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.
Just gotta claim you’re being canceled now, and Netflix will give you a special, I think.
Netflix Exec 1: “We need a new way of getting subscribers”
Netflix Exec 2: “How about this - we wait for a comedian to say something really awful, then, when ordinary people are appalled by what they said, we get the comedian to start shrieking about being cancelled…”
NE1: “We’re cancelling them?”
NE2: “That’s the thing - nobody is! But as we all know, these comedians core audience are people who have a Pavlovian response to the word ‘cancel’ and they’re somehow even less able than they already were to think coherently…so we wait, for the ‘controversy (lol)’ to really ramp up, then give the comedian a 2 hour special. It’ll only cost us a few million but the new subscriber numbers amongst the gammon population will far exceed that figure!”
NE1: “Brilliant! But wait…aren’t we going to look like shitty people?”
NE2: “Possibly, but ten years from now we can produce a documentary series about the real world affect on people these specials had - we can act all contrite, the comedians can, I dunno, cry a bit maybe? Net result - more money!”
Cue greenlighting Disclosure 2, where even more exasperated trans people have to explain the damage the media is still causing trans people.