Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or somewhere with really bad wifi) for the last three weeks you probably heard something about the controversy around comedian Dave Chappelle’s latest special The Closer, released Oct. 5 on Netflix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Full disclosure that I’ve been a huge Chappelle fan ever since seeing him live at Montreal’s Just for Laughs festival in the late ’80s when he was in his teens. I immediately loved his mix of comedy and racial commentary that remains a hallmark of his act today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The controversy around The Closer is focused on what Chappelle says about gay and trans people. This isn\u2019t new. In fact, at the beginning of The Closer Chappelle says he\u2019s going to address the controversy from his remarks about trans folks in his previous specials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main critiques of The Closer I\u2019ll address here are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regarding the first point, an Oct. 15 Vulture article<\/a> said, \u201cThese intersections are blind spots for Dave. He speaks about Black and queer struggles as if they are strictly in competition, not always entangled.\u201d An Oct. 23 Vox article<\/a> says, \u201cChappelle rarely acknowledges that these communities contain people of colour; instead, he frames the concerns of queer and genderqueer people \u2014 especially the linguistic arguments about pronouns, anatomy, and bodily functions that often arise from conversations about trans and nonbinary identity \u2014 as solely a product of white progressive hysteria gone mad.\u201d The overall point is mostly valid (except the \u201chysteria gone mad\u201d part as Chappelle says nothing of the sort). The only time I remember Chappelle directly acknowledging the existence of Black gay\/trans folks in The Closer was in one bit about a gay white guy – with whom Chappelle had an argument in a restaurant – calling the cops on him. Chappelle says a gay Black man would never do that because he knows the cops would show up asking, \u201cWhich one of you n%$#*s is Clifford?\u201d. He also indirectly acknowledges the existence of gay Black folks when he tells the story of Sojourner Truth<\/a> to highlight racism within the feminist movement and, by inference, the gay\/trans movement. However, for most of his special Chappelle seems to see gay\/trans folks as all white and contrast their experience against Black folks who he seems to see as all straight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regarding the second claim, as none of the folks calling Chappelle transphobic that I read about gave their definition of transphobic, I\u2019m going with Google\u2019s: \u201chaving or showing a dislike of or prejudice against transsexual or transgender people.\u201d By this definition, the accusation isn\u2019t valid. Chappelle goes out of his way to explain he has no issues with trans folks as a group, either for their transness or anything else. He clearly critiques the actions<\/em> of white trans and gay folks saying, \u201cGay people are minorities \u2014 until they have to be white again.\u201d, just after telling the story of the gay guy who called the cops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third point, that Chappelle\u2019s comments could could cause harm to the transgender community, seems to imply that they could make people physically assault trans people. One problem with this critique is that it\u2019s impossible to prove unless someone beat up or killed a trans person and said they did it because of Chappelle\u2019s specials. That Chappelle has been making trans jokes literally for years and this hasn\u2019t happened further weakens this point. But what weakens it most are those who accuse Chappelle of hate speech. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Canada, it\u2019s a Criminal Code offence to, \u201cwilfully promote hatred against any identifiable group, by making statements.\u201d The maximum penalty is imprisonment of not more than two years. But, as Chappelle is American, he\u2019s bound by American hate speech laws. The problem is, there aren\u2019t any. According to Wikipedia, \u201cThe United States does not have hate speech laws, since the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that laws criminalizing hate speech violate the guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.\u201d So Chappelle has the legal right to say whatever he wants. Despite that, there are some things I wish he hadn’t said which I cover later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, there\u2019s what people say he did wrong – and what they think should happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several places, including an Oct. 6 Variety article<\/a>, reported that the National Black Justice Coalition<\/a>, a civil rights advocacy group serving the LGBTQ+ community, issued a statement, urging Netflix to remove The Closer, saying, \u201cWith 2021 on track to be the deadliest year on record for transgender people in the United States \u2014 the majority of whom are Black transgender people \u2014 Netflix should know better. Perpetuating transphobia perpetuates violence. Netflix should immediately pull \u2018The Closer\u2019 from its platform and directly apologize to the transgender community.