Netflix & Dave Chappelle: The Problem Is Worse Than You Think

If you haven’t watched Dave Chappelle’s “controversial” Netflix special, The Closer, your impression of what’s happening probably runs something like this: Edgy comedian risks overstepping boundaries with potentially inflammatory material about transgenderism, the trans community and its allies go ballistic, Netflix is forced to apologize, and the world wonders whether Netflix is going to remove the show from its platform. In this formulation Chappelle becomes a champion of the cultural norm — as opposed to the First Amendment standard — that ostensibly nonpartisan media platforms such as Netflix should give wide latitude to artists to express themselves.

And Chappelle is paying a startling price: The comic says that a film he made of another stand-up routine has been ditched by several national film festivals that had previously accepted it. You might say the film has been canceled. Chappelle is probably the highest-paid and most successful stand-up comic on the planet, and so the film will find an audience. (He is vowing to take it on the road himself.) Yet even he has to start thinking about alternate means of delivering his art to the public.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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If you haven’t watched Dave Chappelle’s “controversial” Netflix special, The Closer, your impression of what’s happening probably runs something like this: Edgy comedian risks overstepping boundaries with potentially inflammatory material about transgenderism, the trans community and its allies go ballistic, Netflix is forced to apologize, and the world wonders whether Netflix is going to remove the show from its platform. In this formulation Chappelle becomes a champion of the cultural norm — as opposed to the First Amendment standard — that ostensibly nonpartisan media platforms such as Netflix should give wide latitude to artists to express themselves.

And Chappelle is paying a startling price: The comic says that a film he made of another stand-up routine has been ditched by several national film festivals that had previously accepted it. You might say the film has been canceled. Chappelle is probably the highest-paid and most successful stand-up comic on the planet, and so the film will find an audience. (He is vowing to take it on the road himself.) Yet even he has to start thinking about alternate means of delivering his art to the public.