I loved the Chappelle show, but haven’t found his recent comedy very funny. I don’t think he’s changed, I think I probably have, so fair enough. When I decide not to watch the new Chappelle special that’s a personal choice, I’m not planting a flag.
But what I will never stop finding funny is how conservatives cannot refrain from huffing and puffing and becoming aggrieved about any art/comedy that doesn’t reinforce their political agenda. Who needs a comedy special when you can watch the wingnuts pop off?
Some of it's funny, some isn't. Some of the show is offensive, some is edgy. It's Chappelle. Easily triggered people shouldn't watch him. (Srsly, Fox News triggers me so I don't watch it, same applies here.)
This makes me want to check out the show. I'm a Wanda Sykes/Michelle Wolf kind of person. I remember after Michelle Wolf's epic Washington Press Corps dinner gig, I was talking with a conservative friend of mine. I said, "Hey, did you see it?" While I was saying I *loved* it and thought it was hilarious, she was saying, "Oh god, that was *disgusting*!" The thing that bothered her especially was Wolf's sardonic reference to abortion. But see, I already knew that Wolf makes it a habit to always include an "abortion joke", and I get it. It's transgressive and darn it, I just appreciate it. She didn't. I didn't try to make her get it.
So I wasn't inclined to watch the Chappelle thing, but now I am, and I'll see what's what. Thanks.
I watched "Sticks and Stones" last week and got more than a few laughs and not a few cringes as well. When he told the network S&P woman that "I'm not a nigger either" (to justify yelling "faggot!") I took that to mean he's not a nigger in the way racists would use that word. But I agree, I'm not sure that gives him a free pass to use it freely since we all "know" he isn't really homophobic. It's been nearly 50 years since the release the incredible "Thank You Masked Man" and there still hasn't been a better demolition of the hypocrisy and venality of homophobia yet and it doesn't look like Dave Chappelle is up to matching it either.
Aside from the slipping-on-a-banana type of physical humor that is inherently funny, most humor depends upon the individual making the jokes. And the more the humor is observational and satirical, the more critical the personality and voice of the humorist is whether written or voiced. This is what conservatives just don't understand. They approach humor like they do everything else as an opportunity for cramped, ideological and usually hateful statements that almost invariably fall flat. Chappelle confuses them because his detached observations and his disruptive, provocative behavior really cannot be divorced from Chappelle the person who can't be neatly categorized. OTOH, the Chappelle Show was just pretty damn funny, especially the Black Bush administration send-ups.
Sticks & Stones has moments of genius. I didn't take him as punching down on white heroin addicts -- he frames it as "Now I get how white people were so uncaring about the crack epidemic," i.e., he doesn't care about these poor idiots. But he's only able to say that because he saw this mess first from the other side -- meaning really he does have *some* empathy, and so should we, all around. IThere's yet more to it, but that's part of it. And when he says, "You got any boxes with pictures of a white man on my lawn?" my immediate thought was wow, somebody probably told that exact joke in 1985, color switched to black. Chapelle's joke, in other words, is on the joke. It's on history. It's on having social prominence and money and land and how that changes what you see. So I read it, anyway. I don't think the conservative love affair with this guy will be deeper or longer than one shout of "faggot!" in a crowded theater.
Back in the day The Chappelle Show came on too late for me to watch (kids, job, more kids). Should I, an old white guy who thinks America sold itself into the shitter of antebellum racism in 2016, watch this thing?
As we share the same demographic and attitudes, I say go for it. At its worst, I suspect it'll test your tolerance for a point of view that makes you uncomfortable at times as it obviously did for many of us who've seen it. Even then I don't think you'll feel that Chappelle has malice in his heart for anyone.
I liked his blind,black, klansman; I liked his sketch about what the Web was like─I didn't like a very judgemental part of it about people's sexual desires played-out in one room of it until he dived right in himself.
Uh, and my response to his 'I'm not a nigger, either.' would be a plain 'By me you're no nigger, and by you you're no nigger, but by a hate-filled "Nigger!"-shouter are you no nigger?'.
This, incidentally, is a riff on an old, Jewish, joke─punchline 'By me you're a captain, by you you're a captain, but by a captain are you a captain!?' which I thought might be (and immediately decided was, regardless if so) about Jews being white once we got respectable enough.
The cynic in me wonders if he's just decided, with some good reason, that he can't be paralysed by what white bigots will make of his stuff, and this is how he can keep on doing it without looking as if he's changed his mind.
Years back Robert Crumb drew and published two multi-page comics about blacks and Jews, that he claimed later were just attempts (I think he meant) to exorcise his own bigotry. At least one Nazi site picked them up and began proving Poe by running them with the rest of their Streicherei. I definitely don't want to side with Zhdanov and I think Wilde were better company, but Crumb doesn't seem to want to deal with the idea that art can have moral and physical implications: his reaction never varied from 'I just put it out there and I was trying to do good', and I can't say that satisfies me.
I mean, my first reactions when I saw them were 'Oh, this is an exorcism.'. 'Oh, definitely, some people are not going to get that.', and 'Huh, but the history of censorship is deciding that "other people" aren't fit to see something….'.
