Dave Chappelle - "Killin' 'Em Softly"

there is a very potent absurdity to the very idea of gender. these silly games us humans play. it is ripe ground for comedians.

And there's the DERP

dude, please. that is not what chappelle's jokes about transgender people were about.

xp

i've been watching old episodes of Friends with cyrus and i forgot about how freaked out they were by lesbians on that show. it doesn't seem that long ago! but i guess it kinda is in t.v. years. that show is so norm-core to the bone.

also, when they are playing a quiz game and the question comes up "what is joey's favorite food?" and chandler yells out "sandwiches!" i totally laughed harder than during dave's long-ass sandwich story.

there is nothing assholish about accidentally calling someone the wrong pronoun.

true, that one wasn't as bad as the one where he adopts a typical sneaky transgender voice and says "heh heh, let's go out the club and trick some guys into fucking us"

This is the sort of thing that only an established comedian can get away with in his "I'm still here" Netflix special. A young up-and-comer from a new generation would never make this joke. It'll go away.

this is probably the first time i ever saw him. and i always remembered the moving to the village and having the nightmare about the guy putting a gun to his head and the biting the penis off thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBJXIuzRnyI

i've never seen that! he looks like a baby. that one seems like he's at least a little making fun of his own homosexual panic. also the fact that he looks like a baby makes the straight male obsession with gay men seem...typically juvenile.

there is nothing assholish about accidentally calling someone the wrong pronoun.

accidentally, no, of course not, and I don't think anybody is suggesting otherwise. making a statement like "well HER dick is out" and making fun of the juxtaposition of a "she" with "he" parts is. (as is suggesting it isn't "fair" to be expected to play along).

I've accidentally called the wrong pronoun before - most human beings just apologize and correct themselves at that point and .....that's it.

i have to admit the bit about getting on an airplane and asking the pilot "yo, you wanna live, motherfucker?" was hilarious tho

Nothing is sacred in comedy, it's either all in or out IMO. But whether you find the jokes funny or poor taste is up to you obvs.

no one has ever said comedians can't say what they want. but accordingly, they can fucking suck it up when they say wack things and people point it out.

^ yeah, agree with that.

making a statement like "well HER dick is out" and making fun of the juxtaposition of a "she" with "he" parts is.

but he's joking about social awkwardness at parties. isn't this a standard topic for comedians? this is normalizing trans issues in a way.

social awkwardness at parties is so not what was the subject of his joke, even if that's what *you* got from it

the joke was about navigating a changing world full of chicks with dicks and how socially awkward it is that chicks can have dicks nowadays

dave is old news now anyway. i'm already anticipating...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Fe3mInaTI

where does this no punching down thing come from? both Chapelle's standup and show was largely crackhead based.

re: crackheads, Dave typically told crackhead jokes or played crackhead characters as commentary on his own community

so he isnt allowed to joke about people outside his community?

jesus have you not read any of the previous 200 posts

look, if your argument is he should just not joke about it to avoid spreading potentially hateful ideas then he did that for like a decade! he stopped his hugely successful and influential TV show exactly for that reason. he agrees with you.

you can joke about something without turning that something into an item of mockery.

you could tell a joke involving a transgendered person that actually satirizes society's reactions to something they don't understand. you can also tell a joke involving a transgendered person that amounts to "lol this person calls herself a lady but she has a dick and they expect me to call her 'she'".

I don't think Dave is some hateful asshole that dislikes transgendered people as much as I think he got lazy and was going for low-hanging fruit with his audience. doesn't make it much better though.

as I said, I left feeling entertained that night, but that 5 minutes or so had me very uncomfortable, not laughing, and wishing for him to move on.

it also depends on the stature of your target. the transgender community is undoubtedly earning acceptance that was unthinkable even a decade ago but they're lagging behind the gay community in that many people that are "ok" with homosexuality still condemn transgenders. At the time of Dave's special, it was early 2015, so we didn't have the North Carolina bathroom bill yet, but we did have the aforementioned savage McDonald's beatdown, and National Review had just a year earlier published its infamous nasty article "Laverne Cox is not a woman".

I'm not saying comedians have to be agents of social change, I'm not even saying they can't ridicule things or joke about controversial things (I'm hardly a prude, I probably laugh at shit that would get me 50 FPs if people knew about it here)....but it's probably best if telling a joke involving a community fighting for acceptance that you don't make it a lowest-common denominator joke reinforcing the worst of stereotypes about a group that is still fighting hard to gain acceptance.

