![]() With this, Sarandos delivered a decisive blow to the words-are-violence crowd. Key to this is increasing diversity on the content team itself. So we have Sex Education, Orange is the New Black, Control Z, Hannah Gadsby and Dave Chappelle all on Netflix. We are working hard to ensure marginalized communities aren't defined by a single story. Adults can watch violence, assault and abuse – or enjoy shocking stand-up comedy – without it causing them to harm others. The strongest evidence to support this is that violence on screens has grown hugely over the last thirty years, especially with first party shooter games, and yet violent crime has fallen significantly in many countries. While some employees disagree, we have a strong belief that content on screen doesn't directly translate to real-world harm. With The Closer, we understand that the concern is not about offensive-to-some content but titles which could increase real world harm (such as further marginalizing already marginalized groups, hate, violence etc.) Last year, we heard similar concerns about 365 Days and violence against women. "Our goal is to entertain the world," Sarandos wrote, "which means programming for a diversity of tastes.…We also support artistic freedom to help attract the best creators, and push back on government and other censorship requests." Excerpted below: Our employees are encouraged to disagree openly and we support their right to do so," a Netflix spokesperson clarified to Variety, failing to stop the deluge of misleading headlines.Įarlier this week, Netflix's co-CEO Ted Sarandos issued a careful rejoinder to his employees, some of whom were staging a walkout in protest of the company airing the Chappelle special. (Many media outlets, from The Daily Beast to The Verge to NPR to The New York Times neglected to convey the appropriate nuance in their headlines.) "It is absolutely untrue to say that we have suspended any employees for tweeting about this show. Lower-level employees took to crashing a company meeting of executives media sites dishonestly declared that "Netflix Employee Who Criticized Dave Chappelle's Special Gets Suspended," neglecting to mention in the headline that it wasn't really the criticism that was the problem, but rather the unkosher practice of crashing leadership's meeting. Jokes like these have inspired outcry from within Netflix. "I said 'What? One they, or many theys?'" "A nigga came up to me on the street the other day, he said, 'Careful Dave, they after you,'" Chappelle says, pausing, his eyes wide. I be lookin' around the crowd, searching for knuckles and Adam's apples to see where the threats might be coming from." "Every time I come out on stage, I be scared. "These transgenders…want me dead," Chappelle says later on. He seems sincere when he insists he's "not indifferent to the suffering of someone else" (before launching into a joke about taking a shit at Walmart and trans bathroom bills and DaBaby killing a guy, of course). ![]() No one is safe from Chappelle's jokes-but also, everyone is safe from Chappelle's jokes, given that words don't directly cause harm, and that Chappelle is not uncaring or unfeeling. This man jokes about hoping "white bitches" get tear-gassed at the Women's March! ![]() But he jokes about almost everyone in a manner that could cause discomfort if you're overly preening and self-serious. He's gratuitously edgy, pushing the envelope because he knows he can, allegedly prioritizing little glimmers of comedic payoff over nurturing a culture that's comfortable and welcoming for trans people. A Daily Beast headline reads "Dave Chappelle, and the Week From Hell For Trans People."Ĭhappelle's comedy exists in the liminal space between irresponsible and downright dangerous to trans people, or so his critics' argument goes. "Too often in The Closer, it just sounds like Chappelle is using white privilege to excuse his own homophobia and transphobia," sanctimoniously declares an NPR piece, clumsily arguing that he thinks that the plight of the black man in America trumps oppression faced by all other identity groups, intimating that Chappelle is just looking for thinly veiled excuses for his own purported animus. If you were reading reviews of the special, you wouldn't know that. It's humane and irreverent and, yes, he directly deals with the criticism and cancellation attempts he's gotten from transgender activists why wouldn't he? He's never been one to shy away from good material. Comedian Dave Chappelle's newest hourlong special, The Closer, pokes fun at people's pieties, sprinkled with a tenderness that Chappelle has long supplied. ![]()
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