I loved the Chappelle show, but haven’t found his recent comedy very funny. I don’t think he’s changed, I think I probably have, so fair enough. When I decide not to watch the new Chappelle special that’s a personal choice, I’m not planting a flag.
But what I will never stop finding funny is how conservatives cannot refrain from huffing and puffing and becoming aggrieved about any art/comedy that doesn’t reinforce their political agenda. Who needs a comedy special when you can watch the wingnuts pop off?
Yes! Twitter as Performance Art, and the straights unaware of their roles as such.
The true conservative humor is kraft dursch freude funny
(Nods) The NSDAP After School Special of the twenty-first century, and the subject for today is "race relations".
Some of it's funny, some isn't. Some of the show is offensive, some is edgy. It's Chappelle. Easily triggered people shouldn't watch him. (Srsly, Fox News triggers me so I don't watch it, same applies here.)
This makes me want to check out the show. I'm a Wanda Sykes/Michelle Wolf kind of person. I remember after Michelle Wolf's epic Washington Press Corps dinner gig, I was talking with a conservative friend of mine. I said, "Hey, did you see it?" While I was saying I *loved* it and thought it was hilarious, she was saying, "Oh god, that was *disgusting*!" The thing that bothered her especially was Wolf's sardonic reference to abortion. But see, I already knew that Wolf makes it a habit to always include an "abortion joke", and I get it. It's transgressive and darn it, I just appreciate it. She didn't. I didn't try to make her get it.
So I wasn't inclined to watch the Chappelle thing, but now I am, and I'll see what's what. Thanks.
I watched "Sticks and Stones" last week and got more than a few laughs and not a few cringes as well. When he told the network S&P woman that "I'm not a nigger either" (to justify yelling "faggot!") I took that to mean he's not a nigger in the way racists would use that word. But I agree, I'm not sure that gives him a free pass to use it freely since we all "know" he isn't really homophobic. It's been nearly 50 years since the release the incredible "Thank You Masked Man" and there still hasn't been a better demolition of the hypocrisy and venality of homophobia yet and it doesn't look like Dave Chappelle is up to matching it either.
Aside from the slipping-on-a-banana type of physical humor that is inherently funny, most humor depends upon the individual making the jokes. And the more the humor is observational and satirical, the more critical the personality and voice of the humorist is whether written or voiced. This is what conservatives just don't understand. They approach humor like they do everything else as an opportunity for cramped, ideological and usually hateful statements that almost invariably fall flat. Chappelle confuses them because his detached observations and his disruptive, provocative behavior really cannot be divorced from Chappelle the person who can't be neatly categorized. OTOH, the Chappelle Show was just pretty damn funny, especially the Black Bush administration send-ups.
Sticks & Stones has moments of genius. I didn't take him as punching down on white heroin addicts -- he frames it as "Now I get how white people were so uncaring about the crack epidemic," i.e., he doesn't care about these poor idiots. But he's only able to say that because he saw this mess first from the other side -- meaning really he does have *some* empathy, and so should we, all around. IThere's yet more to it, but that's part of it. And when he says, "You got any boxes with pictures of a white man on my lawn?" my immediate thought was wow, somebody probably told that exact joke in 1985, color switched to black. Chapelle's joke, in other words, is on the joke. It's on history. It's on having social prominence and money and land and how that changes what you see. So I read it, anyway. I don't think the conservative love affair with this guy will be deeper or longer than one shout of "faggot!" in a crowded theater.
Back in the day The Chappelle Show came on too late for me to watch (kids, job, more kids). Should I, an old white guy who thinks America sold itself into the shitter of antebellum racism in 2016, watch this thing?
As we share the same demographic and attitudes, I say go for it. At its worst, I suspect it'll test your tolerance for a point of view that makes you uncomfortable at times as it obviously did for many of us who've seen it. Even then I don't think you'll feel that Chappelle has malice in his heart for anyone.
I liked his blind,black, klansman; I liked his sketch about what the Web was like─I didn't like a very judgemental part of it about people's sexual desires played-out in one room of it until he dived right in himself.
Uh, and my response to his 'I'm not a nigger, either.' would be a plain 'By me you're no nigger, and by you you're no nigger, but by a hate-filled "Nigger!"-shouter are you no nigger?'.
This, incidentally, is a riff on an old, Jewish, joke─punchline 'By me you're a captain, by you you're a captain, but by a captain are you a captain!?' which I thought might be (and immediately decided was, regardless if so) about Jews being white once we got respectable enough.
The cynic in me wonders if he's just decided, with some good reason, that he can't be paralysed by what white bigots will make of his stuff, and this is how he can keep on doing it without looking as if he's changed his mind.
Years back Robert Crumb drew and published two multi-page comics about blacks and Jews, that he claimed later were just attempts (I think he meant) to exorcise his own bigotry. At least one Nazi site picked them up and began proving Poe by running them with the rest of their Streicherei. I definitely don't want to side with Zhdanov and I think Wilde were better company, but Crumb doesn't seem to want to deal with the idea that art can have moral and physical implications: his reaction never varied from 'I just put it out there and I was trying to do good', and I can't say that satisfies me.
I mean, my first reactions when I saw them were 'Oh, this is an exorcism.'. 'Oh, definitely, some people are not going to get that.', and 'Huh, but the history of censorship is deciding that "other people" aren't fit to see something….'.