Dave Chappelle's 'The Closer' Is A Warning For How The Rich Will Treat Us
Image; Netflix
I hesitated to watch Dave Chappelle's special The Closer because I am a trans person, and I thought it would be best to sidestep this moment altogether (something that should tell you how toxic this discourse has become for trans people). I have spent a lot of time documenting what the alt-right does for this blog, and I figured I didn't need to add more transphobia into my life. Many great writers from Scott Woods to Zuva Seven had covered the special already, and I didn't think there was much to add.
The discourse around the special, however, just hasn't ended. It's metastasized and mutated to the point where I don't think I can ignore it if I tried. And so here I am, giving my thoughts about The Closer, and you might be surprised that we are not going to focus on transphobia as much as we are going to talk about what this standup special means for how we interact with the rich.
And yes, Dave Chappelle is rich — “tens of millions of more dollars than you or I will ever have” rich.
About halfway through watching The Closer, I realized that this isn't really about standup or transphobia at all, but how those with means can construct entire realities around their own narrow conceptions of justice and pain. Dave Chappelle is not attempting to have a discourse about the intersection of queerness and blackness in his special. His framing is far too messy for that. He is the discourse, and that realization tells us something pretty poignant about where we are with the state of "cancel culture."
We are a culture fixated on the petty complaints of the rich.
Before we proceed with this analysis, yes, The Closer does have transphobic, antisemitic, and misogynistic jokes as well as a dozen other "problematic" things. I tell you this as someone who has analyzed the rhetoric of thousands of white supremacist posts: the transphobic arguments those malicious actors use (i.e., that gender is an unquestioned fact, using biology to claim transgender people aren't valid, misgendering, etc.) can be seen in this special. This parallel doesn't make Dave Chappelle a supremacist — that claim would be ludicrous — but it does tell you that he is susceptible to the same sorts of biases as everyone else in our society.
Early in the special, there is a point where Dave Chappelle asks if a gay person can be racist (note : this homophobic framing erases the intersections between gayness and blackness). He’s talking about how white gays can often use their whiteness to “punch down” (a phrase he allegedly has problems with) at members of the Black community, which is a valid criticism, albeit one said in a way that inflames preexisting tensions.
In this same vein, is it not also possible that a rich, cis, black man can be transphobic, and classist, and anti-semitic, and misogynistic, and a million other things?
The answer, just as in the special, is clearly yes. He affirms that he is a Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist (TERF) and compares transgenderism to blackface. It's apparent that Chappelle is working through his thoughts on gender, in real-time, with millions of Americans. His transphobia shows in these moments. He's not a terrible person, but he is a stubborn one, and unfortunately, his inability to truly listen has led to the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes. I have seen TERF communities share his lines like "Gender is a fact" with glee, and regardless of his intentions, it's obvious that some of his jokes probably would have been better left unsaid.
At this point in the discourse, you are either going to listen to this criticism, or you are going to defensively tell me that "it’s just a joke;" that "comedy doesn’t need to have limits;" that I, a trans person, cannot recognize transphobia when I have spent years having to notice it as an act of survival.
These deflections are, of course, naive. Anyone who has studied history knows that art can have a material impact on reality (see how A Birth of A Nation increased KKK recruitment, how Philadelphia helped destigmatize HIV/AIDS, how Blackfish caused SeaWorld to end its controversial "Shamu Show," etc.). Proponents of this special want Dave Chappelle to receive all the benefits of art— the recognition, the money, the fame — with none of the accountability, and it's frustrating.
When we jump into this discourse, we have to acknowledge that no one is above criticism, including the very people claiming to speak truth to power.
Yes, we will be talking about Dave Chappelle because that's where we are in the pop culture discourse, but we are not really talking about the special. We are talking about how he has constructed this discourse — saying things he very clearly believes in — so that he can speak truth to power about how the transgender community is "after him." How Chappelle, a rich person who was paid $24.1 million to create this special, and has full range over the construction of his set, somehow is the victim.
We see this phenomenon a lot, don't we?
Whenever rich people are accused of saying or doing "problematic" things, complaints of mobs and witch hunts resurface. It's the reason why everyone from former President Barack Obama to J.K. Rowling has bemoaned cancel culture. "I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people," Obama lamented during a summit in 2020, "and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of: 'The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people.'"
When we look at how the rich interact with the world at large, it seems like criticism from the wider public on places like Twitter is what they complain about the most. This gripe is partially because this is the one type of media that is the most difficult to buy. The rich build entire ecosystems of news publications and foundations to give themselves positive press, or at the very least, to control the conversation. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, has given hundreds of millions of dollars to press organizations, and that has made critics reluctant to come forward about where his foundation has negatively impacted the world. Jeff Bezos likewise owns the Washington Post, and although that paper has released critical reporting of him, there is a concern about a potential chilling effect. Mike Bloomberg has built an entire media empire in his name. A host of rich men have attempted to reform our media ecosystems to suit their interests, and it stifles their ability to take criticism.
However, you cannot make every nobody online like you, which drives the rich up the wall. They often try to double down, using their influence to claw at the one place, usually Twitter, where they are receiving genuine criticism. This clapping back at critics is what this special was aimed to do for Chappelle — a way for him to control the conversation. "Twitter is not a real place," Chappelle laments in The Closer, allegedly claiming to an audience of millions that he does not care about what people on Twitter think.
