Dave Chappelle Wins Grammy for Netflix Special Condemned for Being Transphobic

[iemanja]

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Dave Chappelle won best comedy album at the 2023 Grammys for his most recent special The Closer, which received backlash over material focused on the transgender community.

The comedian took the honor Sunday over Louis C.K. (Sorry), Jim Gaffigan (Comedy Monster), Randy Rainbow (A Little Brains, A Little Talent) and Patton Oswalt (We All Scream). The award serves as Chappelle’s fourth Grammy and follows C.K.’s controversial win last year for Sincerely Louis CK, his first comedy album since his sexual misconduct revelations. . . .

After Chappelle and C.K. were nominated for the 2023 Grammys, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. told The Hollywood Reporter in part, “We don’t control who the voters vote for.”

“If the voters feel like a creator deserves a nomination, they’re going to vote for them,” Mason jr. said, addressing controversial nominees. “We’re never going to be in the business of deciding someone’s moral position or where we evaluate them to be on the scale of morality. I think our job is to evaluate the art and the quality of the art. We can make sure that all of our spaces are safe and people don’t feel threatened by anyone. But as far as the nominations or the awards, we really let the voters make that decision.”

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/dave-chappelle-wins-grammy-for-netflix-special-condemned-for-being-transphobic/ar-AA178IPz?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=7b025af6c7b04867af2bdf16ab080a70

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[NullTuples]

1. "We're never going to be in the business of...where we evaluate...morality"

Truer words by a wealthy CEO have rarely been spoken.

[LudwigPastorius]

2. I'm sure his paycheck plays into it, but...

I'll bet he also knows the Academy wouldn't have a lot of music left if they omitted all of the drug addicts, domestic abusers, racists, homophobes, and other miscreants.

[orleans]

3. maybe i'm naive but this surprises me. nt

[nevergiveup]

4. Yeah, me too. It is very disappointing.

[Ford_Prefect]

5. It is about the Entertainment Business rewarding itself for editing and selling popular culture.

It is a primarily sales driven self-promotion and is anything but democratic in the polling used to select winners.

[tonekat]

15. You Nailed it!

It's no more glamorous than a bunch of mattress salesmen going to the company retreat where there will be super A/V presentations that make mattresses look as impressive as the Space Shuttle (my former BIL produced a show like this), and puff up over their sales numbers.

It's a meeting of sales people competing for the plaque, art need not apply.

[SouthernDem4ever]

6. Awesome that Randy Rainbow received a nomination

Congrats to him. As far as Chapelle goes, he's not happy unless his comedy is pissing off someone.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. "We're never going to be in the business of deciding someone's moral position"

So say if someone does a comedy show akin to a minstrel performance derogatorily mocking blacks as "lazy shuffling coons" without any ability or expertise to be able to separate out perpetuating a "stereotype" from doing a "mocking parody", then that's okay because it's "someone's moral position" that you all of a sudden have no authority to "control".

This means you open the door for antisemites to "vote for" someone like Kanye and make celebrating him "acceptable".

"Letting the voters make the decision..." when it comes to TRAMPLING rights of traditionally-oppressed communities is how Jim Crow happened - and particularly because "the voters" were narrowly selected.

[catsudon]

8. correct

i think the last movie that i saw that did minstrel performance correctly was bamboozled.

Bamboozled is a 2000 American satirical dark comedy-drama film written and directed by Spike Lee about a modern televised minstrel show featuring black actors donning blackface makeup.


it was pretty shocking when i first saw it.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. I remember when "Bamboozled" came out!

Blast from the past of a little-mentioned (at least recently) piece that he did to underscore the absurdity.

Similarly, the characters "Buckwheat" and "Velvet Jones" done by Eddie Murphy were other examples of parody and mocking vs "normalization". He and Billy Crystal and especially Mel Brooks, were masters at it.

The below was done almost 40 years ago -

And let me distinguish from what Tyler Perry has done, which has pushed me away from his "Madea" series of films (none of which I have seen all the way through but had enough for me to note a concept that tips more into stereotype than parody).

[mopinko]

10. have you seen- "a jazzman's blues"?

i wasnt a big fan of his comedies, but i watched this 1 twice. so very good.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. No - I have been trying to catch up

I just got Netflix with my T-Mobile when I finally converted my Sprint account over to them (they bought out Sprint) not long ago so need to set aside some time to do some binge watching!

[Martin68]

12. I don't really think I understand where comedy leaves off and bigotry begins or how to distinguish

between satire - which is a way to criticize bigotry - from getting a cheap laugh with a racist or homophobic joke. Freedom of speech is important, and comedy has always pushed the boundary of what is appropriate to laugh to expose our foibles, absurdities, and hypocrisy. Some kinds of comedy poke at our unconscious bigotries to make us more self-aware - or just to laugh at people who are different from us. Dave Chapelle has always breached the barrier, and I'd like to think he does it in good faith. How to tell the difference? I don't really know.

[obamanut2012]

13. He punches down, it is not in good faith

That's the best way to tell: do they punch up or down? Are they a member of the community they are slamming (although LGBT+ folks can be phobes, black folks can be racist, etc.)

[Martin68]

14. I'm not sure he's "punching" at all. Again, I feel the line between an attack or disparagement and

satire is difficult to distinguish. Is he punching down when he makes fun of black people's foibles? How do you draw the line? Satire is aimed at bigots, not the subject of the satire itself. It reveals the disgusting behavior of bigots by parodying them. I'm not saying I have the answer - I'm just saying I think we should tread lightly when it comes to comedy because it often makes a point by parodying the behavior of bigots. If Chapelle ONLY parodied people other than his own race, he would be highly suspect. But he has often parodied Black people in his comedy. Are you suggest he is punching himself in the face because of self-hate? Or is the just part of a very consistent use of satire and parody to draw attention to foolish or abhorrent behavior?