Dave Chappelle has released a new Netflix special, The Dreamer, which is full of jokes about the trans community and disabled people.
“I love punching down!” he tells the audience, in a one-hour show that landed on the streaming service today (31 December).
It’s his seventh special for Netflix and comes two years after his last one, the highly controversial release The Closer.
That programme was criticised for its relentless jokes about the trans community, and Chappelle revisits the topic in his new show.
He tells jokes about trans women in prison, and about trans people “pretending” to be somebody they are not.
It’s amazing how many snowflake comedians start crying about being cancelled and then go on to have numerous netflix specials about it. Almost like they were never actually cancelled in the first place but they learnt that if they said they were enough times, the terminally dim people who enjoy their material will pay money to see their bully fantasies played out on stage by an old rich guy.
Every Edgy Millionaire Comedian – roughly the same joke but the Columbus thing makes the edge of my mouth slightly curve upward every time
In one of Dave’s early Netflix specials he talks about Bill Cosby and how complicated his crimes were for a black standup who was both inspired and influenced by Cosby as regardless of how shitty he is as a person is a giant of that medium. I sort of feel that way about Dave now, his show and early standup sets were so fundamental to how my sense of humor formed that I can’t completely divorce myself from them, but who he’s become is shameful and i can’t ride with him anymore.
Like fuck him for being so shitty and bigoted in general, but an extra fuck him for letting down the people he inspired and influenced. He’s become the very thing he should have destroyed
Yeah, I’m right there with you. He came up in a conversation over the holidays and I had to go through how in my opinion he had potential to be one of, if not the best, comic of his generation and he squandered it by needlessly punching down and taking oddly vindictive stances. Maybe this is always who he was, but I think the fame and frustration that came with how his career played out changed him.
I can’t reconcile the Dave from old interviews and shows with this one, and it’s kinda sad.
Unlimited money lets people be who they truly want to be.
Chappelle may have moderated his views early on because he was still trying to “make it,” or he may have gotten worse over time, or both. But what reassures me that he’s actually just not a good person now is the fact that he can afford to be anyone he wants, and this is who he chose.
He didn’t need to moderate his views. The 90s were anti-gay, let alone trans. He just didn’t have material about it because it wouldn’t have generated controversy. People would have agreed and moved on, or disagreed but the media wouldn’t have cared or maybe would have put them on for extra laughs.
It’s hard to believe how different things were back then, looking at it from how things are now. Trans jokes would have been considered offensive, but because they referenced transexuals, not because they made fun of them.
I am so sick of his comedy of grievance. Every act he does over the past few years is about how unfair the world is to him and how people don’t acknowledge how great he is.
He’s riding out the glory of an okay sketch show that he made two seasons and then torpedoed 20 years ago.
Yeah, I’m reminded of Jerry Seinfeld. Some comedians are great for life, most have a time and a place and excel then and there. I’m the 90s Seinfeld was bigger than big, in the 10s he was telling college campuses they’re too pc for not laughing at jokes about trans people. In the 00s Chappelle left on a high note and was a popular icon of comedy who quit too soon. In the 20s he was a raging bigot who should’ve stayed quit. Meanwhile Larry David is still making tv and fairly popular, but that’s because he mostly sticks to punching himself in the face.
Meanwhile Larry David is still making tv and fairly popular, but that’s because he mostly sticks to punching himself in the face.
I’ve got a love-hate thing with his writing. David is a master of unconventional suicide by words. He’s very funny but so good at causing intentional cringe that I suspect that his humor could be weaponized in the event of another world war.
I remember in “The Closer” he said "now Key & Peele are on Comedy Central, doing my show."
Like dude, you did not invent the sketch comedy show. SNL had been going on for decades before he even thought of doing his own spin on it. I used to like his comedy, but not so much after that special, and definitely not after this.
I grew up with (and loved) the Chappelle Show but Key & Peele is sooo much better. I rewatched some of his show a few years ago and most of the skits don’t hold up well at all. It’s mostly just black stereotype caricatures that are only “not racist” because a black guy wrote them
The fucked part is one of the reasons he stopped doing Chapelle Show was (according to him sometimes) because he recognized a good chunk of his audience was laughing at the black stereotype shit instead of with him about how ridiculous it was. And now he’s cashing in on punching down at other groups and cares not a bit about it.
Jokes are meant to be funny and that is just whinging on his part, you bloody walnut.
I mean, yeah, he’s a piece of shit, and yeah he’s still riding on that old fame, but come on. That was a great sketch show, not merely an ok one. The fact that he has turned into Clayton Bigsby should not distract from the fact that the first episode of his show featured a faux documentary about a black white supremacist. That was some amazing television. I’m all for bashing Dave for the many, many shitty things he’s said and done in the past few years, but let’s not rewrite history here.
