Was Dave Chappelle's extended SNL opening monologue on November 12th anti-Semitic? Plenty of people and organizations thought so. At the risk of being called a self-hating Jew, I thought it was brilliant.
I normally eschew controversy and reserve my blog for posting my poetry, which ensures that my readership stays as low as possible. But after a friend sent me a link to a thoughtful open letter to Dave Chappelle published online in Forward by the great-granddaughter of Sol Wurtzel, a Hollywood pioneer, I felt the need to respond in writing myself.
I can certainly appreciate Sharon Rosen Leib's anxiety and concerns, and in fact, I share them. But it's utterly misguided to put Chappelle's masterful performance in the same category as Kanye's and Kyrie's off the cuff Tweets, as some have done, and actually insulting to Chappelle's courageous, well-crafted artform. As my brother succinctly put it in a message "Society has lost its sense of humour - context matters." Even worse, they completely miss the point.
Admittedly, appreciating subtlety is not a strong point of general audiences, and that's unfortunate because all great art is made of subtlety, nuance etc. It’s why Chappelle is a great comedian, and why, watermelon-smashing Gallagher, who rose to temporary comedic fame in the 1970s and passed away this week, wasn’t a great comedian and won't likely be remembered. But when someone ‘goes into panic mode’ because a raw nerve has been hit from hearing a comedian, it sort of ignores all the subtlety and art of what he's doing. No, Chappelle didn’t ‘echo’ Kanye's conspiracy message. Kanye's craven sleep-deprived late-night Tweet carried the not-so-subtle subtext of violence against the Jews. The term "Defcon" is a military term, it actually refers to justified retaliation for aggression. That’s why it is so disturbing. And the fact that Rosen Leib feels the need to go into a history lesson on Jewish suffering to justify the presence of Jews in Hollywood is kind of ironic - she’s lecturing an American black man. As if he doesn’t understand the meaning of historical persecution.
Again, I get her discomfort, and unfortunately that was Chappelle's whole point, to unsettle is the MO of all great comedy. Unfortunately, if you make fun of stereotypes and conspiracy-thinking tropes, you've got to refer to stereotypes and conspiracy-thinking tropes, and that's what Chappelle was doing when he said "I've been there, and there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood." It's a statement of fact, as Rosen Leib attests before launching into her history lesson about why that is. If making a statement of fact is so fraught, it's precisely because it draws attention to our ingrained biases and prejudices, which is Chappelle's objective. When he said, "A group of blacks is a gang, a group of Italians is a mafia, and a group of Jews... well, that's just a coincidence," he's making us laugh at our propensity for stereotypes. So we can be conspiracy-minded with certain groups and not with "The Jews"? And what does he mean by "The Jews" - the two words, he said, you cannot utter together (reminiscent of George Carlin's brilliant 'the seven words you can't say on TV'). Does Chappelle mean that it's okay to think that "The Blacks" and "The Italians" are criminals, so why not "The Jews"? Of course not, it's that all oversimplified prejudice is stupid, but also that thinking stupid thoughts and having dumb opinions is your right if you live in a democracy and not in Communist China or North Korea (where it's required by law). I know that's a subtle message lost on a lot of people, but it's also necessary if we are to live in a functioning democracy. We have to acknowledge that we all have prejudices, and the only way to combat them is to expose them (by laughing at them in the case of comedy.) This is why provocative thoughtful comedy is on the front lines of democracy. It takes the measure of free thought and speech by challenging its limits, which ultimately has the effect of strenghthening democracy. It's a weak democracy that cannot sustain the challenge of freedom and descends into political correctness and intolerance. Bottom line is this is why we need comedians like Dave Chappelle. To make us uncomfortable, to inspire debate, and to hopefully make us laugh in the most profound way possible.
PS
On "The Jews," which shortly after the monologue was apparently trending on Twitter as a hashtag, and not usually to offer compliments. Here I will connect with the main purpose of this blog, poetry. Not too long ago I was asked by an esteemed poet and senior literature professor friend to participate in a group reading of poetry he was organizing. I was flattered and promptly refused. I hadn't written any new poetry in many years at that time, and certainly didn't think that anything I had 'in stock' was worth a public airing. Well, he was persistent and after much arm-twisting I eventually gave in. He asked me to send him copies of the poems I proposed to read, I supposed to vet them for quality, which was understandable and appreciated. I perused my files and found 8 poems that were not too old and not too embarrassing I thought. Some time later he contacted me to approve the selection, except for one poem. He asked me to remove and substitute it with a new one. This poem was one of the more recent ones, and was actually my favourite of the lot. I even deigned to think it was pretty good, which is why I was so surprised that he objected to it. The poem is called "The Italian". When I asked him why he was rejecting it, he answered something to the effect of 'How would you like it if someone read a poem called 'The Jew'"? After some vigorous debate, I reluctantly relented to his request solely out of respect for him. But frankly, I was left feeling disgusted by how it seemed like decades of academia had cowed my professor-poet-friend, turned him into a politically-correct milquetoast, which is the death knell of creativity. What an indictment of academia I thought. And how sad for his art. We are all the poorer for it. Incidentally, there is nothing remotely offensive about the poem, except apparently the title, I guess.
