Dave Chappelle Wants You On Your Knees
At the heart of Chapelle’s latest Netflix Stand Up Special “The Closer” is comedy fighting for it’s license to offend, but why does this have to be at the expense of queer and trans people?
A lot of us, myself included, have very complicated feelings about Dave Chappelle, his Netflix Stand Up Special series which has had a noticeable focus on the LGBTQIA+ community and his most recent special “The Closer”, which I hope is the last installment of the series. I want to use this article to work through some of my own complicated thoughts on the special.
Before delving into the discussion, I want to make some clarifications. The first is that I am not a person of trans experience therefore my views on what is transphobic are not important because I am not harmed by transphobia. Secondly, I do not consider myself a fan of Chappelle. Not because of his latest obsession with trans people but I just never got into his comedy. There are no memorable stand up sets of his that I can recall watching although I probably have seen a couple. I have not seen a single full episode of The Chappelle Show and the only Chappelle thing I can remember ever laughing at is the “Black Bush” skit he did for said show. That should give you an indication that I have no emotional investment in the person of Dave Chappelle and I am also not in the firing line of his jokes.
Now that that’s out there, let’s start with Daphne Dorman.
For context, Dorman was a transgender comedian who lived in San Francisco and was a friend of Chappelle’s. She passed by suicide in October of 2019. Dorman’s passing came after the release of one of Chappelle’s specials titled “Sticks and Stones” in which he mentioned her by name and came under scrutiny for comments he made about trans people, comments that Dorman defended.
In “The Closer” Chappelle, not in so many words, blames the “Twitter woke mob” for Dorman’s passing, remarking that only weeks after she was dragged on twitter for defending him, she killed herself. In a Daily Mail article, Dorman’s sister Becky Kugler clarified that she has had longstanding severe mental health challenges. Her close friend and roommate, Mia Satya, confirmed Dorman’s battle with PTSD and other mental health challenges and in response to a direct question about whether she made that decision because of the outrage on Twitter, she responded, “I don’t think it was the main cause, but who know”. No one can say the call out Dorman received for defending Chappelle had no impact on the state of her mental health however, placing the blame squarely at the feet of the people who called her out is dishonest at best.
Chappelle makes absolutely no mention his friend’s long standings mental health issues in his special as it contradicts the point he is making that her being called out on Twitter for defending him is what drove her to suicide.
Chappelle tells other stories about Dorman; that they were good friends, he invited her to open for him at his San Francisco shows even though she was an amateur stand up comedian and was virtually unknown, and that he started a trust fund for her daughter after her passing. By the way, he found out Dorman has a daughter when he read her obituary, your “friend” who you “loved” had a child you did not know about? Hmm, okay.
He mentions these things to highlight his virtue and kind nature in an attempt to communicate to the audience that he is incapable of being transphobic because a transphobic person would never do all of this for a transwoman. It’s giving, “I have a black friend so I can’t be racist”.
This all happens while he blames the woke twitter mob for her death. Chappelle very carefully and with his sharp tool of storytelling constructs himself as the savior of this woman and the people who called her out as her killers. The reason why Chappelle does this has nothing to do with the person of Daphne Dorman, but everything to do with establishing himself as the person who saved comedy from cancel culture.
There has been, in the past 5 or so years, a much needed conversation about comedians’ license to offend and where offence crosses over to outright bigotry. Comedians are fighting to the death for their license to offend with Chappelle at the forefront of that fight.
When writing this series, Chappelle knew or ought to have known that there would be calls for him to be de-platformed for his comments on the LGBTQIA+ community. He also knew that he commands so large an audience that Netflix would not dare to remove the special from the platform or terminate the remainder of his contract. He uses his power and influence to show that the woke mob cannot cancel him even if they tried and that he can still say anything he wants without losing anything. This very grand and public display of his license to offend without repercussion communicates to the public that comedy will emerge victorious over the woke twitter mob.
Chappelle has more than once expressed his grievance over Kevin Hart being dropped as the host of the 2019 Oscars after old homophobic tweets of his were resurfaced. He remarked that “this young man’s dream” of hosting the awards ceremony has been taken away from him because of old tweets. In “The Closer” he mentions that rapper DaBaby has shot and killed someone but only got cancelled on Twitter for offending the gay community. This further illustrates that Chappelle has an axe to grind with the woke twitter mob and that is who he constructs as the enemy.
I would like to point out that Hart is by no means “cancelled”. He is a working comedian, actor and talk show host who has his fair share of the Hollywood pie and the extent of his cancellation was him not being able to host the Oscars. Reading from history, DaBaby will also most probably make a come back because being cancelled is simply a “holiday” these days.
Chappelle’s problem is not specifically with trans or queer people but with the people who want to cancel comedians. He has absolutely no problem with trans and queer people who don’t mind being laughed at.
In this special and in previous ones, he indicates that the community that makes the loudest noise about cancelling people is the LGBTQIA+ community. He specifically mentions that he hates how “sensitive” they are and are always “shouting at people” about using the right pronouns and other things that he considers insignificant. It makes sense then that he would target the queer community when trying to “cancel cancel culture” as he views the queer community as the loudest part of cancel culture.
I make the point that Chappelle does not necessarily have a problem with queer people but with cancel culture but that does not mean that he isn’t homophobic or transphobic.
In as much as he does not call for the public lynching of queer people, his painting of queer people as the enemies of comedy places the community in direct harm. When his audience retaliates against the woke twitter mob, the people they will attack (maybe not physically) will be queer people because that is who he has told them, is the enemy. I cannot confidently say Dave Chappelle is not transphobic when he is deliberately, yet very subtilty, directing harm at trans people.
Lastly, I want to touch on his and Daphne’s comments on whether he is punching down in his comedy. In the tweet written by Dorman, she says punching down requires one to think of themselves as superior to the other group and that Chappelle does not consider himself better than her. Chappelle, in the last minute of the special makes a humble request to the “LGBTQLMNOPQ community” to stop “punching down on my people” which I would assume are comedians.
I want to make the quick point that he, again paints himself as the hero who is brave enough to stand up to the playground bully.
Returning to the comments about punching down, this is why both Chappelle and Dorman are wrong. One does not need to think of themselves as better than another to punch down on them, what you do need is the knowledge that you can say or do whatever you want to that person and they will not be able to effectively fight back. The playground bully does not think they are better than their victim, they are simply confident that their victim will not be able to fight back.
I mentioned earlier that Chappelle was confident enough to launch this unnecessary attack on queer people because he know they would not be able to get him cancelled. This is textbook punching down.
There are very few comedians in the world who have been effectively cancelled. The most popular of these are Louis C.K and Bill Cosby and to a lesser extend, Al Franken. All these men were cancelled for sexual assault and not for their stand up material. I cannot recall one very popular comedian who has been put out of work because of “offensive jokes”. So who exactly are queer people punching down on?
When the credits roll on “The Closer” Chappelle hopes there will be people bowing at his feet, thanking him for “saving comedy” and “saying what everyone else is thinking but too scared to say”. He also hopes he would have brought the woke twitter mob to it’s knees by demonstrating that he still holds his license to offend without repercussion. Whichever side you fall, Dave Chappelle wants you on your knees.
