Comedy: Stand-Up, Improv, Sketch, Podcasts [ARCHIVED] • Page 665

She’s always great on NNF, I’ll have to check it out

 

Has there been any word if Threedom is gona be CBB World exclusive when it comes back? Realllyy don’t want to have to pay for more subscriptions

 

Anybody listen to Seth Rogen's new Earwolf podcast? It's kind of all over the place and waay overedited imo but I really like the premise and the episodes are mercifully short (well the first one at least, it's 36 minutes) so I'll keep going with it

 

The end of this video had me crying laughing. Eric is the best.

 

You didn’t think any of the larger ideas he was trying to convey with the comparisons between race & sexual orientation were meaningful? Asking out of curiosity & discussion. Not trying to stir shit.

EDIT: I just finished it and struggle with your description of this special as him being an old man yelling at a cloud when he ends it by talking about the importance of empathy. Did you finish it?

 

This weeks master class is the funniest shit I’ve ever heard in my life

 

Tawny is an all-time great one.

 

The newest episode of this is important is so funny

Can anyone recommend good comedy podcasts?

 

He absolutely has a point when he talks about racism in the LGBTQ community, the problem is that he takes it out on another marginalized community and not the people oppressing both communities. The story at the end is hardly impactful when A) it's the equivalent of a racist saying "I have a back friend" and B) it's negated by literally over an hour of homophobic and transphobic material.

He's talented and he's smart. He knows what he's doing, so ironically, it's hard for me to empathize with him when he self-identifies as a TERF and knowingly leans into material designed to offend rather than entertain or actually provoke meaningful discussion. He should know better, but he chooses not to care about or listen to those trying to explain why the angle he's approaching these issues from is so harmful.

 

He definitely knows what he’s doing. There are cheap jokes in there that could be edited out for sure, but I felt then breakdown of meaningful humor to cheap jokes was 80/20. And the story at the end packed weight for me because it pointed out how the trans community can turn on its own people on a dime & help drive the same disastrous outcomes that bigoted non-trans folks can drive.

I just can’t escape the idea that many who criticize him for covering the topics seem to really only want one solution: everyone stop talking about these topics altogether. IMO, that’s not the right solution if you truly want people to open their minds & think differently about something. Comedy is probably the best medium for having that affect on people because of its ability to diffuse & break through all the walls/biases/presumptions.

 

But…his “jokes” are just reinforcing walls/biases/presumptions. In fact, in the most recent one, where he declares himself a member of “Team TERF” (scum), I would argue he’s actively building walls/biases/presumptions.

 

I absolutely think we should have these conversations, but Dave Chappelle, a comedian who for his last five or six specials has dunked on the LGBTQ community (calling them alphabet people) should not be involved.

I think there are kernels of truth in some of his recent specials, but they’re completely negated by his bigoted views (There are so many variations of “Trans women sure look like men, huh?”) or just pure laziness when it comes to understanding LGBTQ people.

And the story with Daphne - I’m glad he gave a trans person an opportunity to shine. I’m glad he had a friend in the LGBTQ community. It’s heartbreaking she committed suicide. But Chappelle tries to have it both ways in that story by saying Twitter doesn’t matter and isn’t real, while speculating (and I take great issue with his speculation that Daphne killed herself because of getting dragged on Twitter, unless she expressly said that) that it was Twitter that was the reason she killed herself. Then he goes on to misgender her so he can get his big yuk yuks in.

The whole thing, all the anti-trans jokes and that final kicker, leading up to that, make it seem incredibly disingenuous and that Chappelle hasn’t learned a thing from his friendship with Daphne, other than using her to get some more clapter. I don’t think he wants a discussion about racism in the community, he just wants to punch down because he’s weirdly obsessed with LGBTQ people.

 

It also rings hollow that he on the one hand tells a story about a friendship he had with a trans woman and then on the other hand says he's "Team TERF".

"I was friends with this person but I also didn't accept that she was 'really' a woman."

 

It is possible to have meaningful conversations and jokes involving the LGBTQ+ community without mercilessly shitting on them for an hour, though

 

If you found 80% of what Dave Chapelle had to say in that special meaningful, I am genuinely concerned about your perspective on trans people. And I'm not saying that to be an asshole.

 

I saw a tweet last night from a woman accusing him and others on the Chappele Show of assault. She said 3 people came to her rescue. I can't find it now... anyone else see that?

EDIT: Found it, of all things David Cross liked it and it showed up in my feed.

 

I have nothing against the trans community at all. I do think I have a higher tolerance for the philosophy of “no topic should be off limits in comedy” than the average person. That doesn’t mean I tolerate material that is cheap/easy/insulting for the sake of a quick laugh though. It’s always going to be a fine line & always going to have some subjectivity to it.

 

I don’t agree with no topic being off limits if you can do it in a clever way. There’s nothing funny to me about “Boy, this trans person sure does look like a man/woman despite being the opposite.” That’s the same shit they hear from people that bully and assault them and drives them to suicide and if Chappelle had even a moment of empathy or self-reflection, he’d realize that.

 

yeah the whole idea is that marginalized people should be the ones joking about thorny topics like sexual assault or gender identity

 

One good thing about the new Chappelle (more the impact of it than the special itself): While it's certainly more than reasonable to dislike him for being a terf, for whatever reason his new shit also sure does seem effective at exposing homophobes, the white LGBTQA performative woke patrol, and other terfs out there