What. The. Fuck.
I’ve never been the biggest Chappelle fan, but years ago, before he started going down this path, I had basic respect for him as a comedian. Now he’s actually promoting punching down? And he didn’t feel like he was punching down enough with trans people, so he had to be an ableist as well as a transphobe?
And Netflix would not have put this on their site sight unseen, so they 100% knew that this was a celebration of attacking vulnerable people.
Christ, even when I was in high school I knew that the guy who pushed the kid in the wheelchair over onto their side was a shithead and so did almost everyone else. So basically Chapelle wants his fan base to be the little weasel kid who stands behind the bully with a grin on his face because someone else is getting it when it could have been them.
I wonder if anyone will come in here and defend him with some mumbo jumbo about free speech?
Here he is introducing (and inadvertently humiliating) his friend Elon, who he shares a shocking amount of awful views with:
Chappelle still tries to act like he’s one of the disenfranchised black people, while living in a mansion and hanging out with Elon Musk.
and chris rock! i was just thinking how these 2 used to be very funny, if not somewhat irreverent… i get it. but now theyre both on this conservative soap box its so weird!
theyve become the anti-carlin!
Carlin is Carlin. Everybody else only tries to approach him or has given up on the idea of doing it. The man had a 50+ year career with a consistent upwards trend. In 4 years we will be at the 20th anniversary of his death. And the man is still relevant and funny to this day.
Chappelle, Seinfeld, Allen, etc. All just hacks who got lucky. Would anyone even know who Seinfeld was without Larry David? That man is another gem for sure.
I can’t even watch or recommend others to watch half baked any more between Chappelle and Bruer.
I haven’t heard about Rock. That’s disappointing. It’s a common thing with comedians these days to get upset if their comedy either goes to far or just isn’t funny and blame it on people being too sensitive. It feels like that’s been pushing some of them to the right even though that’s not really the issue they are being confronted with.
nothing quite as egregious as chappelle, but his recent special was completely class tone-deaf, and boring. ’ i dont enjoy politically correct terminology’, ‘i am rich, entitled human’, ‘will smith sucks’ were the main tones i remember from watching his last special… that and thinking, ‘when did chris rock get boring’?
I wonder if anyone will come in here and defend him with some mumbo jumbo about free speech?
Netflix is a bunch of suits. In their perfect world they can cater different content to trans people and to transphobic people at the same time, in order to make maximum money.
And on top of that they know that outrage fuels views. They keep making inflammatory content that will outrage one side and get the other to spite-view it. Of course inflammatory content to left wingers tends to be bigotted and hateful, while inflammatory to right wingers tends to just be anything not overwhelmingly white, straight, and patriarchal.
I read a view that not punching down is offensive and not right.
See it’s based on everyone being equal and there is nothing wrong with being disabled (the person mentioning this view was disabled). So if you rip on all your friends for whatever, but then don’t rip on your disabled friend for being disabled then that is treating them like that can’t handle it or that they aren’t equal.
Honestly it’s comedy, some isn’t but most is offensive. Comedy doesn’t have to be for everyone but I don’t think it should be stopped just because someone doesn’t like it. The whole punching up, punching down thing is just weird. It’s a self imposed rule people treat like law.
I dunno, there’s a couple problems there. You can still punch up or punch down while recognizing that everyone’s equal, because we can recognize that status doesn’t have to really do with whether or not someone’s equal. i.e. someone can be lower or higher status, monetarily, socially, while still being of equal worth, in terms of like, their value as a human. So you can still “punch up” or “punch down”, because there’s still problems in society, we don’t live in a kind of totally equal utopia, or what have you, and to not recognize that and say that we do, and then use that as a justification to be able to punch down, you know, that would be bad.
Oftentimes, the reason people find ire with “punching down”, is that it makes fun of people from the perspective of their lack of status and their lack of worth as a human. It’s fine to make fun of disabled people, in general, but it’s not really funny to make fun of someone who’s in a wheelchair, for the fact they’re in a wheelchair, most especially if you’re not in a wheelchair, because that’s punching down. You also see this thing where people who occupy minority positions, like being in a wheelchair, will try to ingratiate themselves to the majority, sometimes with some degree of success, by basically punching themselves in the face socially. “Oh, I’m in a wheelchair, isn’t that so funny guys?”, but unironically, which negatively impacts, in this example, the disabled, especially as it is used as evidence for being like “hey disabled people are okay with it” or “hey this other guy’s okay with it, so if you complain, you’re just lame and don’t have a legitimate grievance”. Now it’s their “choice” to punch themselves, but we can also recognize it’s arising from their need to try and improve their situation, and the extenuating circumstances, and so it’s kind of not that funny in the broader picture, and we also try not to blame them for it on the basis that it’s as a result of their circumstance.
