Anyone see the latest Chappelle stand up?
I didn't know there was one in the works until I read the criticisms and condemnations from certain groups, like GLAAD. I have noticed that his humor is different from his pre-hiatus days, and that's understandable since that was almost 15 years ago and a lot has changed. But I also felt that he began to cater to a certain demographic of people that wanted a non-white person that is anti-PC. There are plenty of those but not a celebrity at the level of Dave Chappelle.
I remember when he spoke up about leaving his own show abruptly and one reason he gave was that he felt some people were laughing at the racism portrayed in his skits and felt emboldened by it because it was done by a black person. They completely ignored what he was satirizing and just memed his punchlines.
That's why it was odd for me to hear him poke fun at the LGBT community. There were also a few other jokes he made that you knew resonated with the "anti-PC/woke" group than it would with everyone else, like fans of his work from his show and his standups from the early 2000s. Basically, the type of people that made him uncomfortable at what they were laughing at in 2005 are the very same people it felt like he was catering to now.
I went in to the special having read the outrage pieces on him "punching down" at trans people and there were some quotes from his show that made me think he had gone full-retard, right-wing nutjob. Or that he'd burn the whole forest down just to cater to those people. So I had my prejudice going in to it and a lot of his jokes early on were huge whiffs. The one about meeting the lesbian couple and hitting on one of them and the other one getting mad at him. Not a good way to begin.
But then he got to the LGBT comments and addressed them and it was clear that a lot of what was written in those critical pieces of him had taken his words out of context. They still had a point but they went about making it in a sort of deceptive way. Dave seemed apologetic and acknowledged how he realizes it could have been taken the wrong way by people who are just LGBT. Just like he realized in 2005 that his jokes about black folks could be taken the wrong way by racist people. And then he told the story of his friend who killed themselves and how them being trans had changed Dave's view on things, but it felt a bit like a "I can't be racist, I have black friends." Still, it wasn't just him spreading his cheeks and shitting on a particular group of people and I did like him saying he was going to stop making those jokes until he saw that more people were aware of the issues that he's joking about.
People love to quote Chappelle's Show lines all the time. Juicy Smoliay, or whatever the joke about Jussie Smollett was, is another one that's been memed to hell. No one quoted his standup from 2020 after George Floyd was murdered, though. Of course, it was a more somber event but he still cracked jokes. Funny how his jokes about race-relations in the US don't gain as much traction as "fuck yo couch, nigga" or "The Niggar Family" or even Jussie Smollett's parodied name.
The DaBaby joke was over my head. I only know he's a rapper but I don't know about him murdering someone before. I was aware of his remarks at a concert a month ago about gay people and AIDS, but I don't have much to say on that segment of Dave's special because I'm not familiar with the DaBaby or his history. I'd think killing someone would be a bigger deal than saying those anti-gay things, though, which was one of the jokes Dave made about it.