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.

  • Lutra@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    … its … not ok… to … tell… jokes… about… certain… people ?

    • sunbytes@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Punching down is the problem.

      Also the whole “my brother is an asshole but if you call him that I’ll punch you” thing.

      If he was making jokes about a community he was involved with at all, great. If it was a trans comedian making these jokes, (probably) great.

      But this is just another old out-of-touch rich guy making fun about people who are already having a shitty time (on average).

      Also, notice how anyone has yet to actually forbid him from doing it. He’s not being “cancelled/consequenced”.

      A lot of people just find it extremely distasteful. (It hasn’t slowed him down in the slightest.)

      • cannibalkitteh@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months ago

        If it was a trans comedian making these jokes, (probably) great.

        Honestly, I’d be disappointed even more in a trans comedian. If, after transitioning, they went with such uninspired jokes when there’s a wealth of more humorous things to joke about in transition, I’d question their sense of humor.

        • sunbytes@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Ah yeah I should have specified the jokes should be not nasty or uninformed.

          But I’d hope for better from someone from within the community.

          • cassie 🐺@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            11 months ago

            semi-related tangent, I think some people misunderstand this kind of thing as “well if he was trans it would be fine.”

            when really, no, a trans comedian would just write different and much better jokes about this subject matter because they’re immersed in it and have a deeper understanding of the community and the experience.

        • sunbytes@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Ah yeah I should have specified the jokes should be not nasty or uninformed.

          But I’d hope for better from someone from within the community.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      11 months ago

      I don’t think it would have blown up if the original joke was good.

      But it was just “this person called themselves a woman but had a cock”.

      And then pulled the “I have a trans friend” card. Like Dave of all people should know better than that. He seems to want to be the Bernard Manning of trans jokes.

    • Lutra@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      in the quiet, the real quiet of it all, after the yelling and flaming on the internet, we have two types of thought. One that thinks that people have both the ability and the freedom to say what they think, out loud, and even to entire groups of people. And we have a group of people that thinks we are all safer and happier if we don’t let them. That group also thinks we have to agree (with them), they say one word a lot, ‘tolerance’ but curiously they mean that in one direction: the direction they identify with. In the same way, they falsely equate :“disagreeing with me” to “hating me”.

        • Lutra@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          we can disagree about much greater things. humans have and have figured it out.

          we can disagree about eating animals. for me it may be a sacrilege and for my neighbor it may be lunch. I am under no obligation to agree with her, nor is she under any obligation to agree with me.

          She can think I am insane for protecting a dumb animal.

          I can think she is insane for destroying life.

          She can offend my morality. And I hers. This is disagreement. We do not have to agree, and we have every right to our understanding of the universe.

          I will avoid mentioning other real-er areas because it gets people all in a tizzy and makes this kind of discussion take far too long. but if we extrapolate just a bit, disagreeing with another person, even about deeply held beliefs is part of what we do in civilization.