You would probably get better laughs and better comedy out of it anyways, if you tried to point out the kind of existential insanity of being someone in a wheelchair, and moving through the modern world, which has not been crafted for you. People in wheelchairs have difficulty using the restroom, for example, because restrooms aren’t really laid out for them, so you could maybe come at it from the angle of “why do we still have urinals”, or “what the fuck is up with asian squat toilets”, or something to that effect. Maybe make fun of everyone wanting you to cut off your legs, and give you robot legs, when really all you wanted was to have a wheelchair that lets you piss and shit, and like, an elevator that isn’t broken. The reason chapelle’s modern shit isn’t that funny, imo, is because he doesn’t understand the perspective of trans people enough to make effective jokes out of it. Which, to be fair, is pretty hard to do, if you’re not trans. Which is sort of why most comedians don’t try it, the same way most white comedians don’t try to do racial comedy about black people.
That’s not all to overcorrect and say that all his shit in “the closer” was bad, because it wasn’t, and he had a handful of good points, but the problem is going to kind of arise when those good points also come with a handful of pretty bad points and pretty bad jokes. Just like his actual show. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say that a good amount of dave chappelle’s popularity comes from the double tradeoff of it being extremely popular in the 2000’s to kind of be more comfortable with being “edgy” and making fun of black people, on the basis that they’re equal, and “I’m not a racist, so it’s okay” type shit. People laughing at him, rather than with him, but on the basis that we live in a harmonious post-racial society, barring all of the “weird racists”. He even ended up saying as much, as to why he wanted to quit his own show, that he felt people were laughing more at him. The double tradeoff I’m talking about, there, is that he was using the same platform, out the other side of his mouth, to make funny and insightful comedy that pushed the buck. He could attract white people looking to laugh at the minstrel and misogyny, but then turn around and give some good shit on top of it. Even just to portray the reality that black people were still oppressed. Is that tradeoff worth it? It maybe is, if you’re able to give good enough insight to kind of balance the rest out, but if the insight is lacking, if the perspective is lacking, then obviously people are gonna be more likely to get very frustrated with it. That’s all me talking out my ass, though.
If you think comedy largely has to be offensive and that ribbing your friends is the same as somebody going on TV and saying the same thing, you’re missing out on a lot of good comedy. There’s so much comedy that doesn’t just come down to “saying something offensive for the shock factor.”
See it’s based on everyone being equal and there is nothing wrong with being disabled (the person mentioning this view was disabled). So if you rip on all your friends for whatever, but then don’t rip on your disabled friend for being disabled then that is treating them like that can’t handle it or that they aren’t equal.
This comes off like “I can say the N word because I have a black friend and he finds it funny when I say it.” Ribbing your friends has the implicit understanding between you and them that it’s not ill intentioned or mean-spirited. You could make a joke about your friend’s wheelchair, but you wouldn’t walk up to a random person on the street in a wheelchair and make fun of them for it. You can make a racist joke with your friends because everybody there knows you’re not being serious and you’re probably making fun of the people who would actually make a joke like that, but if you go up in front of a bunch of strangers and do the same joke, they don’t know that you’re not being serious about it. It just sounds like you’re being racist.
Punching up and punching down are very specific things, not just joking about a minority group or not; and they’re not laws or rules, they’re labels for a concept. Calling something a square isn’t some self imposed rule - it’s just the label for a rectangle that has 4 sides of identical length.
Punching down is specifically when you make jokes at the expense of a minority, rather than making jokes about a minority. It’s the comedy equivalent of kicking a kid in the balls because your friends think it’s funny. You can make trans jokes without it being yet another “I saw a chick with a dick and that’s gross and I vomited” kind of joke. Punching down would be going on TV and making jokes about how black people aren’t as intelligent as white people and that’s why they’re poor and do drugs and end up in prison. Not punching down would be making a joke about how all day people kept coming up to you and telling you how proud of you they are for being brave enough to be yourself and wishing you well in your transition…but you’re not trans, you just forgot to put on makeup that day.
Punching up is when a joke is a criticism of a common minority experience at the expense of the people who perpetrate that experience. Like making a joke about how you know that a new black guy moved into town because suddenly everybody is calling you by his name; and when you finally meet the guy, it’s like you’re already best friends because you already know everything about each other. And then a random black guy you don’t recognize shows up drunk in front of your house so you bring him over to your friend’s house because you assume he’s a friend of theirs - but they had brought him over to your house first because they assumed he was your friend.
