If we don’t like his routine, the message is, we are the problem, not him. This is a faded simulacrum of the once-great comedian, who now uses his significant platform to air grievances against the great many people he holds in contempt, while deftly avoiding any accountability. I couldn’t tell you what his point was there. Just when you’re thinking he is going to right the ship, he starts ranting incoherently about #MeToo. Chappelle talks about mainstream feminism’s historical racism. Fortunately my wife doesn’t.) Then in another of those rare moments of lucidity, Mr. (Some may consider that estimation accurate. If I were on his radar, he would consider me a frumpy dyke, or worse. He makes a tired, tired joke about how he thought “feminist” meant “frumpy dyke” - and hey, I get it. Chappelle offers rambling thoughts on feminism using a Webster’s Dictionary definition, further exemplifying how limited his reading is. The poet Saeed Jones, for example, wrote in GQ that watching “The Closer” felt like a betrayal: “I felt like I’d just been stabbed by someone I once admired and now he was demanding that I stop bleeding.” Chappelle says something about how a Black gay person would never exhibit the behaviors to which he objects, an assertion many would dispute. Chappelle pits people from different marginalized groups against one another, callously suggesting that trans people are performing the gender equivalent of blackface. But in these formulations, there are no gay Black people. community has made, while progress toward racial equity has been much slower. There’s a compelling observation about the relatively significant progress the L.G.B.T.Q. Somewhere, buried in the nonsense, is an interesting and accurate observation about the white gay community conveniently being able to claim whiteness at will. Every once in a while, he remarks that, oh, boy, he’s in trouble now, like a mischievous little boy who just can’t help himself. At times, his voice lowers to a hoarse whisper, preparing us for a grand stroke of wisdom - but it never comes. Chappelle’s rants are extraordinarily dated, the kind of comedy you might expect from a conservative boomer, agog at the idea of homosexuality. He reaches for every low-hanging piece of fruit and munches on it gratuitously. community, as he has been in recent years. Chappelle is singularly fixated on the L.G.B.T.Q.
But when an entire comedy set is designed as a series of strategic moves to say whatever you want and insulate yourself from valid criticism, I’m not sure you’re really making comedy. He’s just stating “facts.” He’s just making us think. He’s just being “brutally honest.” He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. Chappelle makes obvious but elegant rhetorical moves that frame any objections to his work as unreasonable. If there is brilliance in “The Closer,” it’s that Mr. The self-proclaimed “GOAT” (greatest of all time) of stand-up delivers five or six lucid moments of brilliance, surrounded by a joyless tirade of incoherent and seething rage, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. The set is a 72-minute display of the comedian’s own brittleness. Chappelle spends much of “The Closer ,” his latest comedy special for Netflix, cleverly deflecting criticism. Chappelle explains that he didn’t in fact threaten the woman: “I felt that way, but that’s not what I said. Ain’t nobody around here.” The audience cheers, before Mr. “Before I kill you and put you in the trunk. “Shut up,” Dave Chappelle recalls telling a woman who had the gall to challenge his comedy, using a sexist slur and laughing at how witty he is, as if he’s the first man to ever deliver such an original, funny line. You’re the one who’s narrow-minded or “brittle” or humorless. All criticism is forestalled with this setup, in which when you object to anything a comedian says, you’re the problem.
Comedians, in particular, are going to punch up and down and side-to-side.Īlso true: Comedy is not above criticism, even if the most famous, wildly wealthy comedians will keep insulting those who question them. Sometimes good art should make us uncomfortable, and sometimes bad people can make good art. Let’s address those upfront: Art should be made without restriction. We generally have the same debates about comedy over and over.