11/4/21, 8:18 PM Dave Chappelle for gender realism | The Economist

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United States Oct 16th 2021 edition

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Dave Chappelle for gender realism

A Hollywood A-lister shows how hollow—and marginal—the arguments of the woke left
are

Oct 14th 2021

H ow does a millionaire celebrity comedian with a boatload of awards retain

his subversive edge? The great Richard Pryor solved the problem in the 1970s
and 1980s by ever more extravagantly—and hilariously—going off the rails. “I say,
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‘God, thank you for not burning my dick,’” he deadpanned on Sunset Boulevard,
f h i hi lf fi hil f b i
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after having set himself on fire while free-basing cocaine. For Eddie Murphy, a
follower of Pryor’s who has drifted into schmaltz and Shrek, the solution has
proved more elusive.

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Dave Chappelle is luckier than his two heroes. Having pocketed a reported $50m
for six shows on Netflix, the 48-year-old stand-up is even bigger than they were at
their peaks. And Mr Chappelle, who lives with his wife and children on a farm in
deepest Ohio, shows no appetite for Pryor-level debauch or for voicing cartoon
donkeys. No problem. The subversion bar has been reset so low by the censorious
left that his irreverent, observational comedy has never seemed more topical or
edgy. Thus the furore stirred by his jokes about transgender politics in the last of
those shows, entitled “The Closer”, which was released last week.

Even many of his critics concede that the lead-in to Mr Chappelle’s long
transgender riff is pretty funny. Because of his past jibes at the community, Mr
Chappelle claims, in mock fear, a conspiratorial well-wisher warned him, “they
after you”. “One ‘they’ or many ‘theys’?” he hissed back. But whatever the critics
thought of his craft, they adjudged his act “transphobic” and to be condemned. As
evidence, many cited his defence of J.K. Rowling’s insistence on the biological
reality that trans identity and sex are different. (No wonder, he deadpans, that
women are annoyed that Caitlyn Jenner won “woman of the year her first year as a
woman, never even had a period…”) “The phobic jokes keep coming,” sighed the
Guardian. “He needs new ideas,” huffed Vulture.

Mr Chappelle is of course foul-mouthed and shocking. He delivers an anti-Semitic

one-liner in his show, chuckles as his audience gasps, then repeats it slowly, three
times. Transgressing public mores, to deliver laughs, or social insight, or just to
make people squirm and wonder why, has been the Get dominant tradition
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up ever since Pryor put a match to institutional racism, too. This reflects a
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11/4/21, 8:18 PM Dave Chappelle for gender realism | The Economist

singularly American set of conditions: high levels of social tension, a dominant

place in popular culture for the most persecuted group and strongly protected free
speech. Mr Chappelle, who, like Pryor and Mr Murphy is African-American and a
master of many forms of comedy, calls stand-up his favourite form and an
“American phenomenon”.

Because of its connection with social justice, most standup comedians, especially
black ones, are of the left. But, again, the phenomenon must be edgy to be funny.
So no whites are excluded from Pryor’s or Mr Chappelle’s racially loaded critiques,
including the sympathetic left-wingers laughing wanly in their audiences. And
that dramatic tension, between performer and fans, has increased in recent years
as the activist left has increasingly presumed to police speech. A declaration in
2014 by Chris Rock, another top black comedian, that he could no longer perform
for college crowds because they had become “way too conservative…[in] their
willingness not to offend anybody,” was a signal cultural moment. For Mr

Chappelle, who was in the process of relaunching his career around that time, it
was also inspiring.

He does not seem transphobic, in fact. If his comedy has a moral theme it is that
everyone is flawed and everyone should be accepted. Its force lies in showing how
quickly that truth is lost when group politics takes hold. Mr Chappelle has spent
much of his career railing against racial injustice. Pointing out the equally
manifest reality that women lose out when sex is redefined as a state of mind is
consistent with that record.

Even when justice is served—as in the advance of gay rights—his subversive mind
ponders why such progress is not general. “Why is it easier for Bruce Jenner to
change his gender than it is for Cassius Clay to change his name?” he asks.
“Empathy is not gay. Empathy is not black. Empathy is bisexual. It must go both
ways.”

This is not exactly rigorous. Muhammad Ali’s name change predated Ms Jenner’s
by 50 years; and there are plenty of non-whites banging the transgender rights
drum. But Mr Chappelle is a comedian, not an essayist, and his emphasis upon
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anti-black discrimination is a dramatic device as well as a political choice. It
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maintains, rather improbably, his claim to underdog status. And that can be a
source of empathy, as well as credibility, as he shows in movingly describing his
friendship with a minor comedian, a trans woman called Daphne Dorman.

“I don’t need you to understand me, I just need you to believe… I’m having a human
experience,” she once schooled him. He was stunned; then slowly responded. “I
believe you … because it takes one to know one.” Group politics, zero-sum and
exclusionary, is dehumanising; his profane, moral comedy is a corrective.

And the leftist Pharisees who disagree with that should reflect on Ms Dorman.
When Mr Chappelle was lambasted as a trans phobe after his previous Netflix
show, she tweeted that he was nothing of the kind and her friend. She was
hounded in turn; then jumped to her death off a towerblock. Can that story—so
vindicating of Mr Chappelle and damning of his accusers—be true? Her grieving
family confirmed it this week. So who is the victim now?

Chapeau, Chappelle
Not Mr Chappelle, at least. Besides torching the pieties of the identitarian left, he
has also shown how marginal it is. His gender-realist views are far more in step
with public opinion than his critics’. And if the unpopularity of their views is rarely
off-putting to the Twitterati, good luck to them taking on an African-American
superstar. This week Mr Chappelle, surrounded by a throng of adoring A-listers,
was given a standing ovation at the Hollywood Bowl. “If this is what being
cancelled is like,” he chuckled. “I love it.” 7

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gender realism"

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