Comedy’s old guard
Madeline Fry Schultz
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The death of comedy has been greatly exaggerated. For proof, look no further than two recent Netflix specials, one by Ricky Gervais and the other by Dave Chappelle.
Both comedians are predictably catching heat from the usual suspects. Gervais’ special inspired a Change.org petition demanding that Netflix remove a particular joke, and Chappelle earned a news headline from Variety proclaiming, “Dave Chappelle’s Obsession With Mocking Trans People Continues in New Netflix Special.”
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The most amusing thing about the petition is that it targets one of the funniest parts of Gervais’ special, called Armageddon. Gervais jokes about making video messages for terminally ill children with the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
The audience may wonder what child would request a video from this dark-humored, cynical boomer as their dying wish. Gervais clarifies that he doesn’t do it unless they ask. “I didn’t burst into hospitals and go, ‘Wake up, baldy!’ Watch me twerking on TikTok,’” he quips. “I always start the video the same way. I go, ‘Why didn’t you wish to get better? What, are you f***ing retarded as well?’”
The funny thing about this bit in particular drawing controversy is that Gervais immediately explains his joke after he tells it, and if explaining a joke is supposed to kill it, doing so with today’s politically correct audiences only makes it funnier.
“I don’t do that, either,” Gervais says. “These are all jokes, OK? I don’t even use that word in real life, the R-word.
“‘You just used it, Rick,’” he adds, in mock conversation with his critics. “Yeah, in a joke. That’s not real life, is it? I’m playing a role. ‘You sounded pretty convincing.’ Yeah! Because I’m good.”
You wouldn’t accuse Anthony Hopkins of being a cannibal after watching Silence of the Lambs, he says. The actor is playing a role, and he does it well.
“Imagine if I came out here and did things not very well so you’d know I was joking,” Gervais says. “That’d be f***ing retarded.”
There’s a free headline suggestion for the Onion, “Audiences offended by comedian’s joke about jokes,” if the satire site has any interest in actual satire.
Days after Gervais’ special came out, Netflix released Dave Chappelle’s The Dreamer, the funnier of the two specials. The Dreamer is Chappelle’s follow-up to his explosive release The Closer, which prompted Netflix employees to protest the comedian and caused at least one venue to cancel on him. Provoking the outrage were jokes Chappelle made about what the Left calls the LGBTQ community, and what Chappelle calls “the alphabet people.”
The comedian begins his latest special by telling a story about meeting his hero, Jim Carrey. Unfortunately for Chappelle, Carrey was in the midst of method acting for the 1999 film Man on the Moon, living as if he were entertainer Andy Kaufman. Chappelle got to meet Carrey, but he had to spend the afternoon pretending he was talking to Kaufman instead.
The set-up goes on for three whole minutes before Chappelle hits us with the kicker: “Anyway, I say all that to say, that’s how trans people make me feel.”
Chappelle is too big to cancel, and he doesn’t apologize for anything he has said. But he also refuses to make being the comedian who dares to poke fun at transgender ideology his identity.
“Now if you guys came here to this show tonight thinking that I’m going to make fun of those people again, you’ve come to the wrong show,” he says. “I’m not f***ing with those people anymore. It wasn’t worth the trouble. I ain’t saying s*** about trans people. Maybe three or four times tonight, but that is it!”
Chappelle proceeds to make a few jokes about disabled people instead while devilishly handing his critics a big, juicy piece of bait: “I love punching down,” he says.
Chappelle knows critics like to accuse him of “punching down,” as if he’s only allowed to make fun of figures such as Donald Trump. Most other comedians seem to think that’s their only possible punchline.
Of course, Chappelle spoke the coverage into reality: “Dave Chappelle can’t stop punching down. And that’s not the worst part,” reads an opinion MSNBC headline from Tuesday.
While the subjects of his special span from former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn to the Oscars slap, Chappelle also gets in a joke about men who identify as women going to women’s prisons and one about a black transgender woman whose pronoun is the N-word: “She dies of loneliness because white liberals don’t know how to speak to her.”
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Chappelle’s latest offering is generating the usual coverage that a Chappelle special does. But don’t let the predictable outrage fool you. Chappelle appears with Gervais under a whole slate of specials Netflix places under the category “Politically Incorrect Stand-Up Comedy,” which also includes Joe Rogan, Bill Burr, and more.
Unapologetic comedians such as Gervais and Chappelle aren’t going anywhere. The only question is: When the baby boomer and Gen X entertainers have gone, who will step up to the mic?