Dave Chappelle, "Weird Al" Yankovic and the Context Conundrum
In What’s In a Name?, a forty minute speech Dave Chappelle Netflix ran as a special because he is apparently a god to them, can do no wrong and must be indulged in his every whim, the previously relevant comedian power-whined, “All the kids were screaming and yelling. I remember, I said to the kids, I go, ‘Well, okay, well what do you guys think I did wrong?’ And a line formed. These kids said everything about gender, and this and that and the other, but they didn’t say anything about art. And this is my biggest gripe with this whole controversy with The Closer: That you cannot report on an artist’s work and remove artistic nuance from his words. It would be like if you were reading a newspaper and they say, ‘Man Shot in the Face by a Six-Foot Rabbit Expected to Survive,’ you’d be like, ‘Oh my god,’ and they never tell you it’s a Bugs Bunny cartoon.”
Chappelle was very upset that these unconscionably mean teenagers, who he later referred to as “instruments of oppression”, were seeing his performance through the prism of the comedian’s transphobia and not his incomparable genius as a poet/philosopher/social commentator who is, in Chappelle’s own words, a “once-in-a-lifetime talent.”
Chappelle seems very concerned that people with the unmitigated gall to ask him to stop being so fucking transphobic lack crucial context.
Here’s the thing: we know the context of a Dave Chappelle show.
No one looks at the transphobic quips quoted in articles and thinks, “That was a strange thing for Dave Chappelle to say while testifying in front of Congress about the need for tort reform” or “That’s an odd pep talk Chappelle gave a little league baseball team but then he’s an eccentric guy.”
What Chappelle means, I think, is that it is wrong to cite the hateful things he says and does without saying that they’re wholly excused by his genius and talent as a once-in-a-lifetime performer.
Chappelle was once a once in a lifetime talent. He’s not anymore. You know how you can tell he’s not a once in a lifetime talent anymore? Because he felt the need to publicly assert that he was, in fact, a once in a lifetime talent.
He furthermore seemed to think that it’s wrong and dishonest to quote moments and lines without quoting everything around them or the special as a whole.
Chappelle strongly feels that in order to criticize him, you must first experience all of his specials, preferably more than once, acknowledge his once-in-a-lifetime talent, praise his genius and insight and then ultimately not criticize him at all, because anyone who criticizes him is an instrument of oppression.
If I might wax hypocritical here when I read the notorious pan of a “Weird Al” Yankovic live concert that ran in The Isthmus, Madison’s famously stuffy alternative weekly I was struck by its complete lack of context.
The critic wrote about the darkness and dysfunction in Al’s songs, and how they are in poor taste given all of the horrible things in the world.
The review was lacking essential context. The critic did not seem to grasp that these are satirical songs and that the target of the satire is invariably the myopia, self-absorption and crazed narcissism of horrible, toxic men, not the luckless women they’re terrorizing.
Instead the critic chose to focus on two irrelevant contexts: the chaotic, divided state of our country and the sheer number of dark songs Al played in a single concert. To her, it would be forgivable if he played a song or two with an unsympathetic protagonist. But to play a whole BUNCH of songs with unsympathetic protagonists? That’s flat out admitting that you like and identify with all the horrible characters in your songs and want the audience to like and identify with them as well.
So context IS important when judging something’s merits but it has to be the right, appropriate context or you just end up deluding yourself.
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