Let's do Katt Williams next.

I love like 2005-era Katt

gender has been fixed for tens/hundreds of thousands of years.

Not the right thread, but this isn't remotely true, even if you fix it to the US and its antecedents.

there is nothing assholish about accidentally calling someone the wrong pronoun.

Right, but (as I know some people have said), that's not what Dave Chappelle was doing here.

Good on you for the subject of the rest of that post - I'm not criticising you, and god knows I misgender people myself, even ones I've known a long time. Well, particularly them.

What I meant was, you could have said the year 3000 and I'd have thought oh yeah fair enough, we'll be mists inside spacesuits living on Venus, significant social change will have taken place. But we're probably both going to see 2050, it's not a far off utopia. And I agree that society (or at least the USA and its shadow) is changing on this pretty quickly, I would have thought 10 years ago that 2050 would have been a good estimate for "Trans/gender thinking gets to where we imagine it should be", and now I can see it happening. Though the kids who have taken it on now will be the old giffers then, I suppose you could say that that's when it'll be finished.

I think a lot of this is just... These specials aren't that good and Dave doesn't really have it.

It feels like a bunch of Rolling Stone convincing themselves like Steel Wheels is really saying something

"hey, this is pretty good..."

Wire - Silver/Lead (2017)

i was really surprised by how much i liked that colin quinn history of new york special on netflix. i never think about colin quinn and never watch him and kinda consider him a dinosaur but it was funny and well-written and he worked it really well. AND it was filled with like 50 years of stand up ethnic stereotypes AND somehow that was half the point and he made it work. it was more like a scripted one man show than a stand up show though.

Colin Quinn's twitter account is a real treasure

It feels like a bunch of Rolling Stone convincing themselves like Steel Wheels is really saying something

I watched the announce live on MTV and David Fricke, who had heard the album and was being interviewed as An Important Rock Critic Who Has Heard the Album, assessed it live on the air as follows:

"It rocks."

this is one of my two most sought after MTV clips btw if anybody's hoarding them. the other one is this anthony kiedis interview w/chris connelly

Fricke is the ultimate classic rock soundbite guy, do respect that he always kept it 100 w/the ramones haircut

he has always been the sweetest nicest guy in person so i'm prejudiced

yeah he always came off as pretty good natured. he used to have a column in RS where he would sneak some pretty underground stuff into the mag when he could.

bill burr wastes the last half of his new special telling a shaggy dog story about a gorilla and its also lame. points for committing to a bit though, i guess.

― scott seward, Thursday, 30 March 2017 02:25

I really liked that part.

I preferred Dave's shaggy dog stories about the sandwiches to the "watch me big a jerk to gays/transgender ppl" bits tbh

but I tend to like comedians that go on really long tangents/storytelling digressions

I hope you've seen the recent stewart lee specials

idk who that is

it wasn't like an "all time LOL" or anything but the story about the dude who kept sending Dave tapes of him beating off made me laugh cos he focused on the stupid details like "who the fuck keeps sending TAPES?" which is kind of how he used to be with his comedy.

you guys must be big kevin hart fans if you like long stories. he can go and go.

I like him okay. he's a bit manic.

i basically agree with shakey's original post. part 1 was an interesting mix of genuine laughs and horrific taboo no-nos, but i think he makes it work, especially with the framing. as cringey as the "he rapes, but he saves" thing was, tying it all together with the cosby punchline at the end was pretty genius

haven't finished part 2 yet, which seems much safer but also less laugh-out-loud funny

His shirt in part 2 is so douchey. I mean if you're gonna do denim cause you're in Texas, then don't stop short of going full on cowboy by wearing this weak-ass blue gradient bullshit, looks like he got it at Costco. What's wrong with a real western shirt? Go loud or go home, and while you're at it, a bolo tie never hurt anyone. Also, maybe don't open your set with a joke about "New York dykes."

Re-watched "For What It's Worth" and it delivers on the laughs far more than the new specials. Seems like both a case of stronger material and less PC times. Some days I'd say he's the funniest comedian ever

anyone catch the new specials?

first ten mins or so, then my friend complained that I turned off Bob's Burgers.

there's a long joke where the payoff is "so I kicked her in the pussy"

First ep is great!