Dave Chappelle The Closer

[RAGER]

Anybody seen it?  Watched it last night. Started off clunky and not funny. To a lot of people it's not funny at all. Very offensive in fact. I've always thought the human race and it's ego are ridiculous. Our lives are funny. What we're all doing here is funny. If you can't laugh at yourself then you're a fukn drag in my book. I never mind being the butt f the joke. As long as it's funny.

If it's malicious, that's another story.

[peoplething]

The scooby doo voice gag still cracks me up

But I'm a horrible person lol

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[Pissy]

I watched it and thought it was great.   I guess there's a walkout staged for today at Netflix due to the trans content.  He took to the subject head on for sure.  I don't recall who coined the term "fuck em if they can't take a joke," but it seems this special is an hour long way to that phrase. 

[peoplething]

I dig that sentiment for a ton of jokes, burns, whatever across the board. No one group gets to be so uptight when all the other groups are chill'n.

The problem imo, is Chapelle's always argued he's not a role model. Hell, we laugh when he screams at the audience "I am not a role model".

but he is, and there's not much fondness between mainstream black culture and homosexuality/trans at all. It probably would've been better not to bring it up.

[Dylan Thomas]

I haven't seen it, though I'll weigh in on some of the themes expressed here.  I'm not sure that I really want to see it.

I'm all for jokes and such, yes our life here is often described as a gigantic cosmic joke.  I'm okay with that.

I'm not really okay with a "role model" not having enough self-awareness to even realize that their words have a large impact on a large swath of society, whether they want it to be that way or not.  Failure to address a problem almost always exasperates said problem, until it reaches a critical mass and a breaking point, and then the fallout is almost inevitably far more severe.

I also really don't find it particularly funny to target marginalized communities that already get targeted enough.  That's not really okay, when we think critically about it.  It's not that it offends me, it's that I realize how hard everyday life is for a lot of these folks, and that "jokes" of this nature simply make it that much harder for them.  Ever heard of the concept of "punching up?"  Making fun of marginalized folks, well.....it's a bit cowardly, and then it's even more cowardly to play the victim when the backlash ensues, now that some of these communities are being empowered to speak their truths and stand up for themselves.

Though in the right light, yes, our suffering can be funny, making jokes that perpetuate the suffering of some in order to bring relief to some, that's not just and it's simply not funny.  It has a lot of awful unintended consequences, and the people laughing hardest at those jokes are simply not the ones who have to suffer most of those consequences.