DAVE CHAPPELLE AND CANCEL CULTURE; WHEN DO WE DRAW THE LINE?

Dave Chappelle was recently at the center of controversy for his Netflix stand up special ‘The Closer’, the LGBTQ ‘cancel culture’, felt that the comedians jokes were very offensive and had since called for the cancellation of Dave Chappelle. Dave has a history of making jokes about the LGBT community, he was criticized about referring to them as the alphabet people in his special ‘Sticks and stones’.

In the show Dave addresses the LGBTQ community directly, he made reference to an incident that the rapper DaBaby who was recently ‘cancelled’ for insensitive comments he made about HIV/AIDS at a concert, the comedian made a point to say that the rapper allegedly killed a man in a Walmart store but he did not get cancelled for that, which Dave found very shocking.

In closing he told a story about his transgender comedian friend who opened shows for him several times and thought his jokes about trans people were funny. She once told him all she wanted was for him to believe she was a person and she is going through it and Chappelle told her he did. She had defended his transgender jokes several times, she said he was not punching down with his jokes but sadly she received backlash which lead to her being cancelled and she ended up killing herself a week later, this broke Dave Chappelle’s heart. Dormans family came to Dave’s defense and stated that his entire set was begging to end this very situation, what he is saying to the LGBTQ family is , “I see you, do you see me?”

A transgender comedian Dahilia Belle accused Dave’s comedy of being outdated, transphobic and slammed him for making jokes about Dorman’s suicide.

A Netflix employee Jaclyn Moore threatened to resign if Netflix continued to air the show as she found the show very offensive and accused Netflix of profiting and promoting dangerous transphobic content but the Netflix co-CEO came to Dave’s defense and said “The closer’ does not cross the line on hate and will remain on the streaming platform.

Comedians came to Dave’s defense stating that if comedians are put in a box by the public limiting what they can and can not say, it will ruin the art of comedy and in turn make comedy boring, several comedians have been cancelled for bad jokes and it has left many of them in fear of speaking their mind as they have felt limited but have commended Chappelle for not watering down the art.

Many have felt that the cancel culture is very selective on who they choose to cancel, racial injustice especially towards the black community has been ongoing for years but you hardly ever get to see someone being cancelled for that. It is starting to feel a lot like the ones at the center of the cancel culture are white people and successful black people are always the target of this culture. In his on way Dave was trying to send an important message across but it was sadly misinterpreted.