“I was actually worried you guys weren’t going to show up, when usually it’s the other way around,” Dave Chappelle said after walking onto the stage at Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, New Jersey. He is the closing act for the Funny or Die Oddball Comedy Tour. His jacket is too tight, something he acknowledges himself but insists, we will “get used to it.” He looks a little older than the last time his fans have seen him, but he is still the same Dave Chappelle from years ago, prior to him dropping off the face of the Western world and heading to Africa.
He mentions he is glad the audience actually showed up before because just the week before Susquehanna, he literally got booed off the stage in Hartford, Connecticut and refused to do his show. Instead of letting the negative reaction to his show affect the rest of his tour, he adds the anecdote to his routine and makes fun of himself and Hartford (but mostly Hartford). Chappelle admits that he just had a bad show, but adds that the mayor needs to worry less about his tour and more on education because “those people were stupid.” When he brings up North Korea later in his routine, particularly how strange Kim Jong-Un’s fascination with him is, he says if the country was going to drop a bomb, he “hopes it’s on Hartford.”
He is just as outlandish and crude as he was eight years ago, which subdued the fear that he might have lost his edge on his hiatus. Although he does not particularly address his departure from show business within the skit, he admits he hates the attention he gets from his fame but he loves doing stand-up. His casual comment leaves the question: why should we care if he is back doing comedy? He left the continent eight years ago, so will he still attract the same attention as before?
The answer his audience will come up with is that we will care because he is still so genuine. He knows exactly who he is, and instead of letting structural identities society gives him, such as male, African American, husband, father, or comedian, he uses these identities however he wants to form his own self-deprecating, hilarious sense of self, and there is something attractive about that. When someone can take the social constraints that bind others and make them appear as tools we can use to redefine ourselves through acceptance and humor, then that person’s work and art is relevant and meaningful. This is exactly what Chappelle does as he accepts his failure at Hartford, tells stories of his son asking his wife what pussy is, and then explains the dangers of using the n-word in a day and age where Paula Deen was fired for saying it 30 years ago. He adds that she can say it as much as she likes when he hires her as his personal cook, he and his friends will love it as long as she keeps the food coming.
As he makes comments like these and chain smokes the entirety of his act, it seems apparent there is no line for what is appropriate and inappropriate for Dave Chappelle. Even if there was, he doesn not mind stomping all over it, which is good because that is exactly what his fans want…except maybe for Hartford.
Jill Heagerty is a third-year student majoring in English with a minor in journalism. She can be reached at JH760370@wcupa.edu.