Dave Chappelle is one of the funniest people in the world, but that doesn’t mean he always feels like being funny. At about the five-minute mark of “8:46,” his new pop-up special on the Netflix is a Joke YouTube channel, the volume of his voice rises into a deep rasp. He’s discussing the death of George Floyd, the Houston native killed by police in Minneapolis, and his tone is one of enraged disbelief.
How, he wants to know, could officer Derek Chauvin have kept his knee planted in Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds (hence the name of Chappelle’s special)? How could the other three officers on the scene stand idly by, hands in pockets? What kind of world do we live in? Chappelle, a comedian who can shock with the best of them, seems genuinely shocked. Which isn’t to say he’s surprised.
These times are unlike any other, and “8:46” is unlike any other comedy special.
For one, as noted, it’s not a comedy, even if Chappelle can’t help but draw some scattered laughter from the crowd. And about that crowd. They’re spread out according to social distancing dictums, and they’re exercising further social responsibility by wearing facemasks. Filmed June 6 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Chappelle lives, and released last Friday, “8:46” is the standup equivalent of breaking news commentary.
“I don’t mean to get heavy, but we gotta say something,” Chappelle tells his audience. And so he does. Chappelle packs a lot into 27 minutes, and connects a lot of dots.
You’re probably familiar with some of them, including the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, and John Crawford at the hands of police. He revisits the murder of five police officers at a 2016 protest march in Dallas, and the rampage of Chris Dorner, who killed four people after he was fired from the Los Angeles Police Department. He lays into media personalities including Candace Owens, Don Lemon and Laura Ingraham, who famously advised LeBron James to “shut up and dribble.” Which is a little like telling Chappelle to shut up and tell jokes.
He has plenty to say on the subject of whether celebrities have a say in it all:
“These streets will speak for themselves, whether I’m alive or dead.” Of course, reality moves a little too fast even for Chappelle. The day after “8:46” was released, Rayshard Brooks was shot dead by police in the parking lot of a Wendy’s in Atlanta.
In the end Chappelle loops it back to a black man who led a delegation to the white house - during the Woodrow Wilson administration. He was there to protest the lynching of a man who was killed over a fee at a grain elevator.
The man who led the delegation was named Chappelle. He was the comedian’s great grandfather. He was born a slave.
“These things are not old,” Chappelle tells his audience. “This is not a long time ago. It’s today.”
Chris Vognar is a Houston-based writer.
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June 16, 2020 at 05:12PM
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Dave Chappelle stays current in electrifying ‘8:46’ - Houston Chronicle
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