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.
He basically says, as most comedians have, that you should be able to make fun of everyone.
He says (paraphrasing here) Im not making fun of trans people, they have a lot of representation, I’ll punch down on handicapped people instead
It’s not about handicapped or trans people, it’s about the fact that no matter what you joke about, someone will be offended, and you can’t live your life not offending everyone
Also, most of the special was about his dreams as a child, and how other people are dreamers too
He also goes on to give Lil Nas X a lot of props in the special, which if he hated lgbtq people, he probably wouldn’t.
The bits about trans people, which were few and far between, were mostly about how people.took and misconstrued his jokes about trans people in previous specials.
I’ve seen all of them, not once do I think he was specifically targeting and being dismissive of trans people
You can make fun of people without discriminating against them. Dave has pretty consistently made fun of everyone.
He makes fun of himself and his wife for being black and Chinese in this. I don’t see everyone screaming that he’s racist against black or Chinese people
I saw “the closer” and what you just wrote about it is full-on bullshit. Before that one maybe you could pass him off as actually joking, but not after that one.
fuck this “making jokes about everyone” defense. why do all these “I mAkE jOkEs aBoUt eVeRyOnE” Mf’ers ALWAYS make jokes about minorities and punch down? if your “comedy about everyone” is literally 90% about you asserting power and dominance over minorities, you’re just a hack. the power of comedy is so great. you can do so much with it. why use it to make people feel small who feel small all their life