Comedian carelessly punches down
New Year’s Eve saw the release of Dave Chappelle’s seventh Netflix standup special titled “The Dreamer.” It’s hard to tell from the opening of the 56-minute special if Dave is going to do some comedy or if he is going up there to be a spiritual leader to his audience.
The Netflix stand-up special’s intro starts with a voiceover from Morgan Freeman and some black-and-white footage of Chappelle backstage at the Lincoln Theater in his hometown of Washington, D.C. What ensues is Chappelle showing us all that he hasn’t listened to the critics since his last controversial special and that he does not seem to mind “punching down.”
For those who don’t remember, Chappelle got in hot water in the press for his comments on the LGBTQ+ community in his special in 2021 called The Closer. In 2023’s Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer, it seems that he doesn’t care about what you had to say about him after that special.
Chappelle uses subtle jabs to catch his audience off guard and let him know that he hasn’t backed down from what many people wanted to attempt to cancel him for two years ago. He brings up a story about meeting Jim Carrey on the set of the film Man on the Moon and how Carrey was in character on the set as Andy Kaufman. His quote went like this:
“I was very disappointed because I wanted to meet Jim Carrey, and I had to pretend he was Andy Kaufman all afternoon. It was clearly Jim Carrey. I could look at him and clearly see it was Jim Carrey.” He followed it up by saying, “I say all that to say… that’s how trans people make me feel.”
The theater erupts with laughter at the delivery, but a slight sense of nerves fills the air as you now know that Dave plans to go there, and you’re stuck with him till he closes the show. Chappelle then targets the disabled community because “they’re not as organized as the gays.” And then he brings things back to the LGBTQ+ community with the comment:
“To be honest with you, I’ve been trying to repair my relationship with the transgender community because I don’t want them to think that I don’t like them. You know how I’ve been repairing it? I wrote a play. I did. Cause I know that gays love plays. It’s a very sad play, but it’s moving. It’s about a Black transgender woman whose pronoun is, sadly, n***a. It’s a tear-jerker. At the end of the play, she dies of loneliness cause white liberals don’t know how to speak to her. It’s sad.”
Chappelle’s comments are meant to be met with backlash. He knows exactly what he’s doing with this type of content. He wants to poke the bear and supposedly make the debate on equality and an equal playing field.
Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer also tackles his incident on stage with the Hollywood Bowl, when someone jumped up on stage and tried to attack him. An incident that happened a mere three months after his friend Chris Rock was slapped on stage at the Oscars by Will Smith.
This is something that Chappelle also brings up by saying that Will Smith got to slap Chris Rock and go back to his seat and enjoy his night. If that happened to him, Will Smith would not be going back to his seat and enjoying his night.
Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer has hype around it that we all can understand. The message at the core of the Netflix stand-up special is actually quite nice since this is the theater where Dave is returning to his roots.
But the clash of controversy he spills over it actually may hurt the overall nice vibe of the show rather than just hurt feelings. The jokes land, and so do the stories, but there are a handful of other Dave Chappelle specials one could seek out to understand his genius.
Read More: Dave Chappelle Ending Explained
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Verdict - 6.5/10
6.5/10