Yet, he does care because he made this special about how Twitter users were mean to him. Suppose he was curious about mending his relationship with the transgender community, as this special claims he wants to do. In that case, he could have actually talked to activists about how to improve that relationship. This would have involved listening to those who do not have a vested interest in keeping him happy, and it would have been difficult and praiseworthy work to do. Instead, he chose to air his half-formed grievances to the world. He did the one thing you shouldn't do when trying to be a better ally— he made it about him.
It’s telling that the one trans person Dave Chappelle references being in dialogue with is Daphne Dorman, a woman who not only cannot speak for herself anymore because she’s dead, but was someone who idolized him. She was an aspiring comedian who Chappelle asked to open for him during his sets. Power dynamics would have made honest conversation between them difficult, yet that’s not something that Chappelle, an alleged truth seeker, wants to discuss. He would rather talk about how he is being attacked by the trans community — a group that is right now facing a lot of discrimination and violence. He is deeply wounded by the accusation that he could be "punching down," directing that anger at the larger LGBTQ+ community itself instead of doing the work to improve this relationship.
For all the rich people complaining about being canceled, historically, the politics of shame happen the other way around. The powerful use their positions of privilege, as Chappelle is regretfully doing here, to bully and attack those with less power (see the Salem Witch Trials, The Lavender Scare, etc.). The people who are genuinely hurt by weaponized shame are far more likely to be poor, brown, and queer, with trans youth facing some of the highest rates of suicide in the nation. They are the ones who endure all of the problems with cancel culture while having none of the wealth to insulate themselves from its ill effects.
Dave Chappelle even references this with the suicide of Daphne Dorman, who he alludes to possibly killing herself after defending his previous special Sticks & Stones. "I don't know if it was them dragging, I don't know what was going on in her life, but I bet dragging her didn't help," he claims, refusing to go into the specifics about why, at this moment in history, trans individuals might be feeling so terribly. He doesn't want to talk about the discrimination and high rates of harassment that trans people face on a daily basis, the overwhelming medical debt they take on to acquire life-saving surgeries, the job discrimination they face for being their true selves. He avoids mentioning the substance of his critics because that would make his anecdotes about being accosted by trans people while at dinner and being told to use the right pronouns sound very petty.
Instead, he waxes poetically about how we need to protect men like him. "Remember taking a man's livelihood is akin to killing him. Please do not abort DaBaby," he lectures in The Closer, talking about himself. He then bemoans that Kevin Hart was denied the right to host the Oscars for past homophobic remarks. He places this petty grievance of one rich man (Kevin Hart has a net worth in at least the tens of millions of dollars) on the same level as the trans community as a whole.
I need to stress that this type of detached reaction is common among the wealthy. It's well-known at this point that the empathy of the rich is stunted. For example, research from the journal Psychological Science has found that lower economic status people are better at reading others' facial expressions than wealthier people. Other studies have found that people in luxury cars are more likely to cut off other motorists or speed past pedestrians using crosswalks. It's a finding found a hundred different ways, all over the place.
We see the same thing here with Chappelle. He is a man with a net worth in the tens of millions, and this impacts how he interacts with others. He recently remarked that "everyone I know from [the LGBTQ+] community has been loving and supportive, so I don't know what this nonsense is about." And that's, of course, because he mainly interacts with people with similar class interests. Those that aren't on the same level as him have an imbalanced power dynamic, which makes providing him genuine criticism difficult.
Chappelle is a powerhouse in his industry, and he is so used to power and privilege that he cannot distinguish between criticism and attack. This reflex is not unique to Dave Chappelle, and so it would be unfair to pretend like he's somehow uniquely awful. Truthfully, when we compare him to other rich people, Chappelle is one of the #goodones.
But regardless, this response should alarm us. If the wealth of a man as progressive and insightful as Chappelle has stunted his empathy so much that he cannot admit he’s wrong about something as minor as a joke, what does that say about our future with the rich?
Dave Chappelle is not the first rich person to throw a tantrum about not being perceived well by the public, and he isn’t the worst offender. A standup special is a tiny drop in a sea of transphobia and hatred. It doesn’t help, but let’s not pretend that it’s the ocean itself.
Some white billionaires have done far worse and received far less criticism because they have the money to buy better press, their whiteness partially insulates them from criticism, and unlike Chappelle, their careers do not force them to be active in the spotlight. Men like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos have made decisions that negatively impact the livelihoods of millions of people. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have engaged in terrible anti-labor practices. Bill Gates has aggressively defended IP law, even to the point of delaying the COVID-vaccine rollout for countries around the world. They may be hated in activist circles, but rarely do they become parts of the discourse like Dave Chappelle has here.
However, that could soon change. I worry that as climate change and wealth inequality further metastasize, we will see the same sort of recalcitrance from these men, but we will not get something as benign as a hateful standup special in response. When you have spent a lifetime bending reality to your will, as men such as Gates and Bezos have done, what do you do when facing the reality that the public wants you to change?
If this special is any indication, we will be witnessing a decade of rich men telling the world that they are the victims, and then placing the most marginalized in the crossfire. And there’s nothing funny about that.