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the accusation that he’s “punching
down” at trans people. That hurts be-
cause—given that they’ve labeled him
trans phobic and he too represents
an oppressed community—he feels
like the injured party. If he is going
to show trans people kindness, then
they need to show him kindness fi rst.
“Empathy is not gay,” he says. “Empa-
thy is not Black. Empathy is bisexual.
It must go both ways.” It’s a surpris-
ingly sweet joke, but one that fails to
acknowledge his long history of paint-
ing the trans community, with the ex-
ception of one trans woman who met
Chappelle on his own terms, as mono-
lithic. As far as Dave Chappelle is
concerned, it seems, the most impor-
tant thing about trans people is that
they’re angry at Dave Chappelle.
Such sanctimony isn’t limited to
comedians bent on off ending the po-
litically correct. My personal beliefs,
for what it’s worth, align more closely
with those of Hannah Gadsby, the
Australian comic who broke through
in the U.S. with a 2018 Netfl ix spe-
cial, Nanette, that connects her expe-
riences in comedy with the trauma
she’s suff ered as a woman and a les-
bian. Gadsby’s particular talent as a
comedian is synthesis. She can pull
together a seamless set, incorporat-
ing a wide range of topics and emo-
tional beats, by weaving in callbacks,
refrains, and meta-commentary—and
she knows this so well that she fl aunts
it, outlining at the beginning of both
Nanette and 2020’s follow-up Douglas
what she’s going to do and how she’s
going to do it. It’s a neat trick, but
one that can slide into the territory of
condescension when Gadsby starts
explaining to her audience how she
expects them to react to her material,
as though she’s a powerful enough ma-
nipulator to override any conceivable
viewer’s capacity for free thought.
Her critics latched on to this tone ,
protesting that Nanette shouldn’t be
classifi ed as comedy. Douglas takes up
the accusation in earnest. Of course
not everything in Nanette was sup-
posed to be funny, Gadsby tells the
crowd: “I turned the laugh tap off my-
self. It was a decision. I stand by it. ”
Elsewhere, she launches into a self-
consciously shrill rant about men—
There’s precious
little space left for
introspection or
humility or self-doubtjust, she says, to bait her haters. The
problem with this stuff isn’t that it’s
not funny (although it isn’t) so much
as that it isn’t insightful or challeng-
ing in the way that her other material
can be. It’s self-absorbed. It protests
too much.I DON’T THINK comedy specials
that address serious themes, in tones
that are also sometimes serious, are
the problem. Stand-up is a relatively
young art form, and there are only so
many ways to stand in front of a mi-
crophone and deliver punch lines.
More fl uidity between the worldsRothaniel,a deeply personal special
directed by Burnham that plays like a
conversation and a confession, stud-
ded with very funny jokes, about the
contradictions of being a gay Black
man coming out in his mid-30s.
I don’t believe, either, that the
woke wars are at the core of comedy’s
current crisis. What I see is an elite
tier of highly paid, well-known com-
ics who can’t seem to accept the fact
that the privilege of performing for
an audience of millions—and being
treated as not just an entertainer but
a thought leader—carries with it the
burden of subjecting yourself to pub-
lic scrutiny. Self-deprecation has gone
out of style in stand-up. Now there’s
precious little space left for introspec-
tion or humility or self-doubt. Mean-
while, the epidemic of controversy-
courting smugness has been
exacerbated by a content- hungry
streaming industry that incentivizes
comedians to insert themselves into
the news cycle. When one of their
names trends on Twitter, that’s free
advertising for the comic and the plat-
form that releases their specials.
No wonder Netfl ix doubled down on
its support for Chappelle.
This is all a shame, because vulner-
ability goes a long way toward defus-
ing the anger directed at people who
tell jokes. Why has Larry David—a
74-year-old straight white guy who
never met a piety he didn’t want to
puncture—thrived for long enough
to charm millennials and Gen Z?
Because his jokes about other people
rarely overshadow his jokes at his
own expense.
There’s a diff erence between using
your platform to wring laughter out
of the human folly in which we all
participate every day and using it to
fi ght petty battles against the haters.
Comics who position themselves as
infallible are always going to catch
hell for ripping into others. “Who
are these perfect people that we have
in America now?” Maher demands
in #Adulting, during a riff on the
supposed cancellation of Aziz Ansari.
“So many perfect people who never
make a mistake, never do anything
wrong, yet get to judge your date.”
Comedian, heal thyself. of stand-up, spoken word, storytell-
ing, theater, and music should only
be daunting to genre purists—who,
frankly, need to lighten up. The rest
of us get to spend time with work that
defi es expectations, from Nanette to
Chappelle’s blistering response to the
murder of George Floyd, 8:46, to Bo
Burnham’s Inside. Earlier this spring,
HBO unveiled Jerrod Carmichael’sGadsbybaits▷