I'm one of those people who only saw one side which was a clip and a couple of tweets (the team-terf one and one of him laughing because he's becoming even richer from the drama). I'm exclusively going to base my reaction here off of that: The clip was really bad. It wasn't funny enough for that to be relevant. I think pretty much every offensive joke is funny, but I try the bare minimum to leave offensive jokes for those who don't treat everything like a joke. I see good faith jokes that the target is in on turn into full-on discrimination. Some of the cleverest and funniest people I've ever met mindlessly repeat jokes without understanding a word of them. And it all goes further and happens basically everywhere, "it was just a joke." If I wanted to make offensive/transgressive jokes without disrespecting a wide audience, there's more topics today than ever before. For example, making jokes about suicide is easier than fish shooting themselves in a barrel. I don't really want to make offensive jokes, the reaction isn't worth my effort (even if assuming no one else would be personally affected just because I'm not) I'll throw out there defending comedians for this in the last twenty years isn't a much different idea than saying the police only have a few bad apples. Grats to comedians who disrespect people that don't need it and getting a paycheque out of it edit: Being funny may as well be the easiest part of comedy. The main takeaway I got from the transgressive comedy I grew up on was respect is more important
I'm one of those people who only saw one side which was a clip and a couple of tweets (the team-terf one and one of him laughing because he's becoming even richer from the drama). I'm exclusively going to base my reaction here off of that:
No offense, but this is the problem. He never laughs about how he’s making money off of the drama in the special. Not that I recall. Context matters. It would be like hearing a measure of one song and declaring that the entire album must suck. Watch it. Then come back and discuss.
You're missing a very important point: you are privileging your context over circuit's. You're privileging Dave Chapelle's context over the transgender community's. Yes, context matters. All context. The context here is Netflix using their platform to promote transphobic humor. Your context may not judge it as transphobic. The transgender community disagrees, and they are experiencing more harm from Netflix hosting the content than you would experience from Netflix not hosting it. Charlie Daniels' "Uneasy Rider '88" is about starting a fight in a gay bar. Do you need to listen to it to know that it is harmful to the gay and trans community?
All I’m saying is if you’re going to criticize art, or have a strong opinion about it; you should have experienced it, first hand. Especially in this day and age when all cable media outlets are looking for bombast to spew. Context matters. I know nothing about Uneasy Rider 88, for all I know at the end the guy starting the fight realizes the error of his ways. I have no clue. Would you write a ‘bl00’s review about a book you didn’t read? You mention in a comment that you’re not a fan of standup. I also have to wonder, how many people that genuinely love standup and watched the special are incensed? Much standup can be offensive. Chapelle makes this point in the special. Often, when he’s painted as a transphobic comic, it’s from an article that was written 20 years ago that misquotes a show he did in SF. He states that without fail it’s recycled again and again and that it’s inaccurate. As someone that has a little experience dealing with media, this isn’t surprising. Accuracy is no longer the goal. Clicks are. But, for those that actually watched and found it transphobic, I respect that viewpoint. I really would enjoy watching it with Q.
Found the problem. This isn't art criticism. This is commerce criticism. Which in a capitalist society is cultural criticism. None of the complaints against Ice-T/Body Count's Cop Killer were that it existed, it was that it was released on a major label The beef against Marylin Manson (prior to the rape allegations) was that he was on a major label. The whole PMRC moral panic was not that artists were making this music, it's that American corporations were marketing it to children. We used to have racists on my show on the reg. Nobody protested them, they protested CBS for giving them a platform. The beef here is not against Dave Chapelle. I mean, obviously there is beef against Dave Chapelle, but there will always be beef against artists, I don't care what art you create. Art pushes the boundaries of society. The beef is against Netflix. Dave Chapelle streaming from his own website is a lot less culturally relevant than Dave Chapelle popping up every time I turn on my Kindle Firestick. The concern is not whether I like it. It's not whether I find it offensive. The concern is whether it shapes what is acceptable to a portion of humanity such that it impacts the lived experience of a large group of people. Suburban white kids screaming "Cop Killer" nationwide is very different from 200 guys at a club in the Bronx. This has never been about what we watch - it has always been about what everyone else watches, how easy it is to watch, how acceptable it is to watch. The beef against Fox News has never been that they're a bunch of horrible, opportunistic old racists, it's that they're a bunch of horrible, opportunistic old racists on every cable system in the nation supported by the ad dollars of companies we all give money to.All I’m saying is if you’re going to criticize art, or have a strong opinion about it; you should have experienced it, first hand.
this take feels exceptionally correct, it sucks so much that when i buy anything my money is being routed straight to things I hate I don't want to support that! but I also want to live. 90% of the funding for the Alt-Rightier-than-Fox network OAN comes from my ISP AT&T and I'll be damned if that doesnt piss me off at least as much as OAN itself
Interesting example. When Louis CK decided to go direct rather than through publishers, he did several comedy specials - professionally produced on his own dime - and released them for $5 a piece on his web site. You could download the entire thing. He asked you not to share it with anyone else, and help him make this thing a reality. It worked, and he made multiple times more money than he ever did on a Netflix/whatever special. Of course, when it came out he was a shit to women, I unsubscribed from his site and lists. But your separation of the artist from the platform is an interesting wrinkle to consider, for the Dave Chapelle thing. If Dave had released this for $5 on his own web site, I suspect there'd be some grumpy tweets and scathing commentary in some issue-specific chat rooms. But little public backlash, and it would have been forgotten by the weekend. But because there is a big-name platform involved that - like you said - feeds it to you when you log in to your device to watch other content... that DOES change things, doesn't it? That's a curious thing to consider, and Marshall McLuhan may have had a point after all that the medium is the message. Or, at least changes the message... The beef is against Netflix. Dave Chapelle streaming from his own website is a lot less culturally relevant than Dave Chapelle popping up every time I turn on my Kindle Firestick.
Dude it's the only thing to consider. It's the difference between "what he says" and "what we all say." Art has always been about access - nobody remembers what some random Assyrian said, they remember what Cyrus the Great had carved on the cliff at Behistun. Art and culture are inextricably about access and patronage. Louis CK was able to go private once he was Louis CK. Prior to becoming Louis CK he was just another poorly-paid comedy writer for fifteen years. Louis CK a year after Caroline in the City gets cancelled? Gets 20 downloads a month. Louis CK after he decides Netflix doesn't pay him enough because he's Louis CK? That's always the flip in entertainment - are you taken advantage of or do you take advantage? We know about the Medicis because they controlled public art, not because they were rich. There were other rich families in Florence but it was the Medicis that sprayed their faces on every third wall. Likewise, Kardashians have far more cultural influence than Dursts, despite the Dursts being richer. If the Rothschilds had bought theaters instead of vineyards they probably wouldn't be accused of owning space lasers today.But your separation of the artist from the platform is an interesting wrinkle to consider, for the Dave Chapelle thing.
Kept my post as little about Chapelle as possible, but everything I did say ended up being inaccurate. Was going off memory and assuming about twitter, the team terf was included in the routine (and the laughing about being cancelled was a live reaction to seeing an audience of fans so I fell for a headline there) Transcript: https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/dave-chappelle-the-closer-transcript/ The first vaccine joke gives context that many of his jokes are going to attempt to offend everyone. If he wants criticism, over half of the routine is intentionally giving people a lot to work with. The payoff by omission is "trust me." But I'll stick with not defending it