Thank you. I always thought Dave Chappelle was a spiteful comedian, and actually was not very funny. He just turned that energy towards trans people so now he’s become a problem for people. But he was never really that funny to begin with, and the root of his jokes always had some sort of vitriol.
Spiteful comedy feels good as long as it punches up. Not necessarily funny, but schadenfreude, cathartic, or just relief seeing them ‘get taken down a peg.’ It invites controversy when the artist and the audience disagree on the power structure. Chappellle falls apart around transgender, because he thinks he’s punching up to that group, where I imagine most people believe that trans are close to the bottom of the oppression spectrum. Chappelle’s argument basically being something like, “Well, they can ‘pass’ if they just match gender presentation to biological sex, and a lot of them are white.,” but having to hide your membership in a group is the opposite of power.
Watching him Vs trans people is like watching MRA Vs feminism. Or conservative Vs PC. Scarecrowing privilege and playing victim over some mere inconveniences and uncomfortable truths.
I think, during his prime, he was more “punching sideways” as it were. I have seen a lot of similar “comedians” from the asian/AAPI perspective.
Much like comedians like Chris Rock and dave chapelle were almost “the anti-cosby” (uhm… cosby the comedian not cosby the rapist). The idea is that there was so much media dedicated to a mix of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and “black people can be white people too”, there was a strong pushback of “While not all of us do, some of us do live in the hood and love fried chicken and orange soda”
So there was a lot of “good natured” ribbing. But… it tended to have the impact of being “black comedy for white people”. Because it was less “ha ha, I am punching you in the arm because we are friends” and more “I am punching you in the arm to show that I am better than you and belong with the ‘upper class’”
We have more or less been living it on the AAPI side for the past decade or so. In the 00s and, to a lesser extent, the 10s it was pretty much standard for the best friend on a sitcom to be the whitest chinese guy imaginable. Albeit, because you can’t be racist against asians, we still had the horrific stereotypes too (shout outs to Apu!). In recent years, we have seen a strong push toward more or less our “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. Media that acknowledges that… yeah, we do play a lot of violin and fuck you if you are the one PhD at a family dinner full of MDs (its cool, you are still better than the JSD. Cousin Wendy was straight up uninvited). But also the acknowledgement that we face a lot of discrimination too.
But also… we have seen an increase in the number of, for lack of a better term, minstrel comedians. People like “Uncle Roger” who, on the surface, are poking fun at the kernel of truth behind stereotypes but that mostly are making us long for the days of david carradine while giving all the white comedians and youtubers opportunities to make the same jokes that they previously knew were “off limits”.
And… chapelle was very much the “Uncle Roger” level of humor. In film he would always play the cranked up stereotype (that mostly existed so that white people could cheer for Martin Lawrence whenever Blue Streak was on TBS). And with his show and standup it was always very much “Ha ha, we are kind of fucked up and funny, right?” levels of “punching sideways”.
This is insane revisionist history. Watch “killing them softly” and try to make the same comments. Don’t bother replying with “I’ve seen it and it’s not funny!!!”, everyone knows it’s one of the greatest stand-up specials of all time
Fair. I, along with a vast majority of western audiences, thought he was king of comedy for a solid 5 years in the early 2000s. Thanks for being civil.
Thank you. I always thought Dave Chappelle was a spiteful comedian, and actually was not very funny. He just turned that energy towards trans people so now he’s become a problem for people. But he was never really that funny to begin with, and the root of his jokes always had some sort of vitriol.
Spiteful comedy feels good as long as it punches up. Not necessarily funny, but schadenfreude, cathartic, or just relief seeing them ‘get taken down a peg.’ It invites controversy when the artist and the audience disagree on the power structure. Chappellle falls apart around transgender, because he thinks he’s punching up to that group, where I imagine most people believe that trans are close to the bottom of the oppression spectrum. Chappelle’s argument basically being something like, “Well, they can ‘pass’ if they just match gender presentation to biological sex, and a lot of them are white.,” but having to hide your membership in a group is the opposite of power.
Watching him Vs trans people is like watching MRA Vs feminism. Or conservative Vs PC. Scarecrowing privilege and playing victim over some mere inconveniences and uncomfortable truths.
No one has ever been pulled over by the police for being trans…
Yeah, it’s not like the Stonewall riots started when the police tried to arrest a black trans woman for being gay. Oh, wait…
His entire thing is just punching down.
I think, during his prime, he was more “punching sideways” as it were. I have seen a lot of similar “comedians” from the asian/AAPI perspective.
Much like comedians like Chris Rock and dave chapelle were almost “the anti-cosby” (uhm… cosby the comedian not cosby the rapist). The idea is that there was so much media dedicated to a mix of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and “black people can be white people too”, there was a strong pushback of “While not all of us do, some of us do live in the hood and love fried chicken and orange soda”
So there was a lot of “good natured” ribbing. But… it tended to have the impact of being “black comedy for white people”. Because it was less “ha ha, I am punching you in the arm because we are friends” and more “I am punching you in the arm to show that I am better than you and belong with the ‘upper class’”
We have more or less been living it on the AAPI side for the past decade or so. In the 00s and, to a lesser extent, the 10s it was pretty much standard for the best friend on a sitcom to be the whitest chinese guy imaginable. Albeit, because you can’t be racist against asians, we still had the horrific stereotypes too (shout outs to Apu!). In recent years, we have seen a strong push toward more or less our “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. Media that acknowledges that… yeah, we do play a lot of violin and fuck you if you are the one PhD at a family dinner full of MDs (its cool, you are still better than the JSD. Cousin Wendy was straight up uninvited). But also the acknowledgement that we face a lot of discrimination too.
But also… we have seen an increase in the number of, for lack of a better term, minstrel comedians. People like “Uncle Roger” who, on the surface, are poking fun at the kernel of truth behind stereotypes but that mostly are making us long for the days of david carradine while giving all the white comedians and youtubers opportunities to make the same jokes that they previously knew were “off limits”.
And… chapelle was very much the “Uncle Roger” level of humor. In film he would always play the cranked up stereotype (that mostly existed so that white people could cheer for Martin Lawrence whenever Blue Streak was on TBS). And with his show and standup it was always very much “Ha ha, we are kind of fucked up and funny, right?” levels of “punching sideways”.
This is insane revisionist history. Watch “killing them softly” and try to make the same comments. Don’t bother replying with “I’ve seen it and it’s not funny!!!”, everyone knows it’s one of the greatest stand-up specials of all time
No, no revisionism here. I actually never liked the guy and didn’t understand why he was so popular.
Fair. I, along with a vast majority of western audiences, thought he was king of comedy for a solid 5 years in the early 2000s. Thanks for being civil.
But also…watch “killing them softly”. Do yourself a favor, it’s fantastic.
I definitely did, might give it a second go.
Cheers, buddy.