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.
Odd that you’re not calling for those other subjects to face condemnations and scrutiny as well. I don’t think mass shooter jokes or jokes about child sexual abuse are funny. Comedy doesn’t exist in a vacuum it has real-world effects on how people think and feel about the subjects it ridicules. We shouldn’t tolerate the normalization of these things.
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So… you do think mass shooting and child sexual abuse should be joked about? Then what was the point of your comment at all?
It’s also just true lol I don’t know how to explain to you that minstrel shows were an active part of racism in America and did a lot to proliferate racist caricatures that still exist to this day. Comedy isn’t magically ineffective at spreading ideology when all other forms of media are.
(Video games don’t make you violent but they can spread unconscious biases about groups of people, like Muslims for example, by reinforcing who is shot at and who is doing the shooting)
It’s often more effective because it feeds off of and into current societal feelings. It can shield itself behind being “just a joke” and can still be actively harmful to the minorities they target.
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And you have no basis for thinking this. You didn’t respond to half my comment so I’m going to assume you’re aware that making a joke where the punchline “trans women are fucking disgusting and are privileged in society and are a threat to children” can absolutely promote and encourage a group of people to legitimately believe that and you just don’t care.
What kind of decent joke could a comedian tell that would encourage a person to shoot up a school or be a pedo? Jokes about marginalized groups help encourage othering of that group and normalizes bigotry. I’m not saying a person can’t joke about anything they want, but in a political climate where people are making historic pushes to persecute trans people I think it is a pretty massive dick move to fan the flames.