DAVE CHAPPELLE'S "THE CLOSER" IS A COMEDIC MASTERPIECE
When you listen to comedy, what do you expect? What makes your lungs excitedly expel a gust of air in laughter when you hear something you consider funny?
Most people might not be able to tell specifically what makes something funny, but the human brain is hard-wired to recognize and understand humour.
Certain elements make a joke work perfectly well, and I can think of at least two, the first of which is relatability, the audience must be able to recognize something about the joke from their experience.
But the most profound reason why a joke works perfectly is that it subverts expectations. The comedian is telling a story, the audience has no idea where the story is headed, but they can give a reasonable guess, then all of a sudden the punchline is revealed and it takes a turn sharply away from where the audience expected it to go, yet at that moment, the audience can at the same time sense a relationship and a dissonance with the premise and the conclusion of the joke and that it is what makes it work.
This last reason is why I think Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special, “the closer” was hilariously perfect. It is as close as one could get to the perfect comedy ever performed. Yet it has generated so much controversy.
If one listens closely to the joke, there are numerous places where Dave subverts expectations, it was radioactive and all over the place, you could never tell where he was going. Just when he’s built up a premise and set up, there comes the brilliant subversion and you are left with no option but to laugh, because it was genuinely funny.
Here’s my analysis of the last fifteen minutes of the special where he talks about a trans woman Daphne. Dave Chappelle starts off the joke with a genuine compliment, stating that one of the coolest people he’d ever met was a trans woman named Daphne. From his description of her, they seemed to have an excellent relationship. He thought she was cool and she enjoyed his jokes, even the transgender jokes. Their relationship was so good that when Dave needed an opening act for sticks and stones special, he thought of her and gave her a call to be his opening act.
From here, what one expects is for the narration to continue on the positive note it started on, but here’s where Dave introduces his first subversion. Speaking with her on the phone, she wrongly assumes that he wants sex from her, to which he cleverly says, that’s not what he’s calling about. I believe that in her wildest imagination, she would not have thought that Dave would ask her, an unknown aspiring comedian to open for him, so in her mind, it was more likely that he’d ask her for sex than for an opening act. With this, Dave manages to subvert not only our expectations but the expectation of Daphne in one genius move.
After her acceptance, Dave continues with the niceties and compliments, he said, she was very professional and showed up early, she was dressed nice, he even exaggerated his compliments of her by saying he’s transphobic, yet still found her dressing incredibly attractive.
Anyone with a modicum sense of humour would see that his statement of being transphobic only served the purpose of heightening and highlighting his tremendous appreciation for how great she looked. It was a sort of juxtaposition where you go to the extreme to get more momentum to bounce back and have a further reach in the opposite direction.
Dave had no benefit from admitting he’s transphobic, he’s not stupid, there was nothing to be gained from that admission rather much to be lost by saying that, yet he respected his craft so much to be willing to take that risk just so the joke comes out great. I think that’s an incredibly brave thing to do.
In essence, his admission of transphobia is no confirmation of whether or not he’s transphobic and by and large people can see that except you have a rare genetic ailment that prevents you from perceiving humour.
Now Dave is still on the complimentary mode, but it’s time to introduce his next subversion. And it went where no one could have expected. At this point most people are wondering despite their laughs, is Dave transphobic? Surely, even if he is he has to be subtle about it, and also is he not? considering he’d just finished complimenting her, what was to follow was sure to be another compliment, but it wasn’t, and that set the premise for a bigger payoff when he said her jokes bombed so badly.
Here on out, he doubles down on how terrible she was as a comedian, and he did it so effortlessly, and the reason he could do that I suspect was that there was no malice, no ill intent, but just an honest critique, exaggerated for comedic effect.
After this seemingly harsh critique, he switched back to commend her on how much of a good sport she was in taking failure in good stride. Just immediately after that compliment, he switched again to the harsh critique, of saying”..she sat there confidently as if nothing bad had happened to her, and I saw her show, something bad had happened to her, it was terrible.”
See, Dave Chappelle was treating her as he would treat any of his bosom friends, maybe it’s a male thing, but guys do often show affection by a good-natured ribbing of their friend. If you read a transcript of my conversation with my best friend, you’d be horrified and think we were enemies, but that’s how we communicate, through throwing jabs at each other, and we both know and understand that it comes from a good place, and that’s exactly what Dave was doing with Daphne, and I suspect Daphne knew that too.
Then Dave goes on to talk about Daphne interrupting his set which he didn’t mind, but the audience seemed to mind, because “her set was terrible” another subversion, but one could have seen this one coming.
But from here, Dave adds another element, another layer to this canvas of comedy he was painting, he spoke of Daphne’s witty response to the heckler and how from that moment her interruptions became a delight and made the show even much more enjoyable.
One could have argued the crowd didn’t like her because she was trans, but what changed after her witty response, why did they suddenly open up to her? Was it because she was no longer trans? No, she was still trans, the only difference was that she became funnier and people liked it.
