Streamer carries the speech he gave to arts students

Netflix has released a speech Dave Chappelle made defending his material and complaining about the way it has been portrayed.

Many of the comedian’s routines have been branded transphobic and homophobic – and he doubled down on his stance in the last stand-up special in his reported $60million Netflix deal, The Closer.

But  in the newly released speech he told students at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington DC last month: ‘The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it.

‘It has nothing to do with what you are saying I can’t say,. It has everything to do with my right, my freedom of artistic expression, that is valuable to me, that is not separate to me. It’s worth protecting for me and for everybody else who endeavours in our noble, noble profession.’

He raised funds for a theatre there which was due to be named after him – but those plans were dropped following the controversy.

Some students protested his speech, but the 40-minute broadcast version, entitled What’s In A Name, shows him getting an appreciative response from his audience.

It opens with a quote from Ellington saying: ‘Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.’

In his speech Chappelle complains that his work was unfairly portrayed in the press, which ‘removed artistic nuance’.

He likened the coverage to reporting the news that a 6ft rabbit shot a man in the face, but not telling them the work being described was a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

In one of The Closer’s more contentious routines, Chappelle joked about beating up a lesbian in a club after misgendering her, concluding: ‘I whooped the toxic masculinity out of that bitch.’  Other lines focussed on transwomen’s genitals  and he declared himself: ‘Team Terf’ alongside JK Rowling.

At the time of the special’s release, the comic was widely condemned, with LGBT campaign group GLAAD  said: ‘Chappelle’s brand has become synonymous with ridiculing trans people.’

But in the special, he spoke of his friendship with trans comedian Daphne Dorman, who took her own life, and said she would have loved his jokes.

And in his speech Chappelle said: ‘No matter what you say about The Closer it was still the most watched special in the world. And I am still of the mind – and I say this with all humility – that it is a masterpiece. And I challenge my peers to make a sequel. They cannot, I am sure

‘It will be decades until you see someone in my genre as proficient as me.  I am maybe a once-in-a-lifetime talent, I am telling you the truth.’

He said if someone had more talent or better ideas they would be able to defeat him, and said of the controversy over the building’s name: ‘The idea that my name would be turned into an instrument of someone else’s perceived oppression is untenable to me’.

Chappelle said it was his idea to drop his name from the building, and instead have it be called the Theater for Artistic Freedom and Expression.

In May the comedian was assaulted on stage during his act as part of the Netflix Is A Joke Festival, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, reportedly by a man upset by the comic’s descriptions of LGBT+ people.

Published: 8 Jul 2022