Dave Chappelle - "Killin' 'Em Softly"

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!

I'm surprised no one brought it up:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/dave-chappelle-louis-ck-netflix_us_5a4b94a2e4b025f99e1da6f3

True, that is the only thing he said. Thanks for clearing that up.

the first Netflix special was so dispiriting
I don't think he's funny anymore

an article from the trans person he talks about in the new special is a worthwhile read


https://medium.com/@tylergfoster/i-wrote-dave-chappelle-a-letter-about-his-terrible-transgender-jokes-55478970b9f

"Equanimity" is fucking funny. I miss the more manic, cartoonish delivery (and voice) of early 2000s tho.

i thought these were a lot better than the ones he did last year. but he does sound like a dinosaur.

not sure i understood exactly how his pimp parable at the end of Bird Rev pertains to him or the audience or comedy central(?) or hollywood or anything really

how much of the runtime of the new specials is dedicate to shitty transphobic bits?

don't watch it

thought equanimity was funny. haven't watched the next one. I understand why Tyler is unsatisfied with Dave's evolution on the topic, but I'm not sure that a step function sort of evolution from last special to this one would be more effective at pulling more fans along for Dave's ride. But perhaps that is an incorrect or less worthy objective.

not sure i understood exactly how his pimp parable at the end of Bird Rev pertains to him or the audience or comedy central(?) or hollywood or anything really

― constitutional crises they fly at u face (will), Friday, January 5, 2018 1:31 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I took it to imply that capitalism will wring every bit of humanity out of you, so he got out while he could

I thought the new ones were mostly bad, especially the second one which didn’t have any laughs and was basically appalling. he tries to houdini his way out of some pretty ugly setups, and to his credit it almost works a couple of times, but what he has to offer is not really worth an hour’s time in 2018. he’s a sad old man

i'm not sure which special is which... the one where he's actually standing up i thought was pretty funny, way better than the two from last year.

the more casual one in LA... i dunno there wasn't a whole lot to like there but i feel like the outrage articles about what he's saying don't quite capture the tone of the set which i thought was kind of approachable even if a lot of what he was saying was borderline appalling logically.

i find his baseline inability to recognize/acknowledge the general concept of intersectionality to be pretty disappointing, especially when it comes to the separation of trans and black people as if there aren't a whole lot of people who are both. there's a gap in his thinking there that i find really hard to square with given how perceptive he is (was) on a lot of other issues.

also that he's a PC culture warrior arguing that telling bad jokes about trans ppl is the bravest thing anyone can do for free speech is really off putting to me but sadly it's kind of the price of admission for watching comedy nowadays.

all of that otm, my feelings exactly. the "second one" was the one where he was sitting down, yeah

feel like if you're thinking about a comedian's "baseline ability to recognize/acknowledge the general concept of intersectionality", comedy just isn't for you

Uh no, if the whole point of the bit is to talk about these things, then I don't know how you can not think about it.

I thought he basically recognized intersectionality in the "first one". He admits that part of his slow evolution wrt to this is due to suspicion related to how a white male can identify as trans. So he recognizes a kind of weighted intersectionality, which wouldn't be entirely incorrect? The bit about Rachel Dolezal also acknowledged a weighted intersectionality.

It is difficult to think of a piece of entertainment that is more about intersectionality than Dave Chappelle's standup. Nearly every bit he does in the "first one" deals in it.

feel like if you're thinking about a comedian's "baseline ability to recognize/acknowledge the general concept of intersectionality", comedy just isn't for you

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, January 5, 2018 4:50 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark

feel like if you're unable to realize why one might expect dave chappelle to recognize/acknowledge the general concept of intersectionality, dave chappelle just isn't for you

feel like if you're thinking about a comedian's "baseline ability to recognize/acknowledge the general concept of intersectionality", comedy just isn't for you

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, January 5, 2018 4:50 PM (thirty-three minutes ago)

if you're going to tackle these issues in your standup, there is an expectation that you've given some serious thought to it. if he has nothing of substance to say, talk about something else

people have been bringing a lot of expectations to stand up as of late

times have changed, dad

yes, as evidenced by the arenas of people in every city walking out en masse when Chappelle tells a joke about transgender ppl

Also, Jordan otm