Sexual identity and orientation is such a small and insignificant part of what a person is, that the fact it generates so much controversy is absurd. Most people would (should) look past sexual orientation and preference except it is deliberately shoved in their face. Did the fact that Daphne was trans in any way make the crowd less amenable to her jokes when they were funny? Certainly not, no one mentioned it, because she did not make an issue out of it.
That is not to say there are no assholes who genuinely hate trans people.
At the end of the show, Dave admits to Daphne that he loved her, he admits that he now saw how humourous she was, but immediately subverted that by saying, “…but I didn’t understand the shit you were talking about.”
Now at this point, Daphne’s reaction became a subversion itself. Dave had so far set her up to be a good sport, someone who wasn’t even offended by trans jokes, yet it was at this particular moment in juxtaposition to the audience that she did not find Dave’s remarks funny.
Yet, in her objections to his joke at that moment, she didn’t accuse him of being transphobic, she just wanted him to understand she was having a human experience, not a trans experience to which Dave Chappelle replied, “…I believe you bitch, because it takes one (human) to know one (human).” Here Dave subverted our expectation of a subversion, instead of a punch line, he just said a relatable thing, it takes a human being to know another human being.
As Dave’s set ended, he took time to get the audience to appreciate Daphne and they gave her a standing ovation, it was an emotional and incredible moment for Daphne. The beauty at that moment, that Dave was able to give this trans woman the experience of her life despite her being trans throws away the argument that Dave Chappelle is transphobic. True, he might not agree with the trans ideology, but it didn’t make Daphne any less human to Dave, neither did it make his interactions with her any less organic.
Do we have to agree with everybody’s choices before they can be human to us? I think not. Even parents and their kids do not agree on tons of choices, that doesn’t make them any less human to each other. Same with the trans issue. Not believing in the trans ideology is not hatred of trans people, it just simply believing that a man cannot be a woman. I don’t see why this is controversial.
After the show Dave continues his story that on the hangout, later on, Daphne was making everyone laugh, he noticed she was funny but had some things to work on, and like any good friend to pass home the point joked to her by saying " you’re hilarious, I didn’t know that when you were on stage.” I believe even Daphne herself would have laughed at that.
Here was someone honest to her about her flaws in a humorous way, offering to help her become better at her craft. It doesn’t get any more human than this. Dave further sweetened the deal by offering to have her open for him whenever he was in San Francisco and show her how to be better. Is Dave Chappelle a saint or what?
In excitement, she hugged him tight and then he said, he pushed her off violently because he’s transphobic. Can you not see the humour in that? Did he truly push her away? I’m sure he didn’t, but for comedic effect, he dramatized that just so it can contrast sharply with all the great things he’d just said and did for Daphne.
The point isn’t that Dave is transphobic, the point is that he’s pretty damn good at his job of making people laugh by subverting their expectations. In a way, the dramatic pushing her away was an exaggeration for comedic effect.
Dave continued with how Daphne defended him when he was dragged by the trans community after sticks and stones came out. In doing that, Daphne risked incurring the ire of her tribe and being ostracized by them, but she was willing to take that risk, to stick out her neck for Dave because he was her friend.
Now here is where the subversion gets tragic. Daphne was on the way to having her dream of being a renowned comedian come true with the help of the great Dave Chappelle, she was secure enough in herself to fight off marauding members of her trans tribe, there were no indications of what was to follow, which was why, she killing herself six days later after defending Dave on Twitter was the ultimate subversion of the audience expectations, albeit a tragic one.
The goal of comedy isn’t always to be funny, at times its goal is to be shocking, and Dave’s narration that builds up to her death sets up that goal perfectly. The crowd gasped because they were expecting a happy ending, but were met with the sad announcement of her death. I ask again, is Dave Chappelle a genius or what?
Yet Dave was able to find some humour in her death despite being devastated by it, by saying she lied to him about being a trans woman as she went up to a roof and jumped off killing herself noting that only a man would do gangster shit like that. This is pure gold!
Dave by this admittance wished that she was trans or at least that she was true to it like she claimed, because if she was then she would probably not have killed herself as fewer women die from suicide than men. These jokes were hilarious and I’m betting Daphne would have found them funny and not offensive if she had been alive.
And the final plot twist Dave introduced was when he said to Daphne’s daughter, “….I knew your father.” This was the height of his comedic genius and use of subversion because all the while he referred to Daphne as she, a female, a woman, so in all that time he was building up to this one big final punchline of “…I knew your father.” The special could be described as a minefield of subversion.
For all those who hate Dave Chappelle for these jokes and want to cancel him for being transphobic take it from Daphne herself who said, “punching down on someone requires you to think less of them, and I know him, he doesn’t, he doesn’t punch up, he doesn’t punch down, he punches lines and he’s a master at his craft.”
Charles Ekokotu writes from Nigeria.