Chappelle’s latest stand-up special, The Closer, finds him once again flirting with the storm. In it, he muses that it was easier for Caitlyn Jenner to come out as transgender than for Muhammad Ali to change his name and jokes about trans women’s genitals. He also declares that gender is real and says “every human being in this room, every human being on Earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth.” Many people are declaring that the comedian went too far this time, with several activists calling for the special to be removed from Netflix and some employees at the streaming service even staging a walkout on Oct. 20 at the company’s L.A. headquarters. In response to the uproar he caused, Chappelle told an audience in L.A. back on Oct. 7, “If this is what being canceled is like, I love it.” The event (a screening of his documentary Untitled: Dave Chappelle Documentary) was attended by celebs such as Brad Pitt, Snoop Dogg, Jon Hamm and Tiffany Haddish. Chappelle added, “Thank God I’m canceled because [expletive] this [expletive] anyway.” Since then, however, the 48-year-old comedian has said that he’s willing to engage with the transgender community, but only under certain circumstances. In a video he shared Oct. 25 on Instagram, Chappelle said that he would not “bend to anybody’s demands,” but would be “more than willing” to meet with members of the trans community so long as they watch The Closer in full first, allow him to determine the time and place of a meeting and “admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny.” (Gadsby is a lesbian comedian from Australia whose 2018 Netflix special, Nanette, won an Emmy and a Peabody Award.) He also claimed that the controversy he caused has more to do with “corporate interests” than the LGBTQ community, as he’s now finding it difficult to get his Untitled doc viewed and distributed. “Now, today, not a film company, not a movie studio, not a film festival, nobody will touch this film,” he said. “You cannot have this conversation and exclude my voice from it. That is only fair. You have to answer the question. Am I cancelled or not?” Keep reading to find out more about Dave Chappelle’s controversial comments in The Closer, what Netflix’s CEO and other celebs are saying about it and whether Chappelle may really wind up “cancelled.” View this post on Instagram
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What did Dave Chappelle say in The Closer?
In The Closer, Chappelle calls himself part of “Team TERF.” TERF stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, meaning feminists who are transphobic or don’t think of trans women as women. “I didn’t even know what the [expletive] [TERF] was, but I know that trans people make up words to win arguments,” Chappelle quips in The Closer. “I’m team TERF. I agree. I agree, man. Gender is a fact.” Chappelle returns to the topic of transgender people multiple times throughout The Closer. This isn’t the first time that Chappelle has joked about the transgender community. In his specials Equanimity and Sticks & Stones, he also cracked jokes about trans people. In Sticks & Stones, he claimed that transgender people “hate my [expletive] guts and I don’t blame them. […] I can’t stop writing jokes about these [people].” However, in The Closer, Chappelle insists that he has no problem with trans people; rather, what bothers him is the white privilege he believes some white gay and trans people benefit from. “Any of you who have ever watched me know that I have never had a problem with transgender people. If you listen to what I’m saying, clearly, my problem has always been with white people,” he insists. At any rate, he also tells the crowd in The Closer he won’t joke about LGBTQ people anymore, declaring, “I’m done talking about it. All I ask of your community, with all humility: Will you please stop punching down on my people?”
Did Netflix remove Dave Chappelle’s special?
No, and the platform reportedly has no plans to take down The Closer, according to Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos in an Oct. 8 email to employees. “As with our other talent, we work hard to support their creative freedom—even though this means there will always be content on Netflix some people believe is harmful,” he wrote. “Several of you have also asked where we draw the line on hate. We don’t allow titles Netflix that are designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe The Closer crosses that line. I recognize, however, that distinguishing between commentary and harm is hard, especially with stand-up comedy which exists to push boundaries. Some people find the art of stand-up to be mean-spirited but our members enjoy it, and it’s an important part of our content offering.” Sarandos later doubled down on keeping The Closer online in an Oct. 18 Q&A with Variety. He admitted that he “should have led with a lot more humanity” and that “storytelling has real impact in the real world,” but when asked if the special would be taken down, he replied, “I don’t believe there have been many calls to remove it.” Netflix has a long history with Chappelle. In 2016, he was contracted to do three comedy specials for $20 million each and has continued to do specials for the streamer. Chappelle’s Show also returned to Netflix in February 2021 after he asked for it to be removed over issues with Viacom/CBS. He personally thanked Sarandosfor “the courage to take show off its platform at a financial detriment to his company, just because I asked him to.” Among other organizations, the National Black Justice Coalition has asked for the special to be removed. However, it’s been reported that a list of demands released by Trans*, a trans employee resource group at Netflix, ahead of the Oct. 20 walkout did not include removing The Closer from the streamer’s platform; instead, the employees are asking that Netflix “invest in multiple trans creators to make both scripted and unscripted programs” and “hire trans and non-binary content executives, especially BIPOC.”
