In Delirious, in 1983, comedian Eddie Murphy made fun of the gay community from the start. “The fags are not allowed to look at my ass when I’m on stage,” he said, listing the rules of decorum of his show.
“I’m afraid of gay people. I have nightmares about gay people. I imagine I arrive in Hollywood and find out that Mr. T is a fag! The rest of the monologue is too crude to be published in a family journal. Let’s just say that there was a lot of talk about sodomy. Murphy would then make jokes about AIDS, which angered the American gay community.
In his next show, Raw, in 1987, Eddie Murphy claimed he could no longer travel freely in the United States, because “the fags” wanted his skin. “I can’t go to San Francisco anymore. I’m on gay radar, 24 hours a day, ”he said, before imitating a gay, particularly effeminate policeman who would arrest him. “There wouldn’t be a siren, it would be a real fagot making a siren sound with its mouth, sitting on the hood. Woûwoûwoû! ”
I saw Raw At the movie theater. I was 14 years old. I saw Delirious the same year, on videocassette. (That was before Netflix, kids.) I remember often laughing at these jokes, which we would repeat among friends. “I make fun of homosexuals because they are homosexuals,” said Eddie Murphy in Delirious. I laugh at anyone. I don’t give a fuck! ”
I immediately thought of Eddie Murphy when I saw Dave Chappelle’s most recent show, The Closer, on Netflix. I am a Chappelle fan. I’ve seen all of his shows on Netflix, some better than others. He has the gift of making us think, of jostling us in our convictions, while keeping to the limit of excess and provocation. He is, like Eddie Murphy in his time, a star of the stand-up with an exceptional talent for comedic “delivery”.
In The CloserDave Chappelle settles his accounts with the trans community, which has resented him for comments deemed transphobic 15 years ago. The comedian adds two, three layers, mocking the physique of trans people while wondering if trans women are really women. Chappelle pleads the exception that proves the rule – a trans comedian who stood up for herself, at her own risk – in order to demonstrate the excesses of LGBTQ + activism. The famous “I’m not transphobic, I have a trans friend”, in short.
He uses the same process to discredit queer activists by recalling that he respects early gay activists, those from the time of the Stonewall protests. Suggesting, on the contrary, that today’s activists are of course too fragile and sensitive.
Of course, Chappelle makes fun of everyone: whites, blacks and Jews (not to perpetuate traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes, but to denounce the treatment of Palestinians). On the other hand, he would have difficulty denying that he does not rely on transphobic prejudices in order to amuse his audience. Her trans jokes, which make up the bulk of her show, are plentiful and loaded.
What Chappelle demonstrates, consciously or not, is that the trans community as a whole is a punching bag socially acceptable comedy in 2021. As the gay community was 40 years ago, and not just for Eddie Murphy.
Netflix employees, backed by LGBTQ + activists, demonstrated outside the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles last week to denounce what they believe to be transphobic language endorsed by their employer.
It did not take more for Dave Chappelle, who receives some $ 20 million from Netflix for the broadcast of each of his shows, does not appear as a victim of the culture of banishment. The comedian claimed that performances of his film Untitled, on a series of shows at his home in Ohio, had been canceled by festivals. To console himself, he will present the documentary in front of packed halls of 20,000 seats, all over North America …
What seems clear to me, both in his show and in the controversy he raised, is that Dave Chappelle does not accept criticism. This is the too often overlooked part of the debates on the culture of banishment. With rare exceptions, a person is not banned for their comments. She is criticized, sometimes violently, when she is not used to being. She is all the more surprised by this since criticism often comes from people who have not traditionally been used to being heard.
Sometimes, of course, the criticism goes too far, as does the criticism. But it is nonetheless legitimate. It is no coincidence that, in most of the controversies linked to the culture of banishment over the past two years, those who are criticized come from privileged groups (Dave Chappelle is certainly an African-American, but he is also a straight man. multimillionaire) and those who criticize, from marginalized groups (ethnocultural, sexual, etc.).
However, those who complain the most of being victims of cancel culture evacuate the notion of privilege, as they are used to having a voice or being carried to the skies. They are especially not used to being contradicted or pilloried. At the end of the day, they rarely lose their stands.
Dave Chappelle will present his film in arenas. Netflix will continue to pay him tens of millions of dollars for the exclusivity of his shows. Complaining about censorship, under the circumstances, is the hypocrisy of “We can’t say anything more” taken to a climax.
Eddie Murphy himself admits to cringe today when he hears his old homophobic jokes. Do not forget what the context was at the time, and that I was only 21 years old, he recalled in an interview two years ago. Already in 1996, Murphy regretted his jokes about AIDS. “Today, I am better informed and I understand very well that there is nothing funny about it”, he declared.
I dare not imagine, in my small circle of high school friends, when we kept repeating the jokes of Delirious and of Raw, if there had been a gay boy of 14 among us. I dare not imagine the humiliation and probably the anger he would have felt. Trans-like humiliation and anger over Dave Chappelle’s jokes 35 years later?