Dave Chappelle has released a new Netflix special, The Dreamer, which is full of jokes about the trans community and disabled people.
“I love punching down!” he tells the audience, in a one-hour show that landed on the streaming service today (31 December).
It’s his seventh special for Netflix and comes two years after his last one, the highly controversial release The Closer.
That programme was criticised for its relentless jokes about the trans community, and Chappelle revisits the topic in his new show.
He tells jokes about trans women in prison, and about trans people “pretending” to be somebody they are not.
You can joke about everything and anything. Dave Chapelle wasn’t arrested and put in jail. The conflation of what’s legal and what’s in the etiquette of society is troubling. You can have shitty views and be entitled not to be arrested for having them. You can have shitty views and not be entitled for anyone to pay you or listen to you say them. I have the same right to complain to Netflix about promoting this asshole as he does being that asshole.