How much antisemitism is too much antisemitism? Whenever grime artist Wiley comes on the radio or playlist I immediately switch him over, but then again, I still read Roald Dahl to the kids. Maybe it’s because Wiley’s hatred seems more immediate and visceral, or maybe it’s because Dahl no longer gets royalties. Maybe it’s because I’m a hypocrite. Whatever the reason, I’m missing out on some banging tunes. So when Dave Chappelle’s new comedy special The Closer dropped on Netflix last week, and accusations of antisemitism started soon after on Jewish social media, I wasn’t relishing the possibility of another lost artist. Especially with Chappelle being a master and fellow member of what he refers to as the same community, standup comics.
When I saw the clip though, I was confused. Dave’s got an idea for a movie, aliens leave Earth thousands of years ago, have a terrible time, so they return to claim Earth. “It’s called Space Jews.” I couldn’t work out where the joke was. Is it the juxtaposing imagery of Space Jews? Mel Brookes had a similar sketch ‘Jews in Space’ in History of the World. Is it the plagiarising I should be upset about? Then it dawned on me, ‘Ohhh, he thinks that’s what happened.’ I didn’t make the connection straight away because, that isn’t our history. We didn’t ‘leave’ anywhere. We were repeatedly kicked out, repeatedly tried to return, some of us remained all along, all of us pining for what was lost. To make the analogy more accurate, you’d also have to say that in the meantime, Earth was constantly invaded and colonised by lots of different ‘aliens.’ Yet as the joke stands, it’s the Jews who are the aliens, the Jew who is otherworldly and not human. The Jew intent on taking over the world. For the joke to work, for it to be a funny joke, that’s what you have to think.
Thirty minutes later Dave tells the story of a former black slave in America, who in turn becomes a slaveowner himself, treating people even worse than the white slaveowners. They’re making a movie about him. “It’s called Space Jews”. I was a bit quicker off the mark this time. Again, that’s a funny joke... if you think that Israeli Arabs, with full legal equality, and now part of the actual government, live under apartheid. If you think that in a local territorial dispute, the ever expanding populations of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, have no agency at all in the situation, and are subject to even worse than being worked to death, starvation, slavery, medical experimentation, and systematic genocide of over a third of their total number. Then absolutely, that’s a clever callback.
And the real brilliance of both these jokes, is that they can be enjoyed by the ‘anti-woke’ where Chappelle stakes his claim here, as well as the ‘woke’. It’s inclusive racism. Just as long as you see Jews as inhuman, world-conquering, and worse than Nazis. Which to be fair, is a significant chunk of the population. Including I guess all the reviewers from national publications, who’ve opined on everything from Chappelle’s supposed homophobia to misogyny and transphobia, but on this, given him a free pass. As always, it falls to the mighty Jewish media to flex our muscles and demand retribution, in the TV review of the JC.
Which brings us back to the initial question, how much antisemitism is too much? Two jokes, in 70 minutes of comedy? There’s some references I didn’t get, lots of offensive language if that bothers you, a few obvious punchlines and obvious angles. But there is brilliance. The cinematic opening is pure class, there are some very funny jokes, and moments of genuine insight. Chappelle is letting us into how he perceives the world. Some things you may agree with, some things you won’t. And whilst making a joke about a group is often wrongly conflated with being offensive about a group, it’s a shame if this is genuinely how he sees the Jewish people, and an even bigger shame that there are enough people out there thinking the same for those jokes to be able to work. It doesn’t make him or them right. It also doesn’t make him not funny.
