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.
Dave Chappelle is the Clarence Thomas of comedy.
Anybody who’s followed Chris Rock since the 90s will be familiar. It starts out as an “edgy” black comedian with an overwhelmingly white audience. It ends with your core audience using you as a black voice, that one black friend, who justifies regressive politics. I don’t know if Dave is in on the joke, laughing all the way to the bank. Either way, he’s playing the clown.
I thought the whole reason he abandoned his successful show was in part a refusal to shuck and jive. Kinda disappointing that he’s putting on a minstrel show now.