Netflix co-CEO defends Dave Chappelle special | Hacker News Reader

Netflix co-CEO defends Dave Chappelle special

variety.com

32 pointshncurious20 comments

I wonder how much of the outrage around this is caused by standup becoming available to a mainstream audience in a way it never has before.

Stand up has always been edgy, raw and, in many cases, intentionally offensive.

Stand up that had made it to the general public previously was censored and filtered and now you have an unfiltered routines out there that never would have been given the greenlight to be on tv.

Even before the internet, which has had edgy shit on it for decades, uncensored comedy had been available to the general public for a long time. I remember listening to Richard Pryor's routines on 8-track tapes. This sort of thing isn't news to anyone.

How much effort did you have to go to to acquire those 8-track tapes?

None, because they weren't mine. I did rent some of his stuff on VHS, though.

the thread I saw on reddit where everyone was outraged and talking about cancelling their subscriptions felt fabricated.

I hate to put a tinfoil hat on but this just seems like ad campaign.

It's nice to see a company stand by their content and decision instead of simply fake apologizing which no one believes or cares about

Plus no one is cancelling their Netflix over it

Good, even if you disagree, other people's opinions don't hurt you.

A welcome respite of sanity from the perpetual torrent of selective outrage. I hope Chappelle inspires others to speak truth to power.

> While some employees disagree, we have a strong belief that content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm

I think it's pretty ludicrous for the CEO of a film business to say this. Film has been used to make people do harmful things in the real world for a century.

They tell me my heavy metal albums and Doom II floppies are responsible for my serial killing

Those weren't designed to make you violent. Goebbels work on the other hand was, and it definitely was effective.

Or how about the anti vaxxers, Q-anon believers, or the people that ransacked the capitol? They never watched any videos designed to drive them to cause harm, I assure you

Dave Chappelle isn't calling for violence, though, not in any way, nor hinting at such, nor alluding to it, nor expressing any kind of support for it. I watched it the other day.

Suggesting the stand-up comedy of Dave Chappelle is somehow akin to the work of Joseph Goebbels, how can someone respond to that? It's literally absurd. It's so outlandish that it can only serve to undermine whatever position you might want to argue.

I didn't compare Dave Chapelle to Goebbels. I said film has the power to cause real harm and brought up historical examples.

But he did in fact establish violence as a normal reaction in his set, multiple times. It sounded to me like he supports violence when I heard him. He told a story about how threatened to assault someone he assumed was gay, and then alluded to them being racist because they tried to call the police. Then he tried to justify assaulting someone else.

I would like to share a Twitter thread that I think encapsulates why people are upset with Netflix’s decision to platform Chappelle’s hate speech.

It is not about offense. Hate speech evokes and normalizes hate in the real world, including violence, rape, and murder.

This isn’t about special snowflakes getting their feelings hurt, it’s about people justifiably feeling like they are not safe to walk down the street without being harassed, assaulted, or killed.

Think about what has happened to many Asian Americans in the past months after hateful remarks received air time. When hate is normalized in media, hate is normalized in life.

https://twitter.com/rainofterra/status/1445914236668895236

I agree with everything in the thread, except how they decided to put "Black" in front of some of the people.

You wouldn't say here's Mark my Black employee, or Jerry my black friend. I think it's quite alienating to describe them that way

In this case, the tweet author is calling attention specifically to the disproportionate number of black trans women who are being murdered, so I believe it is warranted.

mostly in chicago it seems

In the special, Chappelle talks at length and with fondness about a friend of his that was trans and passed away. I feel the special will make viewers think in an empathetic way about the trans community, not a hateful way.

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28835703

Chappell's not getting any funnier or smarter at his age and expecting him to understand sex, gender, and the differences between them would be like expecting Trump to understand government.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com