Basically, if you have to be an asshole to be funny, then the only people who are gonna laugh are other assholes.
Comedy is funny. That’s what it is.
It doesn’t have to be offensive. But it can be offensive.
It’s just a joke and being overly sensitive about something that isn’t true can mean you miss a lot of good quality humour because you find it more important to be offended than to laugh.
I said it in his last special, a comedian doesn’t punch down. Apparently he heard this criticism from others and decided to double down. He’s truly become a piece of shit of a guy and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s jumped on the Maga train.
“Punching down” also indicates that he thinks he’s somehow on a different level from them. So, it should mean, for example, that he’s making fun of comedians who are less successful than him. Or maybe it means he’s making fun of people who have less money than him.
But, there’s likely a trans person out there who has more money than him, so what does he actually mean? He’s the one quoted in this special as saying “I love punching down!” Those are his words that he chose. Is he saying that he’s inherently better than a trans person or a disabled person?
It used to be popular for white people to think they were inherently better than black people. Talk about a lack of perspective.
Harshly criticizing a powerful group or system (punching up) is considered fair social critique. Harshly criticizing a group or system that is already vulnerable (punching down) is just bullying. It’s not about feeling superior in this context, it’s just about someone with a huge platform using it to put down people who already have a harder life than they need to.
No, it’s about people with too much time on their hands and no ambition to fight any real cause being able to pretend like they’re doing something that matters.
Pretty sure the whole punching down thing comes from a story he told in one of these netflix specials where a trans woman in a bar told him she likes his comedy but that he needs to stop punching down against her people. He got all indignant about it and tried explaining that it’s not punching down because he’s black. His logic being that black people are so far down the totem pole it’s impossible for any one of them to “punch down” against a different marginalized group.
Him using the phrase now comes across more to me as him reveling in the position that he’s, in his mind, been mischaracterized into by the trans community. And less so him actually believing he’s better than anyone.
Still not at all a good look. And he’s definitely an asshole. The fact that he’s still fixated on this one perceived slight that happened to him several years ago should tell you all you need to know about him. My dude has produced multiple Netflix comedy specials focused on getting back at a community he feels wronged by because a woman said something to him once in a bar that he didn’t like.
Here’s well known social media karma harvester… George Carlin explaining the concept in… 1990
https://www.reddit.com/r/IsTheMicStillOn/comments/nx3gcz/george_carlin_speaks_on_punching_down_120/
“talk about lack of perspective”
Just a heads up, punching down is a term used in the comedy world. It’s more like, telling a dumb joke that’s easy. It’s an easy win that most people will laugh at, rather than creating humor using actual skill.
Just a heads up, ‘punching down’ means ‘To attack or criticize someone in a less powerful position’. That’s the definition. It’s not limited to the comedy world.
OR, ya’ll are missing the joke entirely, in that he doesn’t think he’s ‘punching down’… nore is he making fun of who you think he is.
In fact, the joke is at the expense of people like those in this thread who are getting bent out of shape taking words out of context. It was tailor made to upset YOU, specifically. YOU, and your unnecessary outrage, are the butt of the joke. He’s mocking those who go overboard with the virtue signaling, and you all here are taking the bait hook, line & sinker.
There is a problem right now with self elected ‘thought police’ trying to remove all discourse, and that is VERY unhealthy for a liberal society. Totalitarianism is not healthy, no matter what your motivation is. Sacred cows are ALWAYS something to be targeted by comedy & satire, and the left wing totalitarianist word/thought police are very much a valid target, every bit as much as the MAGA idiots. For society as a whole, they are equally as dangerous, the end goal is the same but with different underlying motivations.
That being said, the special was lackluster. It felt like he was contractually obligated to give Netflix another special by the end of 2023 but didn’t have enough material yet & even what he had wasn’t very polished.
You’ve set off my 1984 alarm: Never use the term, “thought police” in reference to private individuals making decisions about others actions. If you actually read 1984 (it’s a short book and easy to find online, go read it) the Thought Police were part of the government. As in, policing people’s thoughts was a function of the government (in order to maintain the status quo, avoiding change aka extreme conservativism).
Here, you’re referring to a collection of people that have decided–on their own–to boycott a comedian because they don’t like where he stands on certain topics. That’s not Thought Police! Call them snowflakes or “too sensitive” or “hysterical” or some other bullshit (don’t care, really) but please for the love of Orwell stop using that term to refer to non-governmental entities or the actions of people that aren’t part of any authority.