Were Netflix employees suspended because of Dave Chappelle’s TheCloser?
On October 6, a Netflix senior software engineer, Terra Field, posted a series of tweets about how harmful she felt Chappelle’s special was. “Promoting TERF ideology… directly harms trans people, it is not some neutral act,” she tweeted. “This is not an argument with two sides. It is an argument with trans people who want to be alive and people who don’t want us to be.” Field, who is trans, pointed out, “What we object to is the harm that content like this does to the trans community (especially trans people of color) and VERY specifically Black trans women,” and listed the names of non-white transgender people killed in the past year. She was suspended by Netflix soon after. Netflix immediately said that Field’s tweets were not the reason for the suspension. “It is absolutely untrue to say that we have suspended any employees for tweeting about this show,” a representative said. “Our employees are encouraged to disagree openly and we support their right to do so.” Netflix maintained that Field and two others attended a virtual director’s meeting they weren’t invited to, and that was the reason for the suspension. After determining that Field had no “ill intent” in attending the meeting, Netflix reinstated Field. She tweeted in response on Oct. 12, “I’m going to take a few days off to decompress and try to figure out where I’m at. At the very least, I feel vindicated." Then, on or around Oct. 15, Netflix fired another trans employee, B. Pagels-Minor, for allegedly leaking “confidential, commercially sensitive information.” However, Pagels-Minor—who helped lead the Trans* employee group, as well as a similar group for Black employees called Black@—claims, “I collected the data, but I did not leak the data.” Moreover, Pagels-Minor insists that Netflix did not provide an opportunity for them to explain their side of the story.
Is the Dear White People showrunner boycotting Netflix?
Yes. Jaclyn Moore, who worked on the Netflix show Dear White People, has decided The Closer was the last straw. The last season of her show hit Netflix premiered last month, but the writer-producer has now shut down the possibility of further collaboration with the streamer. Last week, she tweeted, “I will not work with [Netflix] as long as they continue to put out and profit from blatantly and dangerously transphobic content…I’ve been thrown against walls because, ‘I’m not a “real” woman.’ I’ve had beer bottles thrown at me. So, @netflix, I’m done.”
What are celebs saying about Dave Chappelle and The Closer?
Moore isn’t the only one who is weighing in. Jonathan Van Ness, himself a star of Netflix’s Queer Eye, tweeted, “The violence and harm perpetuated against Trans, NB & Intersex folks is relentless and people pay with their lives, their livelihoods, and we’re sick of it. It breaks my heart that such important people and platforms continue to ignore that.” Famous feminist author Roxane Gay similarly dissected Chappelle’s special in a New York Times op-ed, in which she called the comedian’s remarks “extraordinarily dated” and compared his opinions to “a conservative boomer agog at the idea of homosexuality.” Author and poet Saeed Jones wrote in GQ that he considers himself a longtime Chappelle fan, but after watching The Closer, “it felt like I’d just been stabbed by someone I once admired and now he was demanding that I stop bleeding.” However, Chappelle still has some defenders. In the special, the star mentions his friend Daphne Dorman, a comedian and trans woman who committed suicide in 2019. (After Dorman killed herself by jumping off a building, Chappelle joked that “only a man would do some gangster s**t like that.") Says Dorman’s sister, “Daphne understood humor and comedy—she was not offended. Why would her family be offended?” Dorman had likewise publicly defended Chappelle’s jokes about transgender people in Sticks and Stones before her death:
Does the LGBTQ community support Netflix?
Netflix has been proactive about filling its slate with LGBTQ representation over the years. The streaming service has a LGBTQ genre, showcasing the shows and films that have LGBTQ characters. In 2019, GLAAD noted that Netflix led the way in representation, doubling the number of LGBTQ characters present in their offerings that year. As recently as April 2021, Out in New Jersey claimed that “LGBTQ representation is everywhere on Netflix.” However, GLAAD is just one of many LGBTQ organizations that has slammed Netflix over its decision to keep The Closer on its platform. Moreover, one of Netflix’s most high-profile trans stars, The Umbrella Academy’s Elliot Page, declared on the day of the employee walkout, “I stand with the trans, nonbinary, and BIPOC employees at Netflix fighting for more and better trans stories and a more inclusive workplace.”
Is Dave Chappelle done with standup?
It’s possible that Chappelle won’t be onstage (or at least onscreen) for a while now that The Closer is out. In the special, Chappelle claims that “this is gonna be my last special for a minute,” and in its official description of the special, Netflix likewise says that the streaming offeringcomes as Chappelle “closest out his slate of comedy specials.”
Where can you watch The Closer?
The Closer is streaming exclusively on Netflix. Next, Find Out Jon Stewart’s Net Worth (Including What He Made on The Daily Show)
