Subversive humor or amplification of tropes?
Yeah, I finally watched Dave Chappelle's SNL monologue
I know, I know. That last thing you want is another “hot take” on whether or not Dave Chappelle’s lengthy opening SNL monologue was antisemitic or just his usual boundary-pushing humor.
That’s why I purposely avoided watching it for a few days after seeing all the hubbub on social media. I knew needed to watch it in a calm state, away from all the internet chatter, because my feelings on this are so raw after having been immersed in antisemitic hate for so long to write Some Kind of Hate.
I’ve always admired and enjoyed Chappelle as a comedian, for his astute and biting social commentary —until his last Netflix comedy special The Closer. I stopped watching it after he launched into a stream of anti-trans jokes that I didn’t find at all funny, particularly given the context of our world today, where proposed anti-trans bills across the country are putting young peoples’ lives at risk.
Comedy is context, and what we find funny changes as we grow and evolve. Have you ever gone back to watch a movie that you found hilarious as a kid and realized that it is somewhat offensive based on what you know now? That it trades on negative stereotypes for humor in ways that have had real life, negative consequences?
As a grown woman, I often analyze all the films and TV shows and songs I loved as a teen, and realize just how misogynist they were - how they contributed to the idea that women and girls are there to be sexualized rather than being equal intelligent humans with thoughts and dreams of their own. I think about how those messages wove their way into my subconscious, and made me vulnerable in ways that I hate to think about; ways that even some my most enlightened male friends struggle to understand.
It’s the context, and Chappelle’s failure to provide that context, which made his amplification of antisemitic tropes to a worldwide audience so problematic.
He would argue, I’m sure, that he did that at the beginning.
“I wanted to read a statement I prepared. I renounce antisemitism in all its forms and stand with my friends in the Jewish community. And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.”
But then he went ahead and amplified the same stereotypes and conspiracy theories that his friend Kanye and Kyrie Irving did in recent weeks. It’s like if I got up as a Jewish woman and read a prepared statement that “I stand against racism in all its forms and stand with my friends in the Black community” and then went on national TV and made jokes using white supremacist talking points about “Black on White crime.” For those who don’t remember, that is a search term that took the Emanuel AME shooter down the white supremacist rabbit hole and resulted in the death of nine Black worshippers at a bible study group.
Comedy is context - and we are living in a time of rising antisemitism where those kinds of white nationalist tropes and conspiracy theories have inspired similar deathly consequences for members of the Jewish community. But for some reason those tropes are okay for Chappelle joke about and amplify in the current environment.
The film Kyrie Irving amplified, which Chappelle also jokes about, promotes an idea espoused by both the Nation of Islam and KKK leader David Duke, that the Jews were disproportionally responsible for the slave trade. As far back as 1992, Black scholar Henry Louis Gates refuted this idea.
During the past decade, the historic relationship between African Americans and Jewish Americans -- a relationship that sponsored so many of the concrete advances of the civil rights era -- showed another and less attractive face.
While anti-Semitism is generally on the wane in this country, it has been on the rise among black Americans. A recent survey finds not only that blacks are twice as likely as whites to hold anti-Semitic views but -- significantly -- that it is among the younger and more educated blacks that anti-Semitism is most pronounced.
Gates goes on to discuss a work at the basis of these claims, that he calls “one of the most sophisticated instances of hate literature yet compiled,” an official publication of the Nation of Islam called "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews."
The book massively misrepresents the historical record, largely through a process of cunningly selective quotation of often reputable sources. But its authors could be confident that few of its readers would go to the trouble of actually hunting down the works cited. For if readers actually did so, they might discover a rather different picture.
But here’s where the danger of films like the one Irving amplified lies, according to Gates:
the tacit conviction that culpability is heritable. For it suggests a doctrine of racial continuity, in which the racial evil of a people is merely manifest (rather than constituted) by their historical misdeeds. The reported misdeeds are thus the signs of an essential nature that is evil.
But apparently that isn’t problematic.
IN THE CURRENT CONTEXT, where it’s easy for those who hear these tropes to go online and be misled, feeding into the myth that Jews control the media, those of us who speak out against joking about such ideas are often told to stop “whining about the Holocaust,” or that we’re “censoring” or engaging “cancel culture.” Chappelle joked that Black People weren’t responsible for the Holocaust - but no one said they were! In fact as a Jewish person, I recognize that Hitler modeled the Nuremberg Laws on Southern race laws.
I don’t think Chappelle should be cancelled. But I would love to talk to him about the responsibility that anyone with a big platform has: to think about the real life harm their “jokes” can cause.
I don’t think Chappelle should be cancelled. But I would love to talk to him about the responsibility that anyone with a big platform has": to think about the real life harm their “jokes” can cause.
When “The Closer” got pushback, Netflix Co CEO Ted Sarandos wrote this in an email to staff:
With ‘The Closer,’ we understand that the concern is not about offensive-to-some content but titles which could increase real world harm (such as further marginalizing already marginalized groups, hate, violence etc.). While some employees disagree, we have a strong belief that content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm.”
The TL: DR of this: In the current CONTEXT, in the Internet age where algorithms can lead one down a conspiracy rabbit hole and social media is rife with misinformation, the idea that content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm is patently ridiculous. We’ve already seen how the amplification of “The Great Replacement” theory led to the deaths of Jewish worshippers in Pittsburgh and Black grocery shoppers in Buffalo, Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, and Mexican Walmart shoppers in El Paso.
What would have saved Chappelle from all this criticism is if he ended his monologue with an observation that the real beneficiaries of dividing us by these conspiracy theories are the white supremacists and white nationalists who hate us ALL.
But he didn’t. Instead he wasted an opportunity to do good rather than harm, while on a stage watched by millions.
What would have saved Chappelle from all this criticism is if he ended his monologue with an observation that the real beneficiaries of dividing us by these conspiracy theories are the white supremacists and white nationalists who hate us ALL.
But he didn’t. He wasted an opportunity to do good rather than harm while on a stage watched by millions.
I personally do not believe that past works of comedy should be viewed through today's moral scope. When watching a comedy from a bygone era, one must remember the social state of the world at the time the work was produced. Could a movie such as Blazing Saddles be produced and released in today's world climate without Mel Brooks being socially ostracized and the movie banned, or dropped from the theaters due to massive demonstrations? I think not, and that is okay in today's society but in 1974, I would ask how many people who would now condemn this movie laughed their butts off in 1974? Does that make them racist today? No, it does not and I still laugh my butt off when I re-watch Blazing Saddles and almost every Mel Brooks movie ever, which I bet, not one of them would ever be made today as they were back then. I believe that we must accept the past for what it was then, but move forward with the proper consideration of all people.
I haven't seen the Dave Chappelle bit but it was discussed by John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. My sense is that Colbert wasn't in full agreement with Stewart and I'm not sure I am either. Anti-semitism, and racism in general, is like a herpes virus; it lays in a dormant state until the immune system is engaged elsewhere and then bursts out in an ugly blister. Racism is often a sign of societal stress caused by other problems - covid, fascism, inflation. In any case I'm more in favor of confronting the racist than engaging them as Stewart is suggesting. Here is the link to the interview;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V_sEqfIL9Q