Dave Chappelle - "Killin' 'Em Softly"

anyway I doubt chappelle cares that much, he seems like a pretty miserable person and is very rich! and if these two specials indicate anything he is pretty happy at this stage in his career to collect his checks

that whole post checks out

oh well we must force him to wrestle with the issue or he gets no dessert, straight to bed for him

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, January 5, 2018 4:57 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

speaking of tiresome

what a horrible person he does things for money

he usually brings up how rich he is in the context of intersectionality!

god I sure hope I'm tiresome to you sanctimonious fucks

oh well we must force him to wrestle with the issue or he gets no dessert, straight to bed for him

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, January 5, 2018 5:57 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark

nobody is forcing or even asking dave chappelle to wrestle with trans issues? it's his choice, and he's getting paid an insane amount of money to do so. your expectations for both him and yourself seem pretty low honestly.

actually on the contrary i would prefer to turn on a dave chappelle special and not hear him wrestle with trans stuff. but if he's going to then...

actually on the contrary i would prefer to turn on a dave chappelle special and not hear him wrestle with trans stuff. but if he's going to then...

― J0rdan S., Friday, January 5, 2018 3:08 PM (six seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah basically this exactly where I'm coming from. his trans bits in the last round of netflix specials were just really 4chan or someone's racist uncle at the xmas dinner table level stuff: dead-naming, using the slur trannies repeatedly - and then when trying to be less offensive for a second or two saying "transgendered" (which is also incorrect which chapelle would know if he gave two shits) - and talking about dicks etc. it's not funny, it's not thoughtful, and it's bigoted. i hope this shit is going age horrendously and the next generations will look back and think "woah early 21st century people were into some really offensive shit" but, i dunno, that's probably too optimistic

comedians tend to want things both ways (i think CK and Stewart were super bad about this) it's like they love being treated as big important artists -- Chapelle's Block Party was completely designed to cast him as a cultural icon -- and little philosophers, but then when people push back it's like "Hey hey hey I'm just a comedian don't listen to me I'm just jokin' around!" (in fairness I'm probably projecting some of my ire at Stewart on to Chapelle here but I think it's true of both)

xp yeah, but his reaction to that belongs in an apology (which is where he put it) and not next year's special. as a reaction, he could have transformed into mike birbiglia. but the people who like mike birbiglia already have mike birbiglia, and he will leave some of his audience behind by becoming mike birbiglia. you could take the negative view that he doesn't want to lose that audience because he wants there money. you could take a more optimistic view that he loves that audience, is loyal to them, and wants to bring them along as his thinking evolves.

*their money obv

actually on the contrary i would prefer to turn on a dave chappelle special and not hear him wrestle with trans stuff. but if he's going to then...

― J0rdan S., Friday, January 5, 2018 6:08 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago)

this!!!

xp yeah, but his reaction to that belongs in an apology (which is where he put it) and not next year's special. as a reaction, he could have transformed into mike birbiglia. but the people who like mike birbiglia already have mike birbiglia, and he will leave some of his audience behind by becoming mike birbiglia. you could take the negative view that he doesn't want to lose that audience because he wants there money. you could take a more optimistic view that he loves that audience, is loyal to them, and wants to bring them along as his thinking evolves.

― Scatperson (ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-whore.) (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, January 5, 2018 3:28 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

chapelle was never a particularly offensive or transgressive comedian before this comeback iirc and there's a large distance between being grossly transphobic and being a milquetoast bore like birbiglia.

yeah it’s not exactly stay in yr lane but maybe just don’t shit on a whole section of the population just to make hay out of how you don’t “get” them

unless you are making fun of how dumb you are for even bringing it up idk

In my friend group if someone says, like, "cis," there are some major blank looks. They look to guys like Chappelle and Norm MacDonald -- or Bill Maher or Joe Rogan, etc. -- to weigh in: Is this just political correctness run amok, taken to an absurd extreme, or is it a worthwhile idea to differentiate between the sex you're born with and the gender you express? They don't know a trans person irl. And when Chappelle says that the answer is that trans people are gross and that it's appropriate to make fun of them, that a trans woman is just a confused guy, that Caitlyn is inherently Bruce, that these issues are a bit silly, it has a pretty major effect on a lot of people and their thinking. It's irrelevant that it's coming from a comedian. Coming from a respected public figure the idea has incredible currency.

And when it's coming from Nick Di Paolo I think, "This is basically what this guy has always been preaching" and I roll my eyes. But with Chappelle it feels like his heart has shrunk a little bit, that the guy who wanted to throw the block party doesn't necessarily want everyone to come anymore.

^^^ ding ding ding

this exactly

yep

good to remember not to project our values onto the people we admire

did you just yep your ding ding?

good post polyphonic

also i dunno aside from those concerns, like transphobic stuff like caitlyn jenner shit just seems so lame and old fashioned like some fuckin hacky jay leno monologue from 1998 or some shit, like just beneath someone of chapelle's talents

I somehow thought k3vin wrote polyphonic's post

yeah I was wondering how to respond to that, haha. all good

how can anyone even think about anything he's saying when his jacket choices continue to be so weirdly ill-fitting

the guy cannot not wear weird clothes

i just kept staring at the e-cig and the real cigs in both specials. it's all i could look at. it makes me nervous when people hold cigarettes and don't smoke them for some reason. and when people just hold an unlit cigarette and take four years to light it while they're talking. but that's just me. and, yeah, that big C jacket was lame.

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

― k3vin k., Friday, January 5, 2018 3:49 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i disagree. i took it as him saying he was the bottom to the coldblooded culture industry's pimp -- a powerful explanation for why he quit his show

yeah i considered both of those but still wasn't really sure

briefly considered that maybe he even meant he's Iceberg and the audience is the bottom but tbh i was pretty high when i watched it

the first one is pretty good overall
the second one is really...off... like borderline not even a comedy special

I fell asleep during the third one 3 nights in a row. Think I have 4 minutes left. Might not finish it cos it wasn’t v funny. Think Between the 4 new specials there’s prob like 45 mins worth of p good material

i watched both of these and... yeah... he says some rough stuff. now i'm not gonna be surprised if people get upset at the new stuff. it seems like he is pretty critical of the #metoo movement and at times more than a little cruel towards victims imo. but i still think he has the right to say what is on his mind and to expect otherwise seems counterproductive. there shouldn't be an expectation for him to suddenly discard a life's worth of behaviors and socially ingrained belief systems and become an expert in this one ideology. there is value in letting an old fart say what is on his mind and have people publicly say "We don't care if you were a hero you can't get away w that and here is why"

he is from an older era and is using these older reference points. like that Pimp book seems like a very 70's civil rights, something that will immediately trigger a modern audience. i don't think this is intentional and this is just a book he was aware of through his older cultural touchstones and thought was relevant. cos he saw the Weinstein stuff as the same thing these pimps were doing. the pimp had used the money to pay off all of the enablers that helped him break this already broken woman. all the money that was only being made due to the hard work of the exploited woman. Hollywood is pimps seems to be what he is saying.

xpost yeah he also just seems really... lazy and disengaged a lot of times like the final one there are so many times when he just seems to be rambling only sort of making semi gestures towards actual jokes or bits

Yah v half-baked, if you will.

OK, I watched the second/fourth one and, like, I can understand some measure of disappointment that this, like, FOUR FUCKING HOURS of comedy specials released in the span of a single year aren't put together like the C.K./Oswalt model of "this is my hottest hour of material that I've workshopped and finessed on the road for a year," but like I don't see why its so hard to adjust your expectations for a little rambling/free-form from the most naturally hilarious guy on the planet in a world where the Onion A/V Club is like pressuring people to listen to 18 hours of fucking Earwolf comedy podcasts. Even when he's just, like, telling the plot of the Iceberg Slim book for 10 minutes or whatever, he's a transfixing speaker and hilarious guy, even if he's not doing a standard "set"

idk, like, I obviously would never ever ever fault or question someone for saying that Chappelle's trans/rape/gay material upsets their moral compass to the point where they don't want to listen to the guy.

But I really don't understand the upper mississippi/Spottie/Neaderthal criticism that these specials aren't "funny." Like if Dave Chappelle isn't funny, I would love to know what recent comedy things they think is funny.

how many times did you laugh during the second new special? I can't remember laughing at anything actually original, i.e. something other than "haha, this white guy knows what a bottom b---- is"

please write down a number that you think would be an appropriate cutoff for deciding whether or not Dave Chappelle's new special was funny and mail it to a mod before I reveal how many times I laughed. all done? ok. I laughed 1 million times.

god I sure hope I'm tiresome to you sanctimonious fucks

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, 5 January 2018 23:07 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

in a world where the Onion A/V Club is like pressuring people to listen to 18 hours of fucking Earwolf comedy podcasts.

i have no idea what any of this means i don't listen to comedy podcast i've listened to like maybe 10 maron episodes and half weren't comedians

i dunno, i thought that the comedy special "nice lady" by michelle wolf on HBO was very funny, that's one recent one that i watched. i thought it was better than any of these dave chapelle shows. but i'm not dr. comedy, md.

i liked ali wong baby cobra and mike birbiglia thank god for jokes too, i liked those as much or more than the chappelle ones

i just kinda watch random ones on netflix or hbo

i liked (the poorly-named) "Kevin Hart Presents Keith Robinson: Back of the Bus Funny"

wouldn't you have a normal last name and just a doctorate in comedy instead of medicine?

laughter is the best medicine

^ otm

would photoshop* a prescription for Chappelle but i don't do that anymore

*edit in powerpoint

new netflix is not funny and just lazy tbh

dunno if I want to hear another comedian claim that we should go easy on Louie CK cuz what he did "wasn't all that bad"

yeah lasted about 10 minutes

as time goes by it gets weirder and weirder for me to remember that he got super famous from doing a sketch comedy show where he wore wacky wigs and shit

When I saw him a couple of years ago it felt more like hanging out with someone that sometimes says funny things than it did seeing standup. There was no real rhythm to the delivery.

this one is front-loaded with a bunch of obnoxious shit. The most glaring one to me wasn't the Michael Jackson or LGBT-car-trip jokes - it was the "what if I said I was a Chinese person that was trapped in a black man's body" bit (which he later says his own Asian wife finds offensive!) I don't think his comic chops have diminished at all, even the MJ shit is basically just a set-up for a p funny McAuley Culkin joke, but it's sad that he feels compelled to return to "controversial" topics on which he doesn't have anything insightful to say. I mean, the Culkin joke is funny, but it's also super-lazy. I think he's better with the more personal sort of long-form shaggy-dog-type stories that turn out to be really carefully constructed but in this special that stuff is undercut by his compulsion to "push the envelope" or whatever.

It's also sad to a comedian (or any public figure really) complaining about audience feedback in terms of "cancellation culture"/#metoo/pick yr "online movement". Cuz those complaints all boil down to "I liked it better when I didn't have to listen to other people". Social media has lowered the bar to the effort required for an audience to provide feedback, so now it's out there. Get over it.

sad to SEE

xp