Netflix quietly released a new Dave Chappelle project on Thursday, in which he doubles down on why he’s continued to make transphobic jokes in his stand-up. The project, called “What’s in a Name?,” consists of a previously unreleased speech Chappelle gave to students at his alma mater earlier this year.
His 40 minutes on the mic happened back in June at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. The ceremony was initially meant to commemorate Chapelle by renaming the school’s theater after the comedian, who helped raise money for its construction. But the speech begins with him announcing that the theater wouldn’t actually bear his name – it was instead renamed to the Theater for Artistic Freedom and Expression. He later pivoted to defending himself against the ongoing backlash to his Netflix specials.
Back in November, when “The Closer” was first released on the streamer, Chappelle appeared for a Q&A at the school. During the conversation, he faced hostility from the students, who criticized him for continuing to make jokes targeting transgender people. In his “What’s in a Name?” speech some months later, Chappelle addressed what happened and, in response, doubled down, saying the criticisms only fuel his desire to keep pushing the offending material.
“The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it,” he said. “And it has nothing to do with what you’re saying I can’t say. It has everything to do with my right, my freedom, of artistic expression. That is valuable to me.”
Chappelle also complained about how his jokes from “The Closer” – and the special as a whole – was stripped of its “artistic nuance” thanks to the media coverage of it, likening the situation to reporting a Bugs Bunny cartoon as actual news.
Before the speech was up, Chappelle called the students who had criticized him “instruments of oppression,” and claimed that they had simply been indoctrinated by their own superiors. “I didn’t get mad at them,” he said. “They’re kids. They’re freshmen. They’re not ready yet. They don’t know.”