When the government starts cracking down on people’s speech then by all means refer to this action as, “Thought Police”.
This represents a common issue in the discourse. Conservatives tend to use a group of people to try and score points against leftists, liberals people NOT a part of the minority while using the minority as nothing more than a weapon. It doesn’t matter how much we get banged up. In this case it’s cis people using the existence and expressed needs of trans people to try and discredit other cis people while misrepresenting the needs and causes of trans people. We are not bullets to be fired at our own defenders.
You think no trans people are made to feel alienated by this? That in the shockwave following another bombing run we don’t get to hear variations of this rhetoric in our workplaces and get to feel like we need to chose between our mental health and the precarity of keeping food on the table? That people won’t feel empowered to come at us with new fodder to make us to routinely have to defend ourselves against whatever transphobic nonsense is getting panned as a “dig against the libs”? We fight for rights to actually live in our bodies with a mental load out that is hard for cis people to comprehend at a basic level and that gets represented as high humor by someone who very obviously hasn’t got a clue during a time when we are under political fire and human rights campaigns have labelled the USA actively hostile to trans people. It’s beyond poor taste, it’s preaching to the ignorance and intolerance of people directly.
When I tell someone to shut the fuck up I’m merely expressing my own right to free speech, I’m not taking away someone else’s right to speak! How is that “thought police”? They are still free to ignore me, they just have to deal with the fact that I disprove.
And that’s what babies like this are really mad about. Baby can’t stand the thought that people don’t like him!
I’m also free to not watch his special, not give him money, and tell other people to do the same. And baby doesn’t like that!
There is a problem right now with self elected ‘thought police’ trying to remove all discourse, and that is VERY unhealthy for a liberal society.
Is Dave Chapelle entitled to a Netflix special? Does he have a right to a Netflix special? Is not letting him have a Netflix special taking away his basic free speech rights?
If so, I want my Netflix special too.
Man, don’t waste your time and energy.
Most of these commenters just want to be angry.
I agree with your comment 100%.
I said it in his last special, a comedian doesn’t punch down. Apparently he heard this criticism from others and decided to double down. He’s truly become a piece of shit of a guy and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s jumped on the Maga train.
it’s essential to consider the broader context of oppression when discussing the dynamics of ‘punching up’ or ‘punching down’ in comedy. historically, black people have faced systemic oppression, which continues to impact their lives in various ways. this systemic oppression isn’t just about individual experiences of racism but also about the overarching power structures that disproportionately affect black communities.
when a black comedian addresses topics related to race, they are often speaking from a place of personal and collective experience with these systemic issues. their humor might be a way to cope with or highlight the absurdities and injustices of these systems. therefore, even when their jokes might seem to target groups traditionally seen as more powerful, it’s not the same as ‘punching down.’ ‘punching down’ implies attacking those who are less powerful or oppressed, and given the historical and ongoing context of racial oppression, a black comedian making jokes about race or related societal structures isn’t an act of punching down but rather a form of social commentary or critique.
That doesn’t work against groups that are even further behind in their quest for civil rights. Trans people are still fighting to use bathrooms or participate in sports the Black people fought for 60-70 years ago.
the comparison between the struggles of black individuals and transgender individuals is valid, yet it’s important to understand each community’s unique challenges. while both groups share a common goal of equality and fair treatment, they face distinct battles rooted in different forms of discrimination.
black people have historically dealt with segregation, police brutality, voter suppression, housing disparities, and many other racially motivated issues. they’ve made significant progress in terms of civil rights over the past few decades, thanks to the efforts of activists, organizations, and legislation. however, there’s no denying that these issues persist, requiring continued work towards eradication.
transgender individuals, on the other hand, primarily struggle with gender identity and expression. they fight against misconceptions, prejudice, and bias, which often manifests as restricted access to facilities, employment, healthcare, etc. trans people also experience higher rates of violence compared to the general population, which illustrates the severity of their plight.
while both groups have experienced similar periods where the right to basic services was denied based on an inherent characteristic, their journeys are not identical. this isn’t about pitting one group against another; rather, acknowledging that the battle for equal rights is ongoing for everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other aspect of human diversity.
The whole notion of you can’t punch down never made sense to me. A group of people that you can’t criticize or make fun of is not a group below you.
What do you mean “can’t”? There’s no law or anything, you can insult whoever you want just like Dave.
Doing something that makes you an asshole is not a contradiction. You are free to be an asshole, through your actions.
“You can’t” in the sense of “you shouldn’t.” Because if you do, you’re an asshole.
So you can make jokes about only certain groups of people without being an “asshole” wouldn’t that make the other groups protected?
