At this point Dave Chappelle is considered the greatest comedian of all time by many, a fact he refers to in his new Netflix special, poignantly titled The Closer. It’s an apt title in theory, not just because it will be his last in a series of specials aired by the streaming service, but also because “a closer” is how comedians refer to the big last laugh the whole set builds up to, the kicker that’s ideally supposed to stick the landing and neatly tie up the whole set. And boy can you tell that Chappelle is trying to close with a bang. In a tense hour-long journey, Chappelle decides to zero in on some of his biggest critics, the LGBTQIA+ community—and to many, it was a bomb.
In true Dave Chappelle fashion, the comedian comes out swinging to let his Detroit audience know that no one and nothing is off the table. He immediately mocks victims of pedophilia and uses Covid as a narrative device to joke about the uptick in hate crimes against Asian people, particularly those inflicted by black people. He sets the scene: this is not a safe space. That’s a hill comedians have wanted to die on for some time, especially when fighting the battle of censorship from the pedestal of comedic celebrity. It’s a bit of a cultural stalemate specific to the genre: people who get offended by jokes are prudish, puritanical and thin-skinned, and the comedian is the brave artist revealing societal truths through offensiveness.
