Comments | sanmiguelmalo: The Miseducation of Dave Chappelle

sanmiguelmalo

The Miseducation of Dave Chappelle

Jul 05, 2006 11:07

The Miseducation of Dave Chappelle, reappropriate_xIt's no secret that I don't particularly like Dave Chappelle. When he was doing the "Chappelle's Show" on Comedy Central, there were times when I simply had to leave the room. I find the endless toilet humour and inane racism of his comedy grating, and although I appreciate some of his sketches (for example, "The ( Read more... )

society, race

Comments 8

tmiseryt July 6 2006, 06:54:48 UTC

haha, indeed, i kind of like your idea.

Still to me the issue you wrote about sounds more like America being befuddled by a value system above money and I think that confusion would ring true in many instances. Integrity and entertainment aren't really synonyms. I don't think America has the attention span to comprehend it.

sanmiguelmalo July 6 2006, 14:40:30 UTC

i definitely agree this sort of quandry applies in many instances. there's always a judgement call to be made between doing something to pay the bills and doing something that feeds into the dominant paradigm.

cd332 July 6 2006, 12:37:23 UTC

well at least dave had a few original ideas.

last time he disappeared, it was no accident that mexican comedians who call their own people "wetbacks " in a caucasian frat boy accent picked up the slack for white folk needing to be entertained.

sanmiguelmalo July 6 2006, 14:36:55 UTC

yeah, i thought a lot of his sketches were pretty clever.

i'm sure seeing who replaced him gave me even more food for thought. i can't wait until mencia suffers an attack of conscious and quits and comedy central brings in the donger show so asians can finally get their turn.

chr0me_kitten July 6 2006, 19:38:49 UTC

Most of the what was great on Chappelle's Show (and there was a lot that was great) was the satire. The problem with satire is that many people don't read it as satirical. They take it at face value. In the case of his show, that led to a couple of big problems. 1) The people who only saw it as race humor for race humor's sake without picking up on the societal critique that was going on and 2) the white boys who thought the show was giving them permission to call people what they wanted to call people all along ( ... )

sanmiguelmalo July 6 2006, 20:24:22 UTC

i most certainly agree that what he was doing wasn't outright cooning but like you pointed out, the problem with satire is when the majority of people don't get it. i've always resisted the girl on this one when we argue about it but i do have to say that so much of art inevitably boils down to interpretation and when the majority of people (and your network) read what you're doing entirely antithetically to what your point was, does the satire still even exist?

chr0me_kitten July 7 2006, 00:19:32 UTC

Did anyone expect Chappelle's show to do as well as it did, though? I'm wondering what the reaction would have been if it ended up being a cult show - if much of the criticism has more to do with its popularity than its content alone. The popularity changed the context of the content. The first sketch was the black white supremacist sketch. I remember watching that and being amazed that it even made it on the air. It felt really transgressive - like he was getting away with something. And part of me thinks it's more important that he got away with that, even just for a little bit, than worrying that a large part of the audience didn't get it. The people who were laughing "at the wrong thing" were always going to laugh at the wrong thing. Does that mean we don't get to do things from our points of view (and by "we" I mean POC in this context) ever because there are always going to be people who are looking for permission for indulging in their racism ( ... )

sanmiguelmalo July 7 2006, 15:16:23 UTC

that's a great point. i want to almost equate it with the way people relate to each other different depending on the environment, like if it's a group of people who are down and in a safe space, they can say things that they couldn't in more public spaces with other people because there's no danger of it being misread. i definitely don't think POC viewpoint work shouldn't be performed or brought into the mainstream commons but when it is i feel like we have to be extra vigilant about what it's being used for and how it's being read. like going back to my slightly (okay more than slightly) absurd ideal poc comedy show, challenging any misreading or misuse of the content. this is unfeasible of course but that's the idea. or the spirit at least ( ... )