But in these formulations, there are no gay Black people. community has made, while progress toward racial equity has been much slower. There’s a compelling observation about the relatively significant progress the L.G.B.T.Q. Somewhere, buried in the nonsense, is an interesting and accurate observation about the white gay community conveniently being able to claim whiteness at will. Every once in a while, he remarks that, oh, boy, he’s in trouble now, like a mischievous little boy who just can’t help himself. At times, his voice lowers to a hoarse whisper, preparing us for a grand stroke of wisdom - but it never comes. Chappelle’s rants are extraordinarily dated, the kind of comedy you might expect from a conservative boomer, agog at the idea of homosexuality. He reaches for every low-hanging piece of fruit and munches on it gratuitously. community, as he has been in recent years. Chappelle is singularly fixated on the L.G.B.T.Q.
But when an entire comedy set is designed as a series of strategic moves to say whatever you want and insulate yourself from valid criticism, I’m not sure you’re really making comedy. He’s just stating “facts.” He’s just making us think. He’s just being “brutally honest.” He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. Chappelle makes obvious but elegant rhetorical moves that frame any objections to his work as unreasonable.
If there is brilliance in “The Closer,” it’s that Mr. The self-proclaimed “GOAT” (greatest of all time) of stand-up delivers five or six lucid moments of brilliance, surrounded by a joyless tirade of incoherent and seething rage, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. The set is a 72-minute display of the comedian’s own brittleness. Chappelle spends much of “The Closer ,” his latest comedy special for Netflix, cleverly deflecting criticism. Chappelle explains that he didn’t in fact threaten the woman: “I felt that way, but that’s not what I said. Ain’t nobody around here.” The audience cheers, before Mr. “Before I kill you and put you in the trunk. “Shut up,” Dave Chappelle recalls telling a woman who had the gall to challenge his comedy, using a sexist slur and laughing at how witty he is, as if he’s the first man to ever deliver such an original, funny line. You’re the one who’s narrow-minded or “brittle” or humorless. All criticism is forestalled with this setup, in which when you object to anything a comedian says, you’re the problem. Comedians, in particular, are going to punch up and down and side-to-side.Īlso true: Comedy is not above criticism, even if the most famous, wildly wealthy comedians will keep insulting those who question them. Sometimes good art should make us uncomfortable, and sometimes bad people can make good art. Let’s address those upfront: Art should be made without restriction. The written piece, since taken down, was arguably worse.We generally have the same debates about comedy over and over. Will she fit into the office lift? How many steps will she have to take to get to the interview? Is there a comfortable chair that will accommodate her six-foot-three, ‘super-morbidly obese’ frame?” Gay, who was suppose to be spearheading the next World of Wakanda book series before it was cancelled, also spoke to Australian site Mamamia about ‘Hunger’ and was offended by their podcast description and article written by Mia Freedman.Īs reported by the Huffington Post they wrote for the podcast, “A lot of planning has to go into a visit from best-selling author. “No matter what you do, you can’t fit, and the world is not really interested in creating a space for you to fit.” In the book she talks about the day-to-day annoyances of being big, like shoppers nitpicking her cart at the grocery store or having to buy two seats for flights. The trauma of being assaulted led to the coping mechanism of eating, that she struggles with today. And they won’t want to do this because I’ll be fat, and boys don’t like fat girls.’” “I thought, ‘If I eat a lot, those boys won’t do this again, because I’ll be able to fight them next time. “My world was shattered, and I just thought, ‘I want to be stronger.