Dave Chappelle’s comedy special continues to elicit remarks for people across the world. He has open up several dialogs that many people may have not been so pressed to have prior to The Closer dropping. However, now everyone wants to chime in. The most recent community to open up about what The Closer has done is fellow comedians. Some of which have applauded him for his stance and the support he’s received from Netflix. TMZ recently caught up with fellow comedian Damon Wayans to ask his opinion on Chappelle’s stand-up. Despite being critical of Chappelle in the past, even challenging him to a Verzuz, Wayans sang his fellow comics praised and said he “freed the slaves.”
When asked for clarification, Wayans pointed out that politically correct culture and cancel culture has made comedians afraid to do their jobs. Comics are afraid to tell jokes right now. “We were slaves to pc culture. As an artist he’s Van Gogh. He cut his ear off and he’s trying to tell us its ok” Wayans told TMZ.
The interview followed up with “Going forward can you be a bit more risqué?” His response: “I’ve always been free. But I think that he’s saying ‘with all that I have, I’m not afraid to lose it for the sake of freedom of speech.’ You can’t edit yourself. Comedians were like…Mercedes makes a great car. But they crash a lot of them first.”
Michael Blackson also offered his support, even though it was in the interest of delivering his own joke. “Dave Chapelle low key snitched on DaBaby. Dave Chapelle did not help Da Baby at all smh lol. The LGBT did not know he took someone’s life, now they hate him even more lol. LGBT it was self defense” he tweeted. The Breakfast Club chimed in as well immediately following the specials release. Charlamagne said “there’s other things on that special people could be outraged about. I don’t think they really watched it.”
The Guardian did a piece called “Cancel culture killing comedy? What a joke” back in August which highlighted several comedians talking about the struggle to operate in PC culture. The shared a thought that Chris Rock shared earlier this year sort of summing it all up. “Everybody’s scared to make a move” he said. Pointing to cancel culture as to why so many show are unfunny right now.
British comedian Dawn French had a similar response when asked if she felt cancel culture was “imaginatively restrictive”. “One hundred per cent yes,” she said, expressing how sad she was that comics could no longer do “edgy” material “because you’d just have so many haters on your back”. “Apparently, comedians are scared to say anything for fear of cancellation,” said standup Robin Ince in the article. “I don’t know who these comedians are and I don’t know what they are too scared to say.”