\u201d (Interestingly, I couldn\u2019t find any mention of the statement, Dave Chappelle or The Closer on the NBJC website<\/a>.) It appears the folks at the NBJC aren\u2019t familiar with either the existence of the First Amendment or the lack of hate speech laws in the U.S. Even by Canadian law, Chappelle would still be safe as he in no way wilfully promotes hatred against gay and trans people. Perhaps the NBJC should focus on getting hate speech laws passed in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chappelle did tell an apparently true story about beating up a lesbian – but not because<\/em> she was a lesbian. He said he beat her up because she swung at him first. The fact that he didn\u2019t end the story by encouraging others to go beat up lesbians means he didn\u2019t break Canadian hate speech laws. But that’s not the issue. The issue is Chappelle shouldn’t be beating up women, any women, and shouldn’t be making such beatings part of his show. At the very least, I would have liked Chappelle to recognize that his power, combined with how fanatical fans and others can be in the U.S., could lead to someone following his lead and, to avoid that, telling the audience he doesn’t condone beating up any women. Or, better yet, he could have just left that story out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two other things Chappelle says caused the most outrage. He said he was \u201cteam TERF\u201d and that \u201cgender is a fact.\u201d TERF<\/a> stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist a term that, according to Wikipedia, \u201coriginally applied to the minority of feminists espousing sentiments that other feminists considered transphobic, such as the rejection of the assertion that trans women are women, the exclusion of trans women from women’s spaces, and opposition to transgender rights legislation. The meaning has since expanded to refer more broadly to people with trans-exclusionary views who may have no involvement with radical feminism.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The unfortunate thing is that what Chappelle says immediately after clarifies that he only believes in one<\/em> TERF idea – that trans women\u2019s vaginas can\u2019t produce children. Based on that, it appears he actually means sex<\/em>, not gender, is a fact. Now, given comedians like Chappelle choose every word very carefully, one must wonder why he\u2019d open himself up to even more criticism than expected by apparently choosing<\/em> to communicate some of the most controversial ideas so confusingly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics also slammed Chappelle for trying to make victims out of people like comedian Kevin Hart and rapper DaBaby<\/a>. Hart got fired from hosting the 2019 Oscars after old tweets of his surfaced and were labelled homophobic. DaBaby was dropped from several show lineups after complaints about an anti-gay rant he went on at a July 25, 2021 show. Chappelle laments Hart losing the Oscars after wanting to host them all his life – seemingly asking the no doubt largely middle class audience to empathize with millionaire Hart\u2019s lost dream (which will likely just be delayed anyway). <\/p>\n\n\n\n What the Hart bit touches on, however, is the last and most important critique of The Closer: that he\u2019s \u201cpunching down\u201d on trans people. Punching down means critiquing groups who supposedly have less power than yours, which raises one of the most interesting question The Closer explores: which group has more power, rich Black men or white gay\/trans people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n One part of the answer is that rich Black men don\u2019t have any<\/em> power as a group<\/em>. There is no National Association of Wealthy Brothers like there is the National Centre for Transgender Equality<\/a> or the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)<\/a>. Rich Black men have power individually but none as a group. Also, a key reason some gay and trans organizations have power is because many of their members are white, whereas, clearly, no rich Black guys are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why one of Chappelle\u2019s main goals in The Closer is highlighting racism in the gay\/trans community. This is real as we saw in Canada when Black Lives Matter Toronto took over Toronto\u2019s 2016 Pride parade. CBC quoted BLM-TO co-founder Alexandra Williams<\/a> saying they held the sit-in because they wanted to hold Pride Toronto accountable for what she called “anti-blackness.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as there has been relatively little attention paid to Chappelle\u2019s critique of white gay racism, there has been absolutely none paid to one glaring omission in The Closer. In all the critiques I read, no one seemed to notice that Chappelle criticizes the #metoo<\/a> movement for being focused on white women and superficial actions – without ever mentioning it was started by a Black woman – Tarana Burke<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reading all the attacks on Chappelle – some justified, many not – leads me to offer these guidelines for critics and artists:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics<\/strong>: before you critique anything, please read or watch the entire<\/em> thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Artists<\/strong>: in this day and age, please realize – and take responsibility for the fact that – most people often don’t<\/em> read or view the entire thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, in the spirit of consistency, and on the question of punching up or down, I ask those going after Chappelle for incitement, this question: are you also going after Facebook\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg? Or are you too uninformed – or too afraid – to punch up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or somewhere with really bad wifi) for the last three weeks you probably heard something about the controversy around comedian Dave Chappelle’s latest special The Closer, released Oct. 5 on Netflix. Full disclosure that I’ve been a huge Chappelle fan ever since seeing him live at Montreal’s Just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[148,149,150],"tags":[152,151,153],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chappelle","category-free-speech","category-transgender","tag-chappelle","tag-free-speech","tag-transgender"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1115"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1155,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}