MEDIAWATCH: NZ Herald review of the cancellation of Dave Chappelle

Karl Puschmann: Dave Chappelle’s new comedy special The Closer proves he just doesn’t get it

Dave Chappelle’s new comedy special The Closer proves he just doesn’t get it. Which is frustrating because his thinking and his message are usually so on point.

Chappelle is a comedian who can articulate societal issues in a way that’s both profound and profoundly funny. He takes risks with his comedy, provokes and trolls in a way that, at his best, sees you gasping for air while imparting topical wisdom to ruminate on long after he’s dropped the mic and the credits have rolled.

Chappelle doesn’t write comedy just to make you laugh. He crafts his jokes to make you think about the world and society you live in.

Although not without controversy, his run of comedy specials that began in 2017 have been a masterclass in comedy by a comedian who has a stronger claim that most to the title of the GOAT, or Greatest of All Time.

But even the great boxing legend Muhammad Ali took the odd loss. And Chappelle’s final special in his eye-wateringly lucrative deal with Netflix really is a self-inflicted KO.

Dave Chappelle is on the receiving end of a woke cancellation in another feral and eye rolling excercise of censoring art from one of the great comedic social commentators of our generation.

The woke need to ostracise Chappelle because he ridiculed Identity Politics dogma and nothing implodes moral self-righteousness quicker than ridicule.

2020 has been a terrible year for the Left by exposing our aggressive desire to censor or erase any opinion we feel triggered by. NZ celebrated pre-censoring a movie none of us saw because it made Paddy Gower feel guilty while the activist base brag about who they will nark on once hate speech laws are passed.

Dave’s crime is holding the woke to their own snarling standards but in a far more clever and funny manner.

As an artist he has every right to direct his craft where he wants, that’s the power of comedy, but he makes an argument about the feral aggressiveness of the Trans debate that critics refuse to acknowledge.

The irony of the Left attempting to deplatform a black comedian who has spent a career attacking white power structures is beyond the woke.

Dave Chappelle is an artist, he is intelligently insightful and prepared to challenge all power structures, including the current woke schism.

That Netflix staff themselves protested is akin to librarians helping book burners.

Look at the language of catastrophe that justifies cancelling Chappelle’s thought crimes…

“Trans people are in the middle of a holocaust,” Soloway reportedly said during the walkout on Wednesday. “Apartheid, murder, a state of emergency, human rights crisis, there’s a mental health crisis. There’s a suicide crisis, a bullying crisis, an anxiety, depression, self-hatred state of emergency crisis.”

…doesn’t sound emotionally manipulative or hyperbolic at all.

As for the banal NZ Herald review. It’s tepid virtue signal of Chappelle’s stand up reads like a review to pacify woke snowflakes easily triggered by comedy that challenges them.

It’s a watered down cowardice masquerading as a critique, thankfully any opinion this bland and middle of the road gets run over.

And reversed over.

And run over again.

The ease with which the Herald weakly sacrifices artistic freedom for the cultural Revolution cancel crew is like Bishop Brian Tamaki converting to Islam – why would the old fuddy duddy Herald champion woke crusades against Art?

Is it just their love of censoring anything they don’t understand?

Or they just don’t like black comedians?

Chappelle’s art being reviewed by the Herald is like North Shore Influencers running ICU beds in that the idea is as fucking stupid as it sounds.

You may as well get The Edge Breakfast Morning Crew to interview Banksy, Chomsky and Marx all at once on the existential crisis of capitalism between fart jokes and anti fat shaming campaigns.

 

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