How to win the culture war
In America culture has become politics by other means, and that has not been good for either realm. As Donald Trump and his imitators have made politics more outlandish and offensive, films, television and even comedy, dominated as they are by creative types of the left, have grown more didactic and censorious—thereby supplying more fuel to the right.
This loop has sucked in even some entertainers wise enough to try to stand outside it, at least to judge by the comedian Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix special, “The Dreamer”, released on the last day of 2023. Mr Chappelle’s wit is still fanged, his storytelling still absorbing, the strike of his punchlines as surprising—as deserving of the name—as ever.
Some jokes fall flat, but that has always been the case. What seems new are the triumphal notes. Early in the new act, Mr Chappelle says with a grin, “I love punching down.” That is ostensibly a reference to a marginalised group he is newly mocking, people with disabilities. But it registers also as a shot at the offended multitude that tried in 2021 to get Netflix to remove his show that year, “The Closer”, because of his jokes about transgender and gay people. It was among the biggest of the many uproars thus far over where to draw the boundaries for American discourse, and it was also unusual because Netflix held the line in the face of an internal uprising as well as a social-media assault.
2024-01-04 08:20:25
Article from www.economist.com
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