the Moon," by which Jim Carrey performed cryptic comedy icon Andy Kaufman. To Chappelle’s dismay, Carrey remained steadfastly in persona whilst on set.
Chappelle sighs, “I was very disappointed because I wanted to meet Jim Carrey and I had to pretend he was Andy Kaufman all afternoon. It was clearly Jim Carrey. I could look at him and clearly see it was Jim Carrey.” Which brings us to the punchline: “That’s how trans people make me feel.” His target audience in stitches, off Chappelle is going.
Perhaps Chappelle traffics in homophobic and transphobic humor as it’s winning.
Quickly thereafter, he intimates that he needs “to repair my relationship with the transgender community, ‘cause I don’t want them to think that I don’t like them.” The reparation in query consisted of writing a play: “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-----.’ 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.”
Unhappy certainly is Chappelle’s (disingenuous) revelation that he plans to desert anti-trans humor and open a brand new comedic entrance: jokes about folks with bodily disabilities. Those bits are disturbingly evocative of Donald Trump’s mocking of a disabled reporter. He makes use of the steadiness of his time to watch that his assailant on the Hollywood Bowl in 2022 used to be outraged over his jokes concentrated on bisexuals.
So no, Chappelle used to be no longer trustworthy when he sighed: “I’m not f---ing with those people anymore ... I ain’t saying s--- about trans people. Maybe three or four times tonight, but that is it. I’m tired of talking about them.”
In fact, he can’t forestall speaking about them. The query stays: Why?
Perhaps Chappelle traffics in homophobic and transphobic humor as it’s winning. He will have been “canceled” for doing so. However as I've stated once more and once more, established artists are, commercially talking, indestructible. What Chappelle will have discovered is that his target audience hasn’t decreased on account of his quite a lot of cancellations. As a substitute, his target audience has merely modified and maybe even grown. So why no longer stoke controversy? It’s just right for trade.
Some other clarification is that Chappelle has a subject matter, even an obsession, with nonheterosexual folks. Despite widespread claims of being an LGBTQ best friend, he’s truly extra similar to a spiritual conservative. If that is so, the megastar comic is talking his fact as he punches down (which, Chappelle claims in “The Dreamer,” he likes to do). Higher but, he can body the backlash to his fact as standpoint discrimination, an attack on loose speech.
A extra charitable studying of Chappelle’s anti-LGBTQ onslaught is that he needs to make a bigger level about comedy and identification. Chappelle could be pronouncing that jokes are merely jokes. Some distance from being punches, he is also suggesting they're innocuous communications to make folks snort. Nobody must let themself be victimized by way of an insignificant gag (previous within the particular, Chappelle lauded Chris Rock for no longer taking part in Will Smith’s sufferer). Like a tall jocular Yoda shedding arduous truths at the LGBTQ group, Chappelle merely needs to mention, “Buck up! Don’t be so frail that words spoken by the likes of me hurt you.”
I’m no longer certain which of those explanations account for Chappelle’s very studied preoccupation with LGBTQ folks. Perhaps all are true, or in part true, without delay. I might, then again, be aware that his preoccupation correlates with what has change into a puzzling staple of his act: self-absorption.
There’s a megalomaniacal measurement to “The Dreamer” (an inclination already irritatingly glaring in “What’s In a Name”). The brand new particular starts with a not-unpretentious epigraph from Henry David Thoreau about following one’s desires and reaching “a success unexpected.”
Via efficiency’s finish, Chappelle displays to a subdued target audience about how he's residing his dream. The closing-credit montage, set to Aloe Blacc’s “The Man,” visually imparts a unified message: Chappelle has made it. Chappelle is liked by way of many well-known, cool folks. Chappelle is — as he (and Kevin Hart) affirmed in other places — the GOAT.
For some, then again, that may stand for “Greatest Of All Transphobes.” To which I might upload that there's not anything extra negative to an artist than to have a good time their very own greatness inside of their very own paintings. Artwork isn’t tennis or boxing. Within the aesthetic realm, there’s no champion. Simply as there are dozens, if no longer loads, of actually elegant jazz bassists, there are innumerable comedian geniuses, of which Chappelle is undeniably one.
Are those two information issues — anti-LGBTQ provocations and narcissism — connected? If they're, Chappelle may believe forsaking each. If no longer, his target audience will proceed to modify, together with his legacy. He’ll be remembered as a Punch-Down Prince, a mean-spirited comedian who couldn’t fathom the ache his skills created.