Dave Chappelle has released a new Netflix special, The Dreamer, which is full of jokes about the trans community and disabled people.
“I love punching down!” he tells the audience, in a one-hour show that landed on the streaming service today (31 December).
It’s his seventh special for Netflix and comes two years after his last one, the highly controversial release The Closer.
That programme was criticised for its relentless jokes about the trans community, and Chappelle revisits the topic in his new show.
He tells jokes about trans women in prison, and about trans people “pretending” to be somebody they are not.
It’s a fine line. I do believe that making fun of something does make it mainstream and even approachable in a certain way. But people need to understand that there’s a difference between a shock comic telling jokes to a consenting audience, and your cousin who secretly tried to kill himself before coming out last year.
Really the way this works is if the comedy is an avenue for empathy instead of hate, that’s ok. If you tell a dark joke, and someone says “hey man that’s not cool” then you should defer, and seek understanding, rather than getting defensive, because you are a brother or a mother or an uncle who has real impact on people close to them, not Dave Chapelle. So if that starts a conversation which makes you and those around you better people, then fine. If it creates a framework for exclusion and bullying, it’s not fine. This seems very simple, but so many people struggle with it even on much